Week two was where I attended my first in person class after contracting the virus. The creative arts studio had been turned into a “home” for us students and was somewhere we could sit comfortably and begin working. For the first half of the class we sat together and watched, listened and read different pieces of work that all joined into the theme of home, while doing this we were instructed to draw UNSIGHTED on our thoughts and feelings when being shown these materials, I found all the documentation shown very fascinating and thoroughly enjoyed multiple pieces of the work, however I did find the unsighted drawing quite difficult as I have a tendency to want to accurately portray what I am trying to in my drawings, overall I did enjoy.
For the second half of the class, we were given a bibliography containing all the pieces of work we went through in the first hour, we then had to choose one and write a short introduction/ factual paragraph about said piece, I knew straight away that I wanted to choose the yellow wallpaper as for me it was the one that stood out the most and I thought that the cinematography was very well captured.
Below are the notes that I compiled in the class, I wrote them as bullet points so that if needed I can add and expand to certain elements.
- a short story written by American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- first published in January 1892
- characters consist of John, Mary, the narrator and Jennie
- the wallpaper in question represents the structure of all things, family, friends, medicine, health
- the wallpaper also represents society and patriarchy
- the story is semi autobiographical and was her way of bringing women’s oppression to light
- the main woman in the book/film gets diagnosed with hysteria, which in the 19th century was not greatly understood
After this class I went on to read the book in question, I thoroughly enjoyed it and I may say it has come to be one of my favourite books so far, even though it is a short story and is only 30 pages roughly I found it intellectually stimulating and emotive and would definitely recommend reading.