I've read "The Yellow Wallpaper" before. Of course, at the time I didn't know Gilman was quite racist...but it's odd, I think, how that didn't influence my reading this second time around. It never really came up, I guess.

The way I read this story is probably going to be different from my classmates. As a well-indoctrinated fantasy reader, I don't spend the story thinking she's crazy, but rather wondering if she's crazy or if there are things in the wallpaper. The recent anxiety problems also affect things: I completely sympathize when she says she thinks she'd feel better if she just had things to do. I'm the same way--it's boredom that scares me...

The last line of this story always gives me the creeps. (hehe.) In a good way.

I find this story very telling in its treatment of women's issues. Hm, not telling...emblematic? I mean, hysterectomy = getting rid of the uterus = getting rid of the source of women's hysteria. (Male physicians used to give their female patients orgasms to get rid of...what was it called, "nervous tension?") So this complete disregard of her mental state was common for the times, I'm sure, and it's interesting how Gilman clearly recognizes this (a depressive herself) without the outside viewpoint that we have now, i.e. depression is often organic and is a real and treatable condition. (Treatment does not, of course, consist of "it's all in your head, don't stress yourself.")

The wallpaper itself...for someone as nonvisual as I am, I think I've got a decent picture of what it looks like. We'll see later (apparently we get small groups today to draw it...)

"A Rose for Emily" is harder. I'm fascinated by the POV--an unnamed narrator telling us the story of Emily's life. I mean really, narrator, using I much of the time. "I" is certainly a resident of the town, but we don't know age or gender. The age seems old enough to remember many of the events, yet also young enough to be attending the funeral; also, the narrator does not identify with any particular age group ("The Colonel's generation;" "the grandchildren of the Colonel's generation").

I'm also confused by the ending. Necrophilia, what? And I understand that okay maybe she loved this guy, and wanted to keep him around, so she killed him to do so, but...ugh. And I also wondered what to do with the line, "He liked men," in reference to said deceased beau. ("He liked men...he said he was not the marrying kind.")

But the language was beautiful, and the story was a synopsis without the syndrome I mentioned before of getting through things without taking time so you feel like you're reading an outline. Or I didn't. There were vivid scenes among the time-sliding passages, which helped greatly, I think.

I've also read "Girl" before. The constant reference to the younger woman as a slut always cracks me up .... it's so mean, and yet so in character for a mother who might tease her daughter. Especially if she was nothing like a slut (as one reference to her as a tomboy seems to indicate). But I love the warm way the mother speaks the rest of the time, and the sense that she's being taught...it's close to the way I've always thought a lot of our life skills are learned, just by someone saying "Here's how you do this." And one imagines the addressee of the speech of "Girl" actually learned, by the fact that she's relating the story.

The voice here is a little interesting too--some interjections make me believe we're getting the girl's point of view, but the story is almost entirely the mother lecturing her daughter, one long unbroken sentence between interruptions.

"The Sky is Grey" was also fascinating. Running out of time so I'll just say--the odd scene in the dentist's office, with the educated young man and the preacher, was very odd in this story. It's kind of like the outside awareness in "The Yellow Wallpaper" of the discourse outside the story, the social tales that describe the class of the protagonists, and yet it felt grafted on in a way "The Yellow Wallpaper"'s awareness did not. Perhaps because it was a clearly recognized aspect of life and so the author felt obligated to address it, whereas Gilman's audience might have been unaware of the issue.

Also, started out thinking the protags were black; realized this was terribly racist of me and realized they were probably poor and white; then they got on the bus and had to sit in the colored section. Stereotyping vs good writing? Who knows.