How to Teach “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Lesson Plans, Analysis Questions, and Assessment Ideas
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s masterpiece of a short story touches on so many different and fascinating themes, but it’s not exactly an easy story for most teens to get into. This tale of an imprisoned housewife who slowly goes insane as she becomes more and more obsessed with the wallpaper in her summer rental is confusing, seemingly random, and on the surface, plotless.
As one contemporary of Gilman said, it’s “enough to drive anyone mad to read it.”
Add to that the extensive historical and literary context that’s pretty important for students to have when reading the story—from Weir Mitchell’s “rest cure” to the Victorian ideal of the angel in the house to classic gothic literature tropes like the double, the secret document, or the imprisoned woman—and this story can feel like too much to even attempt. In fact, while I have adored and respected this story since I first read it in college, I avoided writing the unit for it that I knew it deserved—because I knew just how much work it would entail!
But I’ve done it! I’ve peeled off the, er, layers of the story and broken it down to createa unit that makes the story accessible, relevant, and still challenging for high school students. These lesson plans are designed to make a complex text feel manageable without oversimplifying it.
Here are my 7 tips for teaching the frustrating 19th-century masterpiece about a woman and her wallpaper:
Get students thinking about the importance of setting before you start reading. If your students are anything like mine, as soon as they get to a detailed setting description they immediately think “skip!” But for a story in which the setting is practically a main character, they really can’t ignore it in this text. My favorite way to prime the setting pump is to play the “Mystery Setting” game. In this creative writing exercise, students each describe a setting where something has happened without saying what took place. Then, they read their descriptions out loud and get their peers to guess. This is a super fun game and a great way to get students thinking about how much a detailed setting description can convey—but a warning that you will get your share of crime stories!
Introduce classes to the Victorian ideal of the Angel in the House. Gilman was definitely battling some deeply entrenched expectations in her life and work, and so getting students to understand just how unrealistic and oppressive Victorian standards for women were is key before you start reading the story. I like to do this by discussing art work from the time as well as excerpts from the poem “The Angel in the House” by Coventry Patmore.
Start with a close reading of the first passage. When students are just thrown into the mix with a narrator who is writing a diary with zero explanation, they can get lost on what’s happening and why it matters. So before having them delve into this story of insanity, I have them look carefully at all of the clues that the first passage gives about the characters, setting, plot, and themes of the story as a whole. Carefully crafted analysis questions on “The Yellow Wallpaper” help students notice those clues instead of skimming past them. Knowing that the main conflict is between the narrator and her husband, for example, gets them thinking about who “wins” that battle and how they know. After they’ve got their footing a little, we move on to the rest of the story.
Get students writing about the text early and often. Since this story can be tricky to wrap your head around, I like to offer students theme-centered quotes to respond to. Giving them handouts with quotes about the narrator’s mental state, for example, helps them to both close read and unpack the language of the text as well as to see how the narrator changes through the story. This way, they can focus on meaning rather than searching for the right quotes to analyze. Strong discussion questions can then build on that writing and push students to debate interpretation rather than summarize plot.
Read excerpts from The Rest Cure and “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper,” and read them as primary texts. While it may seem easier and faster to give students a quick powerpoint about Victorian expectations for women and Weir Mitchell’s ideas about women’s health, when students get to tackle those pieces as texts to be analyzed, they’ll see how Mitchell’s language of control, obedience, and mistrust echoes the narrator’s portrayal of her seemingly-over-the-top husband. And they’ll see how Gilman’s short essay both subtly and masterfully frames her story in the way she wanted it to be received. They’ll also see the story’s power as a work of protest and resistance, and maybe gain more of an appreciation for Gilman’s choices.
Read the story in the context of the Gothic Literature tradition. While Gilman’s narrator doesn’t explore damp passageways in old manors, she is staying in an “ancestral hall” for the summer—and she is clearly a fan of the gothic literature genre. Gilman takes standard tropes of the genre and turns them on their head to show the very real terrors for her and her contemporaries. And when students understand that, they will gain an appreciation for the story, the tradition, and the very real struggles of women in Gilman’s time. This is a great time for a jigsaw-type activity in which small groups are responsible for the various tropes.
End with a meaningful assessment. Sure, making class art out of collages of yellow wallpaper and quotes from the story sounds like it’ll be fun and low-key, but students will likely see that kind of activity for the busywork it is. A simple plot-based quiz might check comprehension, but it won’t capture the depth of Gilman’s craft. Instead, I like to have students write an “ironic how-to” in the voice of the narrator, John, Weir Mitchell, or Charlotte Perkins Gilman herself. Topics might include something like “How to Control a Willful, Spoiled Patient” by Weir Mitchell or “How to Deal with Your Silly Goose of a Wife” by John or “How to Write a Story That Protests Unjust Treatment of Women” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. This is the kind of writing assignment that really teaches itself as students revise and edit their work in order to write the funniest essay and get a laugh out of their peers. Adding some concrete elements like quotes from the text to back up their ideas and some vocab words from the source text really make this fun assignment quite rigorous.
It’s a lot, but I think this story deserves to be taught well! Want it all done for you? The approach in this complete unit on “The Yellow Wallpaper” will get students appreciating, understanding, and maybe even enjoying a story about a woman and her yellow wallpaper.