Writing About Literature

A Sample Essay for Comp II

The following essay is a recent submission. It's a good essay that develops an important point about the story. It is not perfect, but it is honest and well-focused.

A good, academic literary essay develops the ideas and concepts in a work. The writer understands the language of the discipline (plot, protagonist, conflict, symbolism, etc.) as well as the nature of artistic expression.

The assignment asked writers to use three sources: one biographical and one critical from college databases. The third source was of their own choice.

Topic: What did you learn from the sources?

Good writing deals with ideas that are important to the writer of the paper. Here, the paper begins with a distinctly medical flavor.

Notice that the writer knows where the writing is going in the first paragaph.

The second paragraph summarizes the story, but does so from the perspective of what the writing must accomplish. The medical focus is still strong here.

The third paragraph is biographical information. Notice, though, that the details were selected to connect into a developing concept. The reader can understand that the artist's life was unusual and can infer that Gilman knew something about depression her whole life.

The quotes selected here are important pieces of evidence.

The biographical narrative continues in the fourth paragraph. Weir Mitchell returns from a mention in paragraph two. Mentioning the doctor's name here ties Dr. Mitchell to the protagonist of the story and to the artist. The focus, though, is always on the artist, not the protagonist.

This quote is the most famous quote concerning the story, and no literary response would be complete without at least a brief quote from it.

A literary writer has an obligation to find the most accurate, relevant and fair sources available.

The writer then responds to the most visible analysis (that of the artist herself).

The response does not take an opposing position, but rather examines other perspectives or angles on the idea.

Notice, though, that the writer always remains focused on the depression, the insanity, and the fact that the story's protagonist is an artistic creation.

The conclusion begins with a bit of confusion, but it does relate back to the introduction in the second sentence.

The weakest sentences are at the end.

MLA citations are not formatted correctly. That's the topic for another page!

drogers

The Yellow Wallpaper

There are more reported cases of clinical depression in women than their are in men. There is also, generalized in western cultures, a stereotype that women are fragile and should be more dedicated to maintaining the home, doing feminine things, that they shouldn't work, and be discouraged from intellectual thinking. In the Victorian period (1837-1901) aside from women's suffragette movements the Victorian woman usually upheld this stereotype of a well behaved wife, more or less a possession then an individual. However, there were a few who defied the odds and took it to heart to let the world know about the indifference's that they went through. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, feminist, was one of these women who used her writing to express the differences and hardships women went through. One of her more famous pieces the Yellow Wallpaper is best know however, as both a feminist pieces and a depiction of Victorian life and indifferences for women. It is a piece that can have controversial meanings that can be taken to heart to why Gilman ever wrote it.

"The Yellow Wallpaper” has a simple enough story, the woman is taken to a rented house to recover from a nervous depression that she was experiencing. The depression was something common in women of the time, especially in more upper class women with little to do. The antidote " the cure" was developed by a Weir Mitchell, for psychoneurosies, in theory a women should inhibit herself from any kind of work or thinking and to get as much fresh air as possible. The heroine is subjected to this cure. Having been confined to a room in the house she starts imagining things in the wallpaper that she hates so much. However, as the story progresses it is harder and harder to tell if the women's imagination is getting to her or if she is slowly slipping in to madness, as she hallucinates people in the wallpaper and adopts a protective nature for it becoming one with her imagination.

The author of the story, Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in July 3, 1860, in Hartford. Charlotte Perkins Gilman is an important figure in feminist activism and literature. Her father was Frederick Perkins, who was an editor and a librarian. Frederick Perkins, however abandoned the family when Gilman was only a baby. In the years to come the only real contact he had with his daughter was that he provided her with book lists." Gilman's relationship with her mother proved similarly peculiar, for her mother knowingly abstained from affection. In addition, Gilman was prevented by her mother from reading fiction or developing strong friendships"(Stone). The only company that Gilman found herself around was her relatives, Harriet Beecher Stowe or Catherine Beecher and Isabella Hooker (feminist activists) However, against her mother's wishes she grew a love for books. Before Gilmans early twenties she taught as a teacher, she soon married though, an artist by the name of Walter Stetson. "Within a year of marrying, and after having given birth to a daughter, Gilman entered into her profound depression"(Stone).

Gilman was married twice in her life, the first time developing this so called psychoneurosies after the birth of her daughter. "In 1887 Charlotte Perkins Gilman placed herself under the care of Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, a wellknown nerve specialist; she was suffering from depression, "nervous prostration" as diagnosed by the doctor, after the birth of her daughter. "At that time, the medical profession had not yet distinguished between diseases of the mind and diseases of the brain" (Korb). If she probably had anything it was postpartum depression. Gilman explains this time in her life in a her biography, Gilman states:

"For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia and beyond. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to "live as domestic a life as far as possible," to "have but two hours' intellectual life a day," and "never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again" as long as I lived. This was in 1887" (Gilman).

Gilman not being able to handle the cure wrote The Yellow Wallpaper. In her biography on her story Gilman states: "Being naturally moved to rejoicing by this narrow escape, I wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper," with its embellishments and additions, to carry out the ideal (I never had hallucinations or objections to my mural decorations) and sent a copy to the physician who so nearly drove me mad. He never acknowledged it" (Gilman). However Wier did eventually acknowledge her story and he did change his cure.

Even though Gilman proclaims that she wrote the story as an rejoicing there is still an ongoing debate about the true intent of The Yellow Wallpaper. In my opinion she wrote the story as an emotional release not just a reason to tell Wier off. If you look back into her life besides her feminist family companions her books became her friend, a passion she loved so much she herself became a writer. The book list her father gave her probably not only help to drive her passion but with the combination of feminist acknowledgments she had something to help her development. It is great that she was able to write a story about a life event she had. The story really depicts a women feeling trapped, "for instance, when John refuses to give in to her fancies about changing the wallpaper because, after that "it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on," he is reminding her of her confinement" (Korb). In another opinion the unruly changing wallpaper could be related to a pattern in ones life. The end of the story itself can also in a weird way shows that even through the heroines creeping insanity she lets herself free from her containment, just as Gilman had done when she went back to writing and divorced her first husband.

In conclusion just how the story tells many stories in one, Gilman probably wrote it to show that kind of diversity. She probably wanted a release, to share her life, to get back at the Wier Cure, to show the injustice brought to women of the period and to probably just be creative. In finding reviews and biographies on Gilman one does not find too many bad words written on her. She is held as a very prestigious writer. As for the yellow wallpaper it really expands the minds and makes one have to sit back and analyze what was really going on.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Why I Wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper"? http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/ daniel/amlit/wallpaper/Whywrote.html

Korb, Rena. An Overview of "The Yellow Wallpgper," in Exploring Short Stories Literature Resource Center. Gale Research, 1998.

Stone, Les. Charlotte (Anna) Perkins (Stetson) Gilman. Contemporary Authors Online. The Gale Group, 2000.