The Yellow Wallpaper Lesson Plan

Causes of the narrator's illness

Kind of Activity:

small group activity

Objective:

to consider how much of the narrator's mental illness is related to her surroundings

Structure:

Ask the question, is there a link between the narrator's environment and her mental illness? Each small group discusses this question for five minutes and comes up with three reasons that support their argument. Each small group then reports to the class for two minutes.

Some reasons:

- the oppressive 19th-century society limits women's choices and infantilizes them (remember the Stanton document), and increases her sense of guilt for not fitting the traditional roles of wife...