Q 01/05

What does John do on entering the room to find Gilman's narrator creeping round the stripped walls?

A) He faints

B) He fetches a doctor

C) He carries her downstairs

D) He tears down the paper

Answer · why

A) He faints

He faints right across her path by the wall, so she has to creep over him each time she circles the room; 'Now why should that man have fainted?' she ...

Q 02/05

Which name joins John's in the narrator's last cry in The Yellow Wallpaper, 'in spite of you and…'?

A) Nellie

B) Alice

C) Jane

D) Anne

Answer · why

C) Jane

Jane appears nowhere else in the text, which leaves readers to decide whether the narrator is naming herself, the dutiful wife she has escaped along w...

Q 03/05

Which light, 'worst of all', turns the outside pattern of the paper into bars for Gilman's narrator?

A) Firelight

B) Moonlight

C) Dawn light

D) Gaslight

Answer · why

B) Moonlight

Moonlight, which 'shines in all night when there is a moon', makes the paper seem a different thing entirely; by daylight the woman behind it is 'subd...

Q 04/05

What about the paper, besides its look, does Gilman's narrator analyse for hours, then call 'yellow'?

A) Its taste

B) Its sound

C) Its texture

D) Its smell

Answer · why

D) Its smell

Its smell — 'a yellow smell' — hangs about the house whether the windows are open or not, and she thinks 'seriously of burning the house' to reach it.

Q 05/05

What does John, 'a physician of high standing', assure relatives is all that ails Gilman's narrator?

A) Temporary nervous depression

B) Incipient nervous prostration

C) Puerperal melancholia

D) Chronic neurasthenia

Answer · why

A) Temporary nervous depression

Temporary nervous depression 'with a slight hysterical tendency' is the verdict; his prescription is tonics, journeys, air and exercise, and an absolu...