As we’ve been studying the Gothic Novel as a genre in our Language class, in order to test our knowledge on how much we learnt, Pilar prepared a test for us:

TASK 1: Publish an infographic including the main characteristics of the Gothic Novel as a genre. Name at least two relevant pieces of work and their writers.

This is mine: ‘The Gothic Novel‘

And for the second task we had to prepare an interview to one of the authors of one of the three stories we read in class: ‘The Yellow Wallpaper‘, ‘The Cask of Amontillado‘ and ‘The Monkey’s Paw‘.,  following this task:

TASK 2: Imagine you had to interview one of the  authors of these stories: The Cask of Amontillado, The Monkey’s Paw and The Yellow Wall Paper. Choose one. Find out about him/her and write the interview. What would you ask them? What would they answer? Publish your interview. (10-14 exchanges)

I chose to do it on Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author of ‘The Yellow Wall Paper’.

I: Good morning, how are you?

C: Fine, thank you.

I: I must congratulate you for your story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’. It is amazingly well written and is incredibly powerful!

C: Thank you very much.

I: It portrays very well the reality that many marriages face. What would you call that?

C: I would call it the deterioration of a marriage.

I: And may I ask what it was inspired on? If it is autobiographical as many people believe?

C: In a way yes, it was. My first marriage to Charles Stetson was a very hard time for me.

I: During that time you suffered from a medical condition, right?

C: Yes, almost immediately after we got married I started suffering from severe depression.

I: And both in your life and in the story, while going through this, there was a baby.

C: Yes, there was. In real life for me it was very difficult to take care of my daughter, Katherine, since, as I mentioned before, I suffered from post-partum depression and in the story the narrator goes through a very similar thing with her child.

I: So it could be said that there is some sort of parallelism between your life and the narrator’s life?

C: Yes, definitely.

I: What was the purpose of writing this short story?

C: I am a feminist, I encourage women to become economically independent, so through this story, I wanted for women to feel identified and to know that they don’t have to stay in that situation.

I: And you are the living example of that.

C: Yes, that’s right. I myself got divorced, got out of that situation and am living a much happier life.

I: What do you believe is the reason for that happiness?

C: My second marriage. I am now living my life the way it’s supposed to be. Not by being almost completely inactive and oppressed.

I: And those things that you attribute to your first marriage are also reflected in the story.

C: Yes. The narrator is constantly having to rest while her husband goes to work which again, represents not just my life, but the lives of many women.

I: Well, congratulations for your success with this piece of work! And thank you for coming and answering these questions!

C: It was my pleasure! Thank you for having me!