Year 11 - English
'The Yellow Wallpaper': analysing character
Fiction: inner musings
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This pupil-friendly study guide includes a unit summary, clear notes, common mistakes, and quick questions with answers.
Unit Summary
In this unit, pupils explore and practise emulating a range of different narrative voices. They explore narrative voice in 'Alias Grace', 'The Yellow Wallpaper' and 'Klara and the sun' before crafting their own narrative voices. At the end of the unit, they write a narrative with a compelling voice.
Lesson Summary
You will learn to analyse a writer's use of different voices in a narrative.
Key Notes
- A first person narrator can often give the reader a unique insight into their personality, relationships and lifestyle.
- The narrator in 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is presented as silenced and powerless.
- The narrator exposes her husband as oppressive.
- Perkins Gilman employs many techniques to show the narrator's lack of agency.
- It could be argued that that narrator has agency since everything we learn is filtered through her consciousness.
Vocabulary To Learn
- Dismissive: treating someone as if they are unworthy of consideration
- Agency: the ability to take action or choose which action to take
- Futility: pointlessness or uselessness
Common Mistakes To Avoid
- Pupils may be used to encountering a detached third person narrator thus expecting most narrators to be trustworthy and reliable.
3 Quick Questions (With Answers)
1. Explain this English learning goal in two key points.
A first person narrator can often give the reader a unique insight into their personality, relationships and lifestyle. The narrator in 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is presented as silenced and powerless.
2. Define this language term and use it in a sentence. 'Dismissive'
treating someone as if they are unworthy of consideration.
3. Correct this common English misunderstanding.
Mistake: Pupils may be used to encountering a detached third person narrator thus expecting most narrators to be trustworthy and reliable. Correction: When a writer chooses to write a story from a characters' perspective, we have to consider that each character is fallible or unreliable. Thus, we have to re-filter (through our own consciousness) the information we get from a first person narrator.
More Lessons In This Unit
- 'Alias Grace': forming opinions on characters Study Guide
- 'The Yellow Wallpaper': crafting voice Study Guide
- Comparing dystopian voices Study Guide
- Conceptualising voice in fiction texts Study Guide
- Creating voice in our narratives Study Guide
- Emulating Atwood's use of an untrustworthy character in 'Alias Grace' Study Guide
- Emulating Ishiguro's use of an artificial voice in 'Klara and the Sun' Study Guide
- Exploring unique narrative voices Study Guide
- Exploring voice in 'Klara and the Sun' Study Guide
- Planning outstanding narratives Study Guide
- Writing a narrative with a compelling voice Study Guide
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