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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. Where does her shoulder “just” fit?

2. What does John make the narrator drink as a cure?

3. Who comes to the door when the narrator is creeping along the wall?

4. Who does the narrator say is her one comfort?

5. Where does the narrator’s husband take her at the beginning of the story?

Short Essay Questions

1. What doesn’t the narrator mind about the nursery at first?

2. Why is the narrator afraid of being sent to Weir Mitchell?

3. What does the woman in the wallpaper do to shake the pattern?

4. How does the narrator initially describe the wallpaper?

5. What does John call the narrator in the middle of the night? And why?

6. Why does the narrator seem jealous when she catches first John, and then Jennie, looking at the wallpaper?

7. What description is horrifying about the wallpaper?

8. What major life event has the narrator just endured?

9. Why does it bother the narrator that she cannot read or write while recuperating?

10. Besides the ugly wallpaper pattern, what does the narrator think she sees in the wallpaper?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

A rest-cure was often prescribed for a variety of mental illnesses in the 1800’s. Why does the narrator believe that something to keep her mind busy is actually better for her than following her husband’s prescription when he is a physician?

Essay Topic 2

Define unreliable narrator. Based on this definition: is the narrator a reliable or unreliable narrator?

Essay Topic 3

Throughout the story the narrator becomes increasingly interested by the perceived woman in the wallpaper. How is the narrator symbolically similar to the woman she describes in the wallpaper?

(see the answer keys)

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