Mental Health & The Yellow Wallpaper

Write-Up Word Count: 643

“The Yellow Wallpaper” has been one of my favorite short stories through the years, but for some reason, I never really thought to look at it through the lens of disability and/or mental illness, even though it was literally and unapologetically about mental illness—a very real brush with a severe, potentially crippling mental breakdown. I first read Gilman’s story in high school, but we never touched on the disability aspect of the story. It was either Gothic Horror or American Fiction, and nothing a little more profound or potentially relating back to things that happen in real life.

In that regard, especially given the growing vocality of the disabled and mentally ill, and the constant criticism of coding film and fiction villains as mentally ill, I find that not talking about the disability aspects behind “The Yellow Wallpaper” to be a great disservice to our high school students. They still have the flexibility to unlearn toxic behavior and thought processes with teachers and administration as mediators, without them having to come face to face with it on their own without support. If we embrace that support structure, we might even help kids ask for help if they think something might be wrong. I know that if we’d taken the disability studies route when I was in high school and first read “The Yellow Wallpaper,” I might have asked for help sooner than I did. Not that I ever had hallucinations or anything, but maybe, just maybe, I would have recognized the dangers of hyperfocus and being fatigued all the time, and how staring off into middle distance all the time probably wasn’t a good thing.

So that was the motivation for this project. I’m currently in the Master’s of Education program here at UMW, and I wanted to do a project that more aligns wit my future goals and career than just writing my ten millionth academic paper. Since I’m going to be a teacher, I do need to practice writing lesson plans, since that’s going to be what I’m doing for the rest of my professional life.

Coming up with something that didn’t rely on the heavy theory readings we did in class was a challenge. Most of the theory reading we did likely isn’t accessible to 11th graders without very careful modeling and guiding, and there isn’t a lot of time for that when you have a state-mandated curriculum to follow. They’re just that dense. I did manage to find several resources for teaching at grade level and some to use for differentiation purposes, since not all students learn the same. The experience I have as an active substitute and my twenty practicum hours this semester were an advantage I utilized to the fullest. If given the chance, I think I’m even ready to teach this lesson, even though it’s designed to take at least two 80-minute class periods. Parts of the lesson plan were purposefully left vague, as they depend entirely on student response.

Making the lesson accessible was my biggest challenge, because a lot of the theory is so dense, and I chose an SOL Standard focused on 11th grade, and most classes won’t talk about anything other than what’s already tried and true. Even today, which the voices of the disability community growing louder, I’ve noticed in my years as a substitute teacher that schools don’t really talk to their kids about disability and mental illness. It’s still taboo, which is a shame, since it’s just as important as looking at racism and sexism in texts, both of which schools do talk about (if, still very inadequately). Disability gets nothing. With that in mind, I wanted to work on this project so that I could have something to show that it is possible to make disability studies accessible even to high schoolers. I just hope I succeeded.

I.          Objectives

  • Students will be able to consider critically the effects of mental health on a person and their behavior, as well as the dangers involved when patients are not listened to when being treated. 
  • 11.3 The student will read and analyze relationships among American literature, history, and culture

II.         Materials for Learning Activities

  • Copies of the Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” and accompanying note “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper”, either digital or print. A handout of questions for discussion. Paper to write on and something to write with.
  • Overhead projector, a copy of “The Yellow Wallpaper” and accompanying note, link to Vimeo short film based on the short story. Strategy pages 69-71 from 50 Instructional Routines to Develop Content Literacy (3rd Edition).

III.       Procedures for Learning Activities

  • Introduction – To introduce the story of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” I, as the teacher, will ask the students what they know of mental illness and its representation in film and fiction. If they get stuck, they can write what they think/know about the Gothic tradition. They will write everything they know or think they know in their class writing journal. This will be an exercise that takes approximately five minutes. After that five minutes, I’ll ask if anyone wants to volunteer what they wrote. If no one is brave enough, I’ll break the ice by offering my own thoughts, because I’ll be doing the free-write, too, to model the exercise and help make students feel more comfortable.
  • Model – To model the lesson, which follows the “Questioning the Author” strategy from Instructional Routines textbook, I, as the teacher, will supply the class with a list of questions drafted for the short story. I will then read the first five paragraphs out loud to jumpstart the reading and provide questions/commentary for them.
    • Okay, so Gilman has established that our narrator and her husband are ordinary people… So, we can assume that there’s nothing inherently special about them, except that they managed to rent a nice property for a summer vacation. The narrator fancies it might be haunted, but why? The author is setting us up for something exciting, with phrases like “ancestral estate” and “romantic felicity.”
    • What could Gilman’s narrator mean by romantic here? Romantic as in a romantic getaway with her husband, or “Romantic Capital R” like Emerson, Whitman, or Dickinson? In this case, it’s probably the latter, since the narrator describes herself as unwell and wanting to get better, and there isn’t typically a lot of marital romance going on when you’re sick…
  • Guide – To serve as a guide for students’ reading, they will each have a handout/half sheet of questions they can use in their writing journals, or they can branch off and ask their own questions. I, as the teacher, will also guide them through a question or two discussing the short story, with a prompt such as the following:
    • Obviously, something isn’t quite right with the house – Gilman’s narrator and her husband are renting it for very cheap and for a long time it was basically abandoned. And yet the narrator’s husband laughs at her. She expects this, because that’s apparently just what happens when you’re married. What do you think Gilman is trying to say with her narrator?
  • Cooperative/Independent – Students can work together using Google Docs or work individually, as they’ll be finishing reading the short story for homework and coming to class the next period having finished the story and with questions they want to ask and points they want to discuss. They’ll be given an original list of questions in the same vein as the prompts elaborated above.
    • What is the author trying to say?
    • What is the overarching message?
    • What difficulties did you have understanding the story?
    • Did the author give us the answer or did you make an inference on your own? What was your reasoning?
  • Teach – When the class reconvenes, after students have discussed with each other their answers, I, as the teacher, will read them the “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper” essay, and have them watch Crash Course Literature #407. We’ll talk about the importance of doctors listening to their patients and being attentive rather than controlling.
  • Cooperative/Independent – After the short essay and the Crash Course Literature video, the students will have the opportunity to discuss any changes to their thinking/reasoning behind their initial analysis of “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
  • Summary – To summarize and cool down the lesson, the class will watch a short independent film. The idea is to bring in something fun and entertaining to watch as a pick-me-up from a heavy topic. The short film could also prompt students to start thinking more about the representation the mentally ill in modern horror films/fiction, something for students to consider in their media consumption and their everyday lives, and what (potentially harmful, or potentially helpful) messages those media representations are sending.

IV.       Assessment

  • Assessment will be based on participation and how much thought each student put into their discussions. I, as the teacher, will have the students write their thoughts out on paper so that even if a student or two doesn’t get the chance to speak up in front of everyone, I can still gauge if my students are grasping the material. The writing could either be physical in a notebook or on loose paper or digital in a Google Doc.

V.        Differentiation

  • Offer print, digital, and audiobook formats of The Yellow Wallpaper.
  • Read the accompanying “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper” note aloud.
  • Students can work digitally in Google Docs or physically on paper
  • Students can work together to form their analyses or independently.

VI.       Technology Integration

  • Computer, Overhead projector, Internet (Vimeo, YouTube, Google Docs)

VII. Outside Materials

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