YWP Outline Final - fall PDF

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Addison Lentz Comp. Lit. R1A Prof. Max Kaisler 12/12/2019

**Self-reflection is on the FIFTH PAGE** 1) What did you intend to write? (Introduction) a) My thesis (for now) is: She carries readers through this experience using personification, seemingly harmless naivete, and self-identification with her environment, and brings them on her journey to what one can only interpret as utter self-liberation. i) What is your goal for this paper? What do you want to show about the text? (1) I want to elaborate on her journey and develop an understanding of the experience and process she went through to end up in the mental state she did. b) Main points to address: i) What about the house she personifies ii) What about the time she lives in makes her so naive, and how this is harmful to her iii) How she identifies with her environment, and how it contributes to her liberation (1) What questions about the text does your thesis raise? How do these questions connect to your main idea? What effect on one’s healing do one’s surroundings have, and how much credit do we owe to an environment for either the healing or lack thereof of the inhabitant? c) “Must see” examples in the text: i) Beginning: rationalizing and complying with her husband’s treatment of her ii) Middle: identification of the woman in the wall-paper iii) End: Elation at being free from the wall-paper

2) What did you actually write? (Portrayal of Naivete) a) Topic sentence: Throughout the text, Stetson defends her husband’s veritable imprisonment of her in the bedroom of the house they are vacationing in. In doing so, she guides readers through her naivete about her own experience. i) How does this paragraph relate to your thesis? What concepts in your thesis will this paragraph develop further? This will explain how the lens of naivete forces empathy from readers and contributes to the overall story as well as the social commentary it ushers in. b) Possible textual examples: i) “He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction,” (Stetson 648). ii) “[He] does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason  to suffer, and that satisfies him,” (Stetson 649). iii) “He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him … and tell him how I wish he would let me [go out]. But he said I wasn’t able to go, nor able to stand it,” (651). iv) “It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so,” (652). v) He calls her “little girl,” (pg. 652, right top quarter).

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“He asked me all sorts of questions … and pretended to be very loving and kind. As if I couldn’t see through him!” (655). (1) Why have you chosen these particular examples? How will they support your topic? These are all the possible examples I could find, and I listed them here so I could see them all in one place and pull from them as needed. They all have to do with his patronization of her and/or her attempted endearment of him to readers. c) Transition? Once she details the rationalization of her husband’s treatment of her, Stetson carries readers through her processing of the situation, and actively shows them its effect on her day-to-day mental health. One of the most prominent mechanisms she uses to illustrate her perception of her surroundings is personification of numerous characteristics of her immediate environment. i) How does this body paragraph connect to your next one, and to the overall goal of the paper as a whole? It connects to the next one through both the flow of Stetson’s essay and through the flow of my thesis; it follows a logical path through her fight with depression and has a solid connection to her naivete transforming into coping mechanisms.

3) What did you actually write? (Personification of her environment) a) Topic sentence: Stetson personifies various characteristics of the house she is in, and uses these personified characteristics as characters in the story of her experience. i) How does this paragraph relate to your thesis? What concepts in your thesis will this paragraph develop further? Literally listed “personification” in my thesis, I’m just taking the order of my points in the thesis statement and following them in a logical chain to a conclusion. b) Possible textual examples: i) “It is a big, airy room … with windows that look all ways,” (648). ii) “One of those sprawling, flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin,” (648). iii) “The lame uncertain curves … suddenly commit suicide,” (648). iv) “It is … a smouldering unclean yellow … a sickly sulphur tint,” (649). v) “This paper looks to me as if it knew  what a vicious influence it had!” (649). vi) “the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down,” (649). vii) “Up and down and sideways [the pattern] crawl[s], and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere,” (650). viii) “this great heavy bed … looks as if it had been through the wars … it is nailed down,” (650). ix) “the sprawling outlines run off in great slanting waves of optic horror,” (651). x) “It is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern,” (652). xi) “[The] moonlight … creeps so slowly,” (652). xii) “[The pattern] slaps [me] in the face, knocks [me] down, and tramples upon [me]. It is like a bad dream,” (653). xiii) “[The smell] creeps all over the house. [She finds] it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor hiding in the hall, lying in wait for [her] on the stairs,” (654). (1) Why have you chosen these particular examples? How will they support your topic? These examples all illustrate her surroundings as particularly chaotic or menacing, which I think will help me to convey the distressing effects the wall-paper had on Stetson. c) Transition? Once she identifies some of her surroundings as active characters in her story, the author shows readers how she identified with them in a real way.

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How does this body paragraph connect to your next one, and to the overall goal of the paper as a whole? This connects to the identification with the environment directly because to identify with an inanimate object, you first have to identify and personify what it is that you will later identify with.

4) What did you actually write? (Identification with her environment) a) Topic sentence: In the last pages of the piece, Stetson morphes from a typical woman of her time into a figure she believes appears to be trapped in the wall-paper. This marks a monumental shift in her mental condition, and clearly and irrefutably shows the dramatically detrimental effects her “treatment” had on her mental state. i) How does this paragraph relate to your thesis? What concepts in your thesis will this paragraph develop further? This brings my thesis full-circle and shows the product of her imprisonment in the room, and explains in detail what it meant for her to pull the wall-paper off the wall, and her deep connection to the fictional woman contained in the wall-paper. b) Possible textual examples: i) “There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will,” (652). ii) “It is the … woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight,” (654). iii) “I see her in that long shaded lane, creeping up and down. I see her in those dark grape arbors, creeping all around the garden. I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines. I don’t blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight! I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can’t do it at night, for I know Hohn would suspect something,” (654). iv) “I don’t want anybody to get that woman out at night but myself,” (654). v) “As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her. I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper,” (655). vi) “If that woman does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her!” (655). vii) “there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?” (656). viii) “I am securely fastened now by my … rope -- you don’t get me  out … I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard! It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please!” (656). ix) Finally, she says to her husband, “‘I’ve got out at last, in spite of you and Jane … I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!’” (656). This illustrates for the reader her elation at being “out” of the wallpaper that she had identified herself as being trapped in. In this context, the wallpaper symbolizes her restrictive husband as well as the depression that she is battling. (1) Why have you chosen these particular examples? How will they support your topic? These all have to do with her identification with and relation to the woman in the wall-paper, and the woman as a sovereign being rather than just a figment in the paper. c) Transition? In transforming into the Woman-in-the-Wall-Paper, Stetson is able to escape from her demoralizing existence as herself and, at least for a few moments or hours, feel free to do what she likes, even if it is (as in this case) just “creep[ing] smoothly on the floor … around the wall,” (656).

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How does this body paragraph connect to your next one, and to the overall goal of the paper as a whole? I think that the end of this paragraph ties up my idea well about her becoming the woman in the wall-paper, and sets a clean slate for me to tie up the essay as a whole with my conclusion.

5) Conclusion a) Where did I begin? In Charlotte Perkins Stetson’s essay The Yellow Wall-Paper , the author chronicles her mental deterioration from postpartum depression for readers, bringing them on an emotional journey through part of the recovery process her husband imposed upon her. She carries readers through this experience using personification of aspects of her environment, seemingly harmless naivete, and self-identification with her environment, and brings them on her journey to what one can only interpret as utter self-liberation. b) Where did I go? i) How did your thesis develop or evolve over the course of your body paragraphs? What have you established in your paper? That the piece includes social commentary on women’s mental health and the way the medical community treated it. c) How can I go further? i) What are your “so what” elements? What is at stake in this paper? Why do the observations you have made matter to your reading of the text? One of the “so what” elements is that Stetson takes on the medical community in its assessment of women’s depression as a “hysterical tendency,” and does so in an eloquent and vivid way.

SELF-REFLECTION: 1) What are you most proud of in this essay? I am most proud of the development I got in it, despite the rather severe time constraint; admittedly, I was the one who made my deadline so short, in only emailing Max about changing my topic piece to an entirely different medium and piece on Thursday, Dec. 12th (three days before the final due date). 2) What would you change if you had more time? I would probably extend my conversation about the social commentary the author included in her piece, and elaborate a bit more on why Stetson’s naivete was so harmful to her overall recovery from the depression she suffered through. However, without more time I can’t find a way to weave that in relatively seamlessly, while also doing so within the page constraints. 3) Anything else you think I should know? Nope! I truly enjoyed your class and appreciate all the feedback you provided us, and all the interesting topics you included in the class. I would absolutely be glad to take it again just because of the topics covered....