Teaching “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Jennifer Hoofard via Kirsten Saxton

Here’s a particularly effective way to introduce “The Yellow Wallpaper.” I borrowed this idea from UCD alumnae Kirsten Saxton who mentored and co-taught with me at Mills.

I start the story by asking the students to do a free-write, to think on paper about how they would go about filming “The Yellow Wallpaper,” specifically whom they would cast as the narrator and John, and how they'd go about filming the wallpaper. It never fails to get them involved in the discussion, as I go around and elicit a response from each of them.

The only downside is they get so excited it can take too long to get to the story proper. I've gotten some great answers, like showing the changes in the wallpaper as simply the narrator's own shadow reflected on the paper; the shadows from the bars on the window make her see herself as trapped within the wallpaper. Others chose distorted camera angles to represent tangibly the psychological changes the narrator undergoes.

This exercise really gets students involved by revealing how they are perceiving character and how they are thinking about the wallpaper as a palimpsest.