September 27th--English 203/ Core 101

I'm in the library prepping for my classes now. I'll write a few lines on how the classes go once I'm out this evening, but I also want to use this space to keep a record of what I plan to discuss in class. 

American lit.--we're moving to "Realism" and "Naturalism" today, discussing Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Cather's "Paul's Case: A Study in Temperament." I don't like to discuss two stories in a class period, as it ruins the flow (for me, anyway; I doubt the students notice), but so it goes. After missing classes for hurricane Florence and then the DVT/ PE, I needed a tighter schedule, and I didn't want to let either of these stories go, as I'd already cut a few other stories/ poems.  

I'll probably begin today's class with a brief discussion of how Realism/ Naturalism is different than Romanticism, which is what we've been studying. I'll point out how these categories/ genres are often created after the fact, thus writers don't necessarily fit neatly into a category. Some "modernist" writers have elements of "postmodernism," and Gilman's story is a good example of something that can be read as "realism" but also could be seen as Gothic horror (realism + horror go together, as the Kavanaugh hearings yesterday made clear). 

Transcendentalism (Thoreau and Emerson, others): There’s an order out there (God or whatever you want to call it) and we can know it.

Dark Romantics (Melville, Poe, Hawthorne...I'd perhaps call Melville an early Modernist): There’s an order out there, but doubtful we can know it—i.e. Bartleby (story and person) resists interpretation; Melville’s “great white whale” resists being turned into an obvious symbol) 

Naturalism (London, Steinbeck, Dreiser)—there’s an order out there, whether social/institutional or “God,” and we can know it, but it often works against us. 

REALISM (late 19^th/early 20^th centuries)—Realism moved away from the intense subjectivity (inwardness) and symbolism of much Romantic writing (“Bartleby” is a good example) and tried hard to present the world as it really is---the way a photograph might capture it.  Realism tries not to feel overblown or dramatic the way a fairy tale or parable or dream might (think about Poe and Hawhtorne).  And it's rarely sentimental or emotional.  It just reads like a plain and sensible account of whatever action it's describing. Mark Twain is the most well-known “realist” writer. Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” has been read as Gothic horror, and there are many obvious symbols in the story. However, Gilman has said she saw the story as realism. REALISM/NATURALISM (Naturalism is later outgrowth, early 20^th century)—Naturalism is an outgrowth of Realism, and it’s very similar. The main difference is that Naturalist writers tend to focus less on individuality and more on the way external forces shape reality. Naturalism's central belief is that individual human beings are at the mercy of uncontrollable larger forces that originate both inside and outside them.  These forces might include some of our more "animal" drives, such as the need for food, sex, shelter, social dominance, etc.   Or, in a more "external" vein, these forces might include the natural environment, the man-made environment, or finance, industry, and the economy. Naturalist works tend to be political, and also tend toward socialism. The most famous naturalists are Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser, Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck, and Jack London.

Back to Gilman. I begin class with this letter she wrote about "The Yellow Wallpaper." I'm well aware of the fallacy of authorial intent, but in this case I think her letter helps steer students away from reading the story as a ghost story (which, in most interpretations I've heard, doesn't have much of a deeper point) and more toward a feminist story that questions patriarchal "patterns" (like the patterns in the wallpaper that the narrator imagines trap women, including herself). I've had a student or two write on evaluations that I'm "condescending", which is kind of hurtful and confusing to me. I try very hard to listen and, if anything, I think I'm a pretty laid back guy. I don't fancy myself much of an "authority" on anything. However, some readings of a story go nowhere and do nothing but limit the potential depth of a story. When I feel a student is heading in that direction (and taking the rest of the class with them), I usually try to ask more questions to get them to either add depth / nuance to their reading (maybe it can go somewhere worthwhile), or to try to steer them in a different direction by noticing (themselves) how many of the details in the story don't mesh with their reading. As novelist David Foster Wallace said somewhere, there is no "right" or "wrong" answer to questions about a text, but there is "interesting versus dull, fertile versus barren, plausible versus whacko." 

I always start class with Gilman's letter and provide a little context. In 1887, after having a child, Gilman wrote in her diary that she was very sick with "some brain disease" which brought suffering that cannot be felt by anybody else, to the point that her "mind has given way." She went to see the noted specialist Weir Mitchell (mentioned in the story) and was placed on his "rest cure". His instructions were to "Live as domestic a life as possible. Have your child with you all the time... Lie down an hour after each meal. Have but two hours' intellectual life a day. And never touch pen, brush or pencil as long as you live." For Gilman, an intellectual and early leader of women's suffrage (she wrote a book called Women and Economics, which argued that  “the economic independence and specialization of women as essential to the improvement of marriage, motherhood, domestic industry, and racial improvement), this was devastating, as she says in her letter.  

In class, I ask students when women got the right to vote (most don't know--1920). We talk about stereotypes toward women then and now, and how those stereotypes may have influenced Mitchell's "rest cure" for women. I also point out that the word "hysteria" is from the Greek hystera, which means womb. Hysterectomy is from the same root word. Early medicine thought hysteria was a product of a woman's womb wondering around loose inside the body. In any case, I like to attempt to get discussion going with questions, so after giving some background/ context, I usually ask: 

1. In 1887, Charlotte Perkins Gilman went to see a specialist in the hope of curing her recurring nervous breakdowns. The specialist recommended a "rest cure," which consisted of lying in bed all day and engaging in intellectual activity for only two hours a day. After three months, Gilman says, she was "near the borderline of utter mental ruin." How do Perkins’ own experiences connect to the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper”?

2. Does the ending of “The Yellow Wallpaper” suggest progress (a woman tears down the shackles that are binding her) or pessimism (this woman has become genuinely mentally ill)? Or is it delivering a different type of message? How should we read this story?

Update (Post class): we had a good discussion of "The Yellow Wallpaper." Students tend to like this story, perhaps because 80% or so of my students are female. We discussed how the story is Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s response to the male-run medical establishment and the patriarchal structure of the nineteenth-century household. Gilman’s short story is a warning to her readers about the consequences of fixed gender roles assigned by male-dominated societies: the man’s role being that of the husband and rational thinker, and the woman’s role being that of the dutiful wife who does not question her husband’s authority. Some of the students were sympathetic to the husband in the story (even though he's condescending/ patronizing to the narrator) and I was happy that they brought up that both the narrator and her husband are trapped in their assigned roles and are doomed because of this. Someone also mentioned "gaslighting," a term that's been used a lot in politics the last couple years, which basically describes a type of abuse where one person tries to manipulate the other into questioning their own sanity. By the end of "The Yellow Wallpaper," I think it's clear the narrator has lost her sanity, so if there is any victory (she crawls over her husband) it's at the price of her sanity. But throughout the story, while telling her that SHE is the only one who can make herself better, he undermines all of her thoughts and ideas about her illness. 

There's much more to the story: of course she has post-partum depression or psychosis, which wasn't recognized at the time. Her husband forces her to stay in a room that was a prior nursery, which perhaps makes her think more about her child, and guilt from not being with her child. There are bars in the windows (for the kids, but symbolize entrapment), etc. I have an annotated version of the story with fairly extensive notes on D2L. I encourage students to read that version and read my notes. 

I am trying to stay away from politics in my classes, but after Kavanaugh's emotional outburst yesterday (which I wasn't aware of in class), it's pretty clear that the stereotypes toward men and women are still very much active. Dr. Ford didn't have the luxury of acting petulant, raging and then whining and crying, in the way Kavanaugh did. If she had acted like that, she would've been skewered for it. Hillary Clinton was questioned as potentially being "too emotional" to be president, and yet we have a president whose main communication is overly emotional twitter outbursts. So there you go--some people don't like to admit it, but the story is very much relevant. 

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Our discussion of "Paul's Case" was much quicker, mostly because we ran out of time. In the future, I doubt I'll ever try to teach two stories in one day. "Paul's Case" is one of my favorite stories to teach, so I was a bit disappointed that we didn't have more time to cover it. 

One of the things I tried to focus on--since I had already brought it up--was the ways in which "Paul's Case: A Study of Temperament" fits literary naturalism. Even the title fits nicely, as it seems to suggest Paul is a type of scientific specimen, a "study". One of the common traits of naturalism is determinism--the idea that individuals are at the complete mercy of forces, whether internal (genetics, etc.) or external (outward circumstances) or a mix. In the story, we see how life in Pittsburgh (bland, gray, monotonous, conforming) stifles or suffocates Paul.  After his escape to Carnegie Hall and the theater are taken away, we're told, "the whole thing was virtually determined.” The "whole thing" being his theft of money from his father's company and subsequent trip to New York. Once in New York, he buys a gun because he knows his escape will end, and he can't bear the thought of going back to Cordelia Street. 

Students often pick up on Paul's mom dying in childbirth, and use that as connection to Paul's behavior--which is good; it shows they're reading relatively closely. In the version of the story I have students read, we're told Paul’s mom died in childbirth in Colorado (not Pittsburgh) after a long illness and his teachers think that some of the “hysterical brilliance” in his eyes is related to a “hauntedness” that's from his mother dying in his youth (especially since he has an authoritarian father).  With this, there is the possibility that everything that is “wrong” with Paul was made wrong before he was born, which emphasizes the role of heredity (nature) on Paul’s circumstances, the way his life unfolds. However, in later versions of the story, Cather took out the part about the mother and the West (Colorado), which I think is important, because it takes away his mother as an explanatory mechanism and places greater emphasis on his environment as shaping his fate. But even in this reading, Paul’s fate seems pre-determined by outward society. Once he realizes he is going to run out of money and that his father will come to look for him, he feels that he has no way out, his life is completely pre-determined by outward circumstances.

I also point out that Cather was a lesbian and that "the thing in the corner" that Paul has always felt may be his repressed homosexuality. There is some evidence for this in the text: Everyone seems perplexed by Paul, but they don’t give a good reason why. The teachers charge him with “various misdemeanors”, but never define those misdemeanors. They also say he is “not the usual case” (note title), but why? Surely they’ve had defiant students before. The way he uses his eyes is described as “Particularly offensive in a boy.” Why would that be? They feel like he is scandalous because he is subverting gender roles to some extent? We’re also told that Paul is “accustomed to lying”; indeed, his entire life appears to him as a lie. Why would that be? Could he be lying, hiding, his sexuality?

The story also mentions “boys” numerous times: at ushers’ dressing room, where Paul teases the boys and they “sat on him” and he is “calmed by his suppression”. The "wild boy" that he meets and spends the night with (doesn't say what they do, only that they parted "coldly") is from San Francisco. San Francisco may be code for homosexuality, since San fran was known for gay bath houses, etc.

Paul’s contempt could perhaps be a defense mechanism. He feels insecure, uncertain, and projects confidence and an uncaring attitude to protect himself from criticism. We’re told he’s always glancing around him, nervously, feeling that “people might be watching him and trying to detect something.” What is he worried about them detecting?

Another key quote: “he had always been tormented by fear, a sort of apprehensive dread that, of late years, as the meshes of the lies he had told closed about him, had been pulling the muscles of his body tighter and tighter. Until now, he could not remember the time when he had not been dreading something. Even when he was a little boy, it was always there—behind him, or before, or on either side. There had always been the shadowed corner, the dark place into which he dared not look, but from which something seemed always to be watching him—and Paul had done things that were not pretty to watch, he knew.”—what is the “thing in the corner”? Could be his homosexuality. Could also be his feelings of alienation from spirit crushing “normal” working life. Hard to know.

Near end, he talks about how he feels like he no longer has to lie, but—of course—he is living a lie, living on money he stole from his father’s company. Dramatic irony is when readers are aware of something that the characters are not. I’d say there is a lot of it in this story. 

That's about as far as we got with the story. We briefly discussed the symbolism of flowers in the story (alienation, defiance, stand in for Paul himself). 

One reading we didn't get to was seeing it as a commentary on the American Dream and the "Gilded Age." I wish we had fit this reading in a bit more as it connects with our next story, Fitzgerald's "Winter Dreams," which is pretty much a short version of The Great Gatsby. Obviously both stories deal with the idea that wealth is everything--and the realization that maybe the American Dream is a hollow dream, a "winter" (dead) dream. 

In "Paul's Case," he sees New York as "the glaring affirmation of the omnipotence of wealth."—one reading is that a corruption of the American Dream has led to a belief only in the power, the “omnipotence” of money.

Gilded Age (1870-1900 ish)—the US economy grew more than any other time in history—think railroads, cities, industrialization, Westward expansion, etc. Wealth inequality was also the highest of any time in history until recently (wealth inequality is actually higher now, I think). An influential book of the period was Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions, which argued that” the businessmen who own the means of production, have employed themselves in the economically unproductive practices of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure, which are useless activities that contribute neither to the economy nor to the material production of the useful goods and services required for the functioning of society; while it is the middle class and the working class who are usefully employed in the industrialised, productive occupations that support the whole of society.”

"Paul’s Case" was written in 1905 and can be seen as an attack on this version of the American Dream, equating all happiness with wealth and consumption. In a sense, Paul is “trapped” by this American belief. “These were his own people, he told himself”—but really they are not. He can’t escape the inner Pittsburgh he carries within himself; it is part of his identity, like it or not, and he doesn’t put in the work that would be needed to move beyond that identification. He wants merely escape, and he imaginations that he is someone he isn’t.

“rivets on a machine”. He has the Thoreauvian idea that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” but his answer to getting out of that desperation is quite different.

He keeps trying to convince himself he fits in, but “The mere stage properties were all he contended for.” In other words, he is a passive observer. He thinks money can BUY him an identity, but it doesn’t. Or if it does, it’s only temporarily. I’d say one of his big downfalls is that he doesn’t see value in work. He wants to live inside a delusion, and of course that delusion has to come crashing down. When it does, he is in a quite different environment than the Waldorf…he is literally at the end of the tracks, snow falling all around him, and nature the “immense design of things” that will swallow Paul and the systems he is caught up in. 

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Core 101--peer review. Went relatively well. Missing several students, though. Otherwise, students seemed relatively engaged. No one finished early.