Today we’ll start with some reading time and then move into reading an academic essay about The Yellow Wallpaper.

This essay is written at a more challenging reading level than you’re probably used to–and that’s a good thing. I want you to practice reading strategies for challenging texts.

So I’m going to teach you some strategies I’ve used for dealing with challenging academic texts and then I’m going to have you put them into practice by reading and responding to this essay: Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Strategies:

1) Preview the text and try to determine what you already know about the topic and identify any challenges you think you might encounter.

2) Break up the text into chunks.

3) Annotate the text:

a. Coding: As you read, use the following symbols to code the text:

* = important

! = surprising

? = I have a question about this

∼ = I can make a connection to this

b. Talking back to the text: At the end of each chunk, refer back to your symbols for ideas and jot down a quick comment, elaborating on one of your codes.

4) At the end of the text, summarize what you think the most important ideas in fewer than 100 words. Post those summaries here:

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Today we will finish our jigsaw exercise on The Yellow Wallpaper and then you’ll have time to work on your reader’s journals for next week’s meeting.

Two important questions to consider (You can answer this anonymously)

1) Who is Jane?

2) To what extent does the narrator achieve freedom?

Answer here:

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Today you’ll have time to finish reading “The Yellow Wallpaper” and then we’ll do a jigsaw activity to answer some questions about the story. If you are away there is a copy of the questions here: Reading_Questions_for_The_YWP

Today we’ll learn about our last type of literary criticism:

Then we will read a short story called “The Yellow Wallpaper.” (You can find an online version here.) But before you do, I want to give you a little background on the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born on July 3, 1860, in Hartford, Connecticut. She published her best-known short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” in 1892. One of her greatest works of non-fiction, Women and Economics, was published in 1898. Along with writing books, she established a magazine, The Forerunner, which was published from 1909 to 1916. Gilman committed suicide on August 17, 1935, in Pasadena, California.

During a period in her adult life, Gilman became depressed and was prescribed the “Rest Cure” developed by a doctor named Weir Mitchell. The cure, which was prescribed almost exclusively for women, had three core elements: isolation, rest, and feeding, with electrotherapy and massage added to counteract muscle atrophy.  The patient was instructed to lie in bed for 24 hours each day, sometimes for months at a time, with a special nurse who would sleep on a cot in the room, feed her, and keep her mind from morbid thoughts by reading aloud or discussing soothing topics. Visits from family and friends were forbidden. The day was punctuated by electrotherapy and massage, sponge baths with a “rough rub” using wet sheets, and frequent feedings. The diet consisted of milk alone for the first week, or, if milk was not tolerated, 18 or more raw eggs per day.  The patient would pass into a state of placid contentment, described by several contemporaneous textbooks: “Brain work having ceased, mental expenditure is reduced to a slight play of emotions and an easy drifting of thought” (2, p. 44). The fat would “roll up in the face, and subsequently over the body” (3, p. 140). When restlessness set in, exercise would be gradually introduced and the patient would eventually resume communication with her family and return to a healthy lifestyle. For Mitchell, at least, “healthy” for women included strict limits on “brain work,” which he felt imposed nervous strain and might interfere with “womanly duties.”

Today you’ll get your new books and time to start reading but we also have some work to finish up on Formalist literary criticism and On the Rainy River, including how to incorporate quotations.

How to incorporate quotations:

Quotations should be used to support your key ideas. If the language itself is not particularly essential and you can paraphrase it, then do so, but still include a citation. When you use a quotation, it should flow with your writing. It shouldn’t feel like something you just sloppily glued on to the page.

Here’s a bad example of incorporating a quotation:

Daisy is very disillusioned. “All right…I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool — that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (21).

Here’s a good example:

Over the course of Daisy’s marriage to Tom, she has become very disillusioned. When talking to Nick about the birth of her daughter, Daisy tells him that she first cried and then resolved, “All right…I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool — that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool” (21). One can infer that Daisy hopes her daughter will be a fool because a foolish person will not know that she is being betrayed in the way that Tom has betrayed Daisy. Daisy clearly thinks that women are destined to be unhappy unless they are “beautiful little fool[s].”

On-the-Rainy-River-chart

Blogging day. Also if you want to earn a bit of karma and you finish your blog post before the end of the period, could you pop over to http://annmichaelsen.com/

You’ll have to look to the right to find a list of all the student blogs. These are Norwegian students writing in English.The teacher is specifically looking for comments on the students’ blog posts about the American election but it looks to me like they haven’t all posted about the American election yet. So if you could find one or two that have, please leave a comment for them. Please use the same rules we use for commenting in our class: be polite and respectful and make an attempt to further the conversation in some way.

Final literature circle meeting for your current novel. Tomorrow of course, we’ll be blogging.

I am home sick today. You will be able to work on your literature circle prep today but I also have a sheet for you to work on for On the Rainy River. If you ware away today make sure you download a copy: On-the-Rainy-River-chart

Welcome back from March Break! I hope you all had a wonderful week off and are ready to get back to work.

I suspect in all the excitement, some of you may have forgotten that we have a literature circle meeting this week, so I’m going to give you some time to work today. Please use your time well.

Today is a blogging day. Check the ning for more details. We’ll be in 211.