Improving by the Hour

As if to make up for the disaster that was my last attempt at timed writing for this piece, my process went so smoothly today!  I was really happy with how far I got.  Instead of looking at it as a monster paper that makes me want to hide under my bed, I broke it into bits.  Each point got its own Word Doc and I was able to stitch them together at the end of today.  Now, I just need to do the intro and conclusion and I'll have a pretty decent draft of this guy!

Here's what I've come up with:

Next Steps and Draft: The Yellow Wallpaper

I'm ready to just get this paper done, out of my system, and off of my to-do list!  A rough draft will be good to help me finally get everything organized and written out in cohesive ideas. Talking through my plans with Dr. Burton was so effective on Monday! He helped me realize that my initial ideas were..uhh...pretty cliche.  Soooo some revision was necessary.  Luckily, he showed me a different option that could also be great and pretty unique, so now my subject will be: "Women and Hysteria: Relating Mental Health and Women's Issues through the Lens of 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'" This isn't the title because it's not super engaging at all, but it's a start.

Annotated Bibliography for "Please, Death, Do Us Part"

I was able to use the sources and databases that we learned about in our library sessions this week and they were so effective!  I  decided to title my essay, "Please, Death, Do Us Part" because I want to focus on author Charlotte Perkins Gilman's opinion of marriage and how it shines through in her work, "The Yellow Wallpaper."

Working Thesis:  As a pioneer work of feminist literature, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, asserts that due to their oppressed roles, women can never find true happiness or satisfaction in marriage.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Julia Reidhead. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2013. 485-497. Print. [Primary Text]

Chohra, Riadh. “The Yellow Wallpaper (Summary and Analysis)”. Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 15 Oct. 2015. Web. 16 March 2016. [YouTube Video]

• ·       This video was a great find for me!  It goes into detail on the life of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and then compares it to the life of the narrator in the story.  Since the author really wrote herself into the work, it provides some awesome ties and relations that will be useful in my paper.

Dock, Julie Bates. "'but One Expects that': Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'the Yellow Wallpaper' and the Shifting Light of Scholarship." PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 111.1 (1996): 52-65. Print. [Journal Article]

• ·       This is a peer-reviewed journal article from back in 1996 that discusses how “The Yellow Wallpaper” went from being read as a ghost story to a work of feminist literature after it was rediscovered in the 70’s.  The author explores how scholarship is just as grounded in historical biases as literature, which will be useful if I want to talk about the obstacles that the author faced to get her work published in a male-dominated system.

Glaspell, Susan. “Trifles.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Julia Reidhead. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2013. 743-752. Print. [Intertextual Story]

• ·       This was a text that I also read in my 293 class.  Its storyline is another example of the oppression that women faced in marriage and the lack of trust between husbands and their wives.  This is an intertextual source and will provide strong supporting evidence that Gilman wasn’t the only one who had a problem with the marital system.

González Mínguez, María Teresa1. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'the Yellow Wallpaper': On how Female Creativity Combats Madness and Domestic Oppression., 2014. Print. [Academic Journal]

• ·       I found this source from the Humanities database. It’s an article from a Spanish academic journal published in 2014.  The author makes some interesting points about how female instinct combats domestic oppression and depression.  This could work when I talk about some of the methods women employed to improve their conditions in an unhappy marriage.

Nenadovic, Milutin M. "Development of Hospital Treatment of Persons with Mental Disorders." Srpski arhiv za celokupno lekarstvo 139 Suppl 1 (2011): 6-9. Print. [Academic Journal]

• ·       I really wanted to explore the mental health aspect of this topic as well, and I was able to find some great information from this article so far. It details the development of treatment for mental health and how it became seen as a real ailment, not just an imagined disease.  This realization occurred around the setting for “The Yellow Wallpaper” and is very relevant.

Davis, Cynthia J. Charlotte Perkins Gilman : A Biography. Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2010. Print. [Author Biography]

• ·       This eBook is gold. It gives a detailed biography into the life of the Charlotte Perkins Gilman and discusses “new insights into the life of a remarkable woman whose public solutions often belied her private anxieties.” I think that by learning more about the author and her history, I will better understand her case for women’s rights and equality in marriage.

Listen Up! The Yellow Wallpaper Pre-Write

So I had a lot of fun with the voice-changer on my phone. Also I couldn't figure out how to do just an audio, so I had to put a picture with it to make it a video so the darn thing would go onto YouTube. Thus, we have this lovely webcam pic :P Anyway, enjoy!

Why "The Yellow Wallpaper"?

For this project, I've chosen to research a short story that I first read in my English 293 class, "The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.  This isn't one of my all-time favorite stories, but I found it really interesting and want to research it more.  It was one of the first works to really expose the oppression that women faced back in the early 19th century, and the lack of understanding and acceptance of mental conditions such as post-partum depression.

There are a lot of audiences that are very interested in these topics.  I haven't decided the route that I specifically want to take yet, whether it be feminism or post-partum depression, but I know that there are various options for either. Some include:

• Goodreads discussion boards
• #theyellowwallpaper, #ppd, #feminism, etc.
• This blog: http://www.everythinghurts.me/blog/2016/2/6/a-story-of-our-pain-then-and-now
• Facebook pages: "women's studies," "feminism," "post-partum depression"
• I also have a few friends that are very interested in women's studies.  I'm excited to bounce ideas off of them and get some live feedback.

I was really worried about the book I'd find for this project, but now I know that there will be a lot of research and information available on this topic and I can't wait to learn more about it.