‘The Yellow Wallpaper’: analysing character
Lesson details
Learning outcome
I can analyse a writer's use of different voices in a narrative.
Key learning points
- A first person narrator can often give the reader a unique insight into their personality, relationships and lifestyle.
- The narrator in 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is presented as silenced and powerless.
- The narrator exposes her husband as oppressive.
- Perkins Gilman employs many techniques to show the narrator's lack of agency.
- It could be argued that that narrator has agency since everything we learn is filtered through her consciousness.
Keywords
Dismissive - treating someone as if they are unworthy of consideration
Agency - the ability to take action or choose which action to take
Futility - pointlessness or uselessness
Common misconception
Pupils may be used to encountering a detached third person narrator thus expecting most narrators to be trustworthy and reliable.
When a writer chooses to write a story from a characters' perspective, we have to consider that each character is fallible or unreliable. Thus, we have to re-filter (through our own consciousness) the information we get from a first person narrator.
Teacher tip
In Learning Cycle 1, you may want to spend some time unpicking how naïve pupils think the narrator is. For example, does she say her husband is "loving" because she genuinely thinks this or is she somewhat censoring herself in case her manuscript is discovered?
Equipment
You will need access to the opening of 'The Yellow Wallpaper' by Charlotte Perkins Gilman for this lesson which is available in the additional materials.
Content guidance
Depiction or discussion of discriminatory behaviour
Depiction or discussion of sensitive content
Depiction or discussion of sexual violence
Supervision
Adult supervision required
Licence
except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).Lesson video
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Prior knowledge starter quiz
6 Questions
Q1.What does 'hysterical' mean?
Q2.What does it mean if we have a first person narrator?
Q3.What does the word 'lurid' mean?
Q4.What might dismissive behaviour look like?
Q5.What is agency?
Q6.How might someone show their agency?
Assessment exit quiz
6 Questions
Q1.Who narrates 'The Yellow Wallpaper'?
Q2.What is particularly concerning the narrator in 'The Yellow Wallpaper'?
Q3.What does dismissive mean?
Q4.What is true of the narrator and her husband's relationship in 'The Yellow Wallpaper'?
Q5.What does the narrator of 'The Yellow Wallpaper' implicitly tell us about her husband?
Q6.What might show the narrator's lack of agency in 'The Yellow Wallpaper'?
To help you plan your 11 English lesson on: ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’: analysing character, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs...
To help you plan your 11 English lesson on: ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’: analysing character, download all teaching resources for free and adapt to suit your pupils' needs.
The starter quiz will activate and check your pupils' prior knowledge, with versions available both with and without answers in PDF format.
We use learning cycles to break down learning into key concepts or ideas linked to the learning outcome. Each learning cycle features explanations with checks for understanding and practice tasks with feedback. All of this is found in our slide decks, ready for you to download and edit. The practice tasks are also available as printable worksheets and some lessons have additional materials with extra material you might need for teaching the lesson.
The assessment exit quiz will test your pupils' understanding of the key learning points.
Our video is a tool for planning, showing how other teachers might teach the lesson, offering helpful tips, modelled explanations and inspiration for your own delivery in the classroom. Plus, you can set it as homework or revision for pupils and keep their learning on track by sharing an online pupil version of this lesson.
Explore more key stage 4 English lessons from the Fiction: inner musings unit, dive into the full secondary English curriculum, or learn more about lesson planning.