McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Gothic Fiction
Yeratel:
--- Quote from: Franzeska on April 14, 2008, 04:29:37 AM ---To be fair, they aren't usually juxtaposed in scholarly literature. Maybe that's why she thought they were a weird choice. The Yellow Wallpaper is certainly gothic enough, but it's much more famous as feminist literature. Maybe you could try comparing it to some of the Poe stories where unpleasant things happen to women (there are certainly enough of them!).
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The common factor to these two stories is that they are both first person narratives by someone going insane due to fantastical thoughts playing on their immaginations.
Wolfhowls:
--- Quote from: Yeratel on April 14, 2008, 05:38:35 PM ---The common factor to these two stories is that they are both first person narratives by someone going insane due to fantastical thoughts playing on their immaginations.
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SEE you understand. I said something along the lines of that and my professor gave me that LOOK.
Franzeska:
--- Quote from: Yeratel on April 14, 2008, 05:38:35 PM ---The common factor to these two stories is that they are both first person narratives by someone going insane due to fantastical thoughts playing on their immaginations.
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Hey, I'm not saying it's an invalid comparison. I just suggested a reason the professor might have reacted strangely. The Yellow Wallpaper is often analyzed as a condemnation of men's/society's control of women rather than as a story about madness per se, so the professor was probably surprised by the topic. There are a number of Poe stories about societal pressures destroying women, so they seemed like a natural comparison to me. (Oh! Sorry. The way the original post was written, I thought the OP was looking for additional stories by these two authors to add to the two he is already using. Oops.)
One could probably get some good material out of the externalized violence of The Tell-Tale Heart vs. the internalized violence of The Yellow Wallpaper as gendered behaviors. I guarantee that writing a paper about The Yellow Wallpaper without including at least some mention of gender is asking for a bad grade. I've never met a lit prof who wasn't obsessed with its feminist implications.
Yeratel:
--- Quote from: Franzeska on April 14, 2008, 07:29:40 PM ---Hey, I'm not saying it's an invalid comparison. I just suggested a reason the professor might have reacted strangely. The Yellow Wallpaper is often analyzed as a condemnation of men's/society's control of women rather than as a story about madness per se, so the professor was probably surprised by the topic. There are a number of Poe stories about societal pressures destroying women, so they seemed like a natural comparison to me. (Oh! Sorry. The way the original post was written, I thought the OP was looking for additional stories by these two authors to add to the two he is already using. Oops.)
One could probably get some good material out of the externalized violence of The Tell-Tale Heart vs. the internalized violence of The Yellow Wallpaper as gendered behaviors. I guarantee that writing a paper about The Yellow Wallpaper without including at least some mention of gender is asking for a bad grade. I've never met a lit prof who wasn't obsessed with its feminist implications.
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It sounds a bit more original to explore the madness, rather than the gender roles. If his thesis is well stated and well supported, and the paper is properly formatted and spelled correctly, that should be enough for a good grade, in my book. I wouldn't have much respect for any professor of literature with a gender bias of any sort, or who marked down original ideas because they didn't parrot the party line. If I was writing on the theme, the only mention of gender I might make would be to point out that one protagonist is male and the other female, demonstrating that madness and "hysteria" are not exclusively female traits in the genre.
Franzeska:
--- Quote from: Yeratel on April 14, 2008, 07:47:09 PM ---It sounds a bit more original to explore the madness, rather than the gender roles.
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I don't think you can do one without doing the other. I'm sure you could do it for lots of other stories, but The Yellow Wallpaper is about a depressed woman who's driven mad by her doctor husband when she's locked in her room as part of a misguided medical procedure. If I were a professor reading a paper on this story that didn't mention gender (at least to the extent of mentioning why the author doesn't think it's significant), I might worry that my student had missed the gendered aspects entirely.
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