ENG 2133 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: The Yellow Wallpaper, Psalm 137, Michel Foucault
10 May 2018
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ENG2133- Lecture 3- May 9, 2018
Agenda:
• By Grand Central- Psalm 137- Messiah of love
• Gogol- Diary form and madness- delusions of grandeur- delirium_ Michel Foucault
• Gilman- confinement-writing and reading-self/other
• Yellow wallpaper
• King
Grand Central continued
• Psalm 137- fall of Jerusalem- people who have lost a sense of home, belonging- are in exile but
are also in control of their enemy
• In the text we have this sense of a women tormented- problem with authority
• Enemies demanding a song of joy- a form of entertainment- refusal to do this- refusing to give
them what they want- sense of withholding art from them- refuse to give when they have no
respect to them
• Infants dashed upon the rock is connection to Jessica and her lost child- a war/competition
between two women
• This text is at an incredibly intense level- emotionally very loud- take it one more notch
• Order of the police is the foreign land- how does one sing the song of the lord in a foreign land?
– the world will take her song and twist it- make it negative etc- so how do I sing my song in a
world that will never understand – Smart begins to view the entire world as a foreign land
• “he uses the laguage of religio hoeer it’s a er seular tet
• The use of religious texts/bible- makes the story more relatable- lets people into the struggle-
more people know the religious texts/bible
• Tries to show that love is messy, love is holy, it is larger than all
• People think she is a religious maniac- she is a sinner, totally secular- but she tries to show a
literal part
• She has all these religious papers tacked up on the wall- as she is giving birth to her child she is
also giving birth to this book
• She sees herself as Jesus- she writes that the messiah needs to become a woman
• Love has other laws
• Pity can be just a strong as love
• The narrator thinks she is like Jesus – it would be very different if she was a woman who
believed she is Jesus
We are moving from sexual desire onto delusion, hysteria, cannibalism and more
• We will look at this from the works as diaries
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