UCF The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman Summary

student 1

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Yellow Wallpaper is a well-known short story that displays many formal characteristics and literary devices typical for its time period within the Realism movement. There are two characters that are focused on. First, there is the protagonist: an unnamed female narrator with what one can assume is postpartum depression. The second is the protagonist’s husband, John, a static character focused on practicalities and often dismissive of the protagonist’s troubles. The protagonist is a dynamic character, narrating in the first-person through letters she secretly writes about her mental state and her stay at a vacation home with John. Both the secrecy and her descent into madness make her an unreliable narrator. The setting is said vacation home, a colonial mansion, but most of the story takes place in the nursery the protagonist sleeps in with yellow wallpaper. The only other place on the property described in great detail is the garden on the estate. For this reason, the two biggest symbols are the wallpaper itself and the garden. Due to the protagonist’s mental health decline, the mood is often ominous and depressed. It is very intense with blunt diction, most things said simplistically and with exact meaning, typical of the Realism era. The plot structure of The Yellow Wallpaper is classical and its resolution is rather unsatisfying, as it leaves the reader unsure what actually happened to both the narrator and John.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote The Yellow Wallpaper in the North East United States in 1892 during the movement described earlier called Realism that ran from the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s. Things such as dynamic lower or middle-class characters, simplistic language, accuracy, and commonplace events were often the center of attention in this movement of literature. Gillman’s life explains a lot of what was the center of attention in this short story. She was a feminist activist who also wrote academic pieces. Gillman herself had postpartum depression and a turbulent first marriage, mirroring the protagonist. Not only that, but other details of Gillman’s life line up with the protagonist’s. Gillman did not want to take care of her daughter when she was born, part of the postpartum depression and the famous Doctor Mitchell prescribed her his well-known “rest cure” which dictated patients to have as little activity and interaction as possible. This often was due to the dismissal of women’s mental health issues during this time period, and Gillman projects that experience onto the protagonist.

This flows directly into Gillman’s likely goal with this piece: to make others understand what women go through when they are dismissed by doctors and the people around them. It was a satire piece calling out the healthcare system and gender inequality of the time. The protagonist’s slow descent into madness is a warning about what society is doing to women. The two symbols stated earlier, the wallpaper/room and the garden, are depictions of the private versus public sphere. Locking women away and confining them to the private sphere (the protagonist’s room) drives them crazy. They’re trapped like prisoners. Gillman was likely targeting this narrative of women being mistreated and misdiagnosed to the American public. For women, it would be a wake-up call to what is being done to them. To men, an explanation of what they’re doing and the damage it causes. To scientists, a plea to end the mistreatment and stop the pain they were causing women when they did so. Gillman likely wanted women’s lives to not be as deterministic, for them to have free will over their own public sphere.

This would be a very effective narrative at an opportune time. The First Wave Feminism movement began around the 1850s (The Seneca Falls Convention being in 1848) and continue to the 1940s. Situated almost in the middle at 1892, the commentary on social and political inequality and the concept of the private sphere would already be well known. Gillman’s academic work was influential as well. This work would be easily identifiable for what it was attempting to communicate, especially using a protagonist that could seem an average woman. While the 19th amendment was not passed until 1920, and did not solve all of the problems (or even come close), this piece was directed at the right people at the right time, fitting perfectly in the context of its era.

The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe

Edgar Allen Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death has lots of interesting formal characteristics and literary devices packed in a short story. The main characters that we see are Prospero (the prince), the mysterious figure dressed as the Red Death, and a large number of nobles or upper-class citizens. Prospero, the protagonist, is questionably described as wise and fearless, and accurately depicted as eccentric with a weird taste in style, especially in his castle. He’s a bit crazy, and continues to be a static character attempting to shut the Red Death out from his home, preventing himself from dying. The setting is a ball that takes place in Prospero’s castellated abbey with 7 extravagant rooms, each in a different color, during medieval Europe. The plot structure is classical and comes to a satisfying close, where the Red Death does make it into his estate upon the appearance of the mysterious figure, killing Prospero first and then all of the other party attendants. Two large symbols present themselves: the clock and the colored rooms. Poe often stated his dislike for art being forced to have incredibly deep meaning, and so these two symbols are rather straight forward. The clock is a clear allusion to death with ticking time. The rooms likely represent the seven deadly sins or seven stages of life. Because of its theme of the inevitably of death, the mood is rather grim and macabre, even with the excitement of the ball, fitting of the Gothic novel popular under the Romanticism movement happening at the time. This movement provides Poe with his choice in diction which is very elaborate and engaging on the senses. Interestingly, this short story seems to be in the third person but there are a few inclusions of “I” and so, therefore, is narrated by some unknown character in the first person.

The historical characteristics of this work give a lot of background to its gothic themes. Created in 1842 during the Romanticism movement in literature (late 1700s to late 1800s) in the North East of the United States, Edgar Allen Poe had many grim life experiences that likely lead to this story. The focus on the Red Death could come from his many close family experiences with death by tuberculosis which, just like the Red Death, involved a lot of blood. As a Gothic Novel, it combined common attributes of the time including horror, death, romance, nature, terror, and the supernatural (which would be the mysterious figure having no corporeal form).

While Poe was not big on needing to have a deep meaning, even at a very surface level this story is a commentary on class. It separates the upper-class from the other citizens as these higher-ups attempt to cheat death and seal themselves off, leaving the common citizens to fend for themselves. This selfishness is clearly a reflection of unsavory opinions about monarchs and the elite. It also clearly shows how it is impossible, no matter who you are, to cheat death. Nobles cannot escape death any more than the common person can. In the end, death is part of the unstoppable force of nature and we are all just human beings.

This would be effective oriented at Poe’s American audience. The hatred for monarchs, specifically European ones, would make this a very clear depiction of elitism and class to the American people due to the history of the American Revolution. They would be receptive to this concept since this anti-elitism of specifically the King and Queen variety in the United States still exists today. We love to jab at European monarchy’s and portray family nobility as corrupt, ingrained into us from youth due to our specifically anti-England designed democratic-republic system.

Discussion Questions:

1. In The Yellow Wallpaper: Where do you perceive the narrator to be both mentally (from completely mentally unstable to no longer mentally ill) and physically (from free to trapped) at the end of the short story? Do you think this better or worse than her position at the start?
2. In The Masque of the Red Death: How deep do you think the meaning of this piece goes? How many layers do you believe there are and what are they?

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student 2:

The featured works I chose to focus on were Lacrimosa by Mozart and Lacrimosa by Apashe. Mozart’s Lacrimosa has a predominantly D minor tonality, which was the key tonic note during the Neo-Classicism period. This tonality helps give it a calm, fierce, dark, sharp, full tone color. This piece is mainly made up of strings and vocals that are in Latin, which makes its instrumentation a limited orchestra. The tempo is slow with a meter that is considered a compound quadruple (12/8); this means there is an accent on every third beat. The dynamics are considered variable in the sense that the range goes from soft to loud. Lacrimosa has a homophonic texture, meaning there is a primary melody played with accompaniment; there is no rhythmic differentiation.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was an Austrian composer who was born in 1756 and passed away in 1791. He was a child prodigy, who began playing the piano and composing works at the age of five years old. He had more than six hundred compositions, and Lacrimosa was his last work. Mozart died before it was completed, and Lacrimosa was the final piece of the Sequentia. The piece is classified as a requiem in the sense that it was molded after Catholic masses, even though there was a decline in religion during this time period. This piece could also be classified as classical because it was created during the Neo-Classicism period that ranged from the mid 1700s to the early 1800s. The characteristics that define this movement include balance, clarity, and restraint. Neo-Classicism had many developments that could be heard through the works created during this period. For example, there were developments in the articulation of tonality, so there was a more organized sound. There were also developments in the symphony due to the expansion of the orchestra.

The main purpose of Mozart’s Lacrimosa was to commemorate the dead, it was created for a count who was mourning the loss of his wife. The main subject of the piece pertains to salvation and judgement regarding Christianity. Mozart composed music for commissioners who paid for these works. During this period of time, music was meant to be played live, so he also composed music for entertainment purposes.

The second featured work I chose to focus on was Apashe’s Lacrimosa. This piece is extremely different than Mozart’s, though Apashe sampled his work. The instrumentation includes strings and vocals from Mozart’s Lacrimosa, but there are synthesizers and computers layered on top, which makes its texture polyphonic, meaning there are two or more independent melodies playing at the same time. Apashe’s Lacrimosa does not feature any tonality because there is no central key, which helps give it an agitated, harsh, dark, sharp, fierce tone color. The dynamics are considered variable, they range from moderate to very loud. The meter could be considered a compound quadruple (6/8), while the tempo is moderate because there are build ups and the piece speeds up and slows down. There is no clear subject, it is considered to be indefinite, but there is emphasis on the contemporary style with a neo-classical illusion.

Apashe was born in 1995 and is a Canadian DJ. He is part of the Contemporary movement, which ranges from the early 1900s to present day. The characteristics of this movement are unknown because of how broad it is, historians are yet to decide if we are still in this movement or if we are past it. There have been many developments during the Contemporary movement, mainly pertaining to technology; computers and synthesizers are now commonly used in many different genres of music.

The reason Apashe made Lacrimosa is unknown, he never explicitly said why he made this piece. It can be inferred that he wanted to pay homage to Mozart, he might have felt inspired by him and thought he was a musical genius. He could have also made this piece for satirical reasons as well, no one is completely sure. Since this piece is modern, its function is for mass distribution on multiple platforms. It can be downloaded digitally from Spotify, Apple Music, etc. or a CD can be purchased. Apashe’s Lacrimosa was made for entertainment purposes, one would hear this at electronic festivals, such as Electric Forest. His works are also meant to be used in television commercials, such as Adidas, Netflix, Apple, and Netflix, along with multiple movie trailers.

Questions:

Why do you believe Apashe sampled Mozart’s Lacrimosa in his own rendition when he could have sampled another composer’s classical piece?

How does Mozart’s Lacrimosa embody the characteristic of restraint?