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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What does the narrator initially want to do with a rope?

2. John’s reason for not taking the narrator away from the summerhouse and frightful bedroom is?

3. What does the narrator think that the figure in the wallpaper is trying to do?

4. How does the narrator describe the wallpaper’s smell?

5. Who is the author of The Yellow Wallpaper?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why doesn’t the narrator cry in front of Jennie or John?

2. Why does the narrator feel bad for the woman in the wallpaper?

3. How does the narrator describe the wallpaper in the middle of the story?

4. How does the narrator feel about her husband and brother’s prescriptions?

5. Why does the narrator consider jumping out the window?

6. How does the narrator describe the countryside?

7. What does this quote suggest: “It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please.”

8. Why does the narrator say John “pretended to be loving and kind”?

9. Why does the narrator suggest she’s not getting well because ofthe fact that her husband is a physician? What does this say about their relationship?

10. What does John do when he sees the narrator creeping around the room?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote this story in 1887, after suffering from depression. A doctor had instructed her to rest and not work, which she believed made her condition much worse. She wrote The Yellow Wallpaper as a way to speak out against the common treatment of what was then called "nervous conditions." The extreme rest therapy that John forces on the narrator gives an interesting look at the treatment of mental illness in the late 19th Century. How is postpartum depression viewed today compared to Gilman’s representation in 1887?

Essay Topic 2

How does the narrator change throughout the story? What moments in the story are indicative of a change?

Essay Topic 3

“I wonder if they all came out of the wallpaper as I did?” This quote appears at the end of the story. What does it suggest? What does the narrator believe has happened?

(see the answer keys)

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