1. Intro to the NEA (Non Exam Assessment)
50 marks
20% of A2 grade
We will be working on this between now and September
The Yellow Wallpaper will be taught and you will choose a second text and a topic of interest to create your own question. This is an exciting opportunity to explore your passions in literature and work independently! (Excellent preparation for university study in general and particularly if you’re thinking of applying for English/Arts or Humanities subject).
Example question: Compare and contrast the ways in which marriage is presented as dysfunctional between the narrator and her husband in The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) and Martha and George, Honey and Nick in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1962)? Examine the view that the depression of a housewife is understandable.

2. Introduction to The Yellow Wallpaper
Understand concept behind the story
Analyse first impressions of key characters
Narrative voice: Identify technique and explore effectiveness

3. Time travelling scenario
You have been swept up in a Dr Who style adventure, transported back through the ages in the TARDIS to 1892! Wow! You find yourself living a completely different life: you are married to a doctor, John. You have recently had a baby. He expects you to devote yourself to being a mother and to sacrifice the intellectual and social pleasures that you find rewarding. To ‘help you’ he has rented a rural house and hired a nanny; you are encouraged to stay in you room (which has bars on its windows) and ‘rest’, avoiding reading and writing.
(Link for TARDIS sounds!)
In pairs, write a diary entry
reflecting on your feelings.
You are able to invite your 1892 self back to
How would you convince her/you to return?

4. Shared reading up to *** “…he hates to have me write a word.”
What are these two characters’ views on her illness?
What do we learn about the narrator and her husband?
Blind courage, foolish, reckless, impulsive, thoughtless, trusting – naive.
What do you notice about the narrative voice/style? How can we describe it?

5. The Split Voice in The Yellow Wallpaper
Narrative voice
The narrator’s voice in The Yellow Wallpaper, is a split voice, and in a sense carries the conflict of the story. The narrator’s voice slips between toeing the patriarchal line, as when she says, “Oh, but John is right. I will try and rest,” to veering off into imaginative, and complex analysis and description. Some critics have interpreted her voice (along with the larger conflict between husband and wife) as representing “a clash between masculine and feminine discourses.” Paula Treichler wrote “the narrator’s description of the yellow wallpaper represents a new vision of women – disordered illogic yet ultimately more creative, an impudent  and prophetic response to the what we are supposed to understand as rational ordered male discourse, authoritative ancestral and dominant.”
The Split Voice in The Yellow Wallpaper
Realistic representation of female experience (partly autobiographical)
First person narrator
Unreliable narrator
Epistolary style in form of a journal (without dates)
Fragmented style; short paragraphs and use of dashes mimic shifts in thought; a ‘streams of consciousness’ narrative (literary technique which reflects the mental world of a character, reflecting their thought patterns).
Changes progressively as time passes across the episodes within the short story.
Thinking points:
Why do you think the writer chose to use a first person narrator for this story? Why might this be effective/what benefit/s does this offer the writer? What is the impact on the reader?

6. Homework due next lesson:
Print out story from the online version at
Read the rest of the story. Research the author and the expectations of a woman in 1892.
Please also print off the list of home learning activities from dhsbookbabes so you know what will be set when.