When we decided to use the newsgroup, we hoped that it would excite students to see their ideas about literature appreciated by people outside the confines of their class. We also hoped that for both classes the newsgroup would function as a healthy working environment in which to brainstorm and develop interpretations. In short, we wanted the newsgroup to function as a larger, interclass InterChange, a forum in which students would remain relatively uninhibited about expressing their views even if those expressions included contesting or critiquing other students' ideas constructively.
Initially, our students' interactions in the newsgroup did not seem to coincide with our goals. Some students supported one another, and a few offered constructive criticism, but many messages seemed contentious and confrontational to a surprising degree. Some postings resembled "flames"--Internet messages characterized by excessive insults and personal attacks--more closely than any in our InterChanges ever had. Usually these messages were directed by a student from one class toward a member of the other class. There seemed to be a split between the two classes, with Anderson's class "othering" Evans' class and vice versa. This phenomenon, which we later dubbed the us-them effect, seemed to engender an atmosphere that was not conducive to uninhibited brainstorming or constructive collaboration. Nevertheless, ultimately, we think it did have some positive results. Our analysis of a specific thread in the newsgroup will illustrate these points.
If you will recall, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" is narrated in the first person by a woman suffering from depression at the turn of the twentieth century. She is a writer, but John, her doctor/husband, insists that she not write or otherwise work while she undergoes a rest cure inspired by the famous specialist S. Weir Mitchell. John rents an old, isolated, country house while the family's city home is being renovated. He insists that his wife take an upstairs room with aged, peeling, yellow wallpaper even though she initially hates it. Gradually the narrator begins to perceive many images in the wallpaper, the most prominent of which consists of one or more women behind a foreground of cage bars. At the conclusion the narrator identifies herself with the women trapped inside the wallpaper. Exhibiting behavior that makes her husband faint in shock, she appears to go mad, tearing the wallpaper off and crawling around the room on the floor, claiming that she is "free."
In the discussion of the story in Evans' class on Monday, students favored a biographical interpretation, and suggestions of this interpretation appeared in many of their newsgroup messages on Wednesday. This similarity of perspective may have prompted some of Anderson's students to perceive Evans' class as promoting a particular party line, which, in turn, may have contributed to the development of the us-them effect. The effect is evident in one thread begun by Evans' student Aaron (none of the names we cite are real). Aaron suggested that the narrator identifies with the women in the wallpaper because she, too, is restricted by the male authority of John and S. Weir Mitchell. He claimed that the image of cage bars in the wallpaper expresses the narrator's own feeling that John patronizingly ignores her desires by insisting that she not write and by trapping her in a room that she dislikes. Aaron then cited our anthology's biographical introduction to the story, noting that Charlotte Perkins Gilman personally underwent a rest cure under S. Weir Mitchell. Gilman claimed that the "cure" almost killed her and that she fought her depression more successfully by rejecting Mitchell's advice and returning to work. Aaron concludes by suggesting that "The Yellow Wall-Paper" attacks Mitchell and his methods by showing how forcing a rest cure upon a patient has harmful results. In Aaron's own words, "[because] the main character follows this 'rest cure' of Mitchell's, she goes completely insane. This may be taken as a 'smear job' against Mitchell by Gilman."
Two responses to Aaron by members of Anderson's class demonstrate the development of the us-them effect. First, Finn stated that
Finn suggests that Aaron's interpretation is too narrow because it relies mainly in biographical evidence and because literary works have meanings beyond those grounded in the author's personal experiences. Another of Anderson's students, Amber, made a similar point more vociferously: Wrapping up her critique of Aaron's argument with a claim to scientific authority and rhetorical flourish, Amber suggests that more effective interpretations would consider "The Yellow Wall-Paper" in the broader historical and cultural context of social attitudes toward insanity.Many members of Evans' class perceived hostility in these messages, which led them to respond in kind. On Friday, Evans was surprised by collective expressions of indignation: "those other students out there have insulted us," his students effectively said, "and we won't let them get away with it." The "us" to which his students referred represented a sense of coherent group identity that had not necessarily existed in the class before. For example, Manny, a student who did not even know Aaron very well, energetically defended him as if they were brothers. He launched a vituperative salvo at Finn. Manny's passion tended to render his points rather incoherent, but generally his message trivializes Finn's objections to biographical interpretation. Referring to Finn's claim that "It is a great injustice to any author to not read past the name on the title-as if the work was incapable of supporting itself," Manny sarcastically points out that S. Weir Mitchell's name does not appear in the title of "The Yellow Wall-Paper," and he facetiously adds "What, did this doctor have yellow wallpaper or something?" Manny then concedes that interpreting the story with respect to its broader social and cultural context can be valuable, but he immediately turns that point around to argue that analyzing the story with respect to the personal lives of women like Gilman herself is one mode of sociocultural interpretation. He concludes the message by invoking, appropriately enough, his personal feelings of sympathy for the story's narrator: "I would be pretty angry with this doctor also if I wasted a portion of my life when I could be doing what I enjoyed." Another contributor to the newsgroup, a member of the university community who was not a student in either class, responded even more negatively to Finn's post, saying simply "I find your whole method of analysis faulty."
Due to this type of communication, by the end of the week it seemed that the newsgroup conflicted with our goals more than it met them. It appeared to engender mutual ire, sarcasm, and borderline ad hominem attacks rather than a productive working atmosphere. We were surprised by the amount of agon, and at that time it absorbed all of our attention and concern. Evans, for instance, tried to make peace between Manny and Finn by contributing a message to their thread. He suggested that, despite their apparently polar-opposite positions, both of them were positing a similar idea: that biographical and sociocultural analysis were intertwined and not necessarily distinct. Evans referred briefly to other student messages that also proposed this idea, messages that probably were not receiving as much attention as they should, either from students invested in the us-them dichotomy or from the instructors. In fact, not all messages in the thread that Aaron started were so contentious. Contributions from members of both classes offered more constructive responses to Aaron's apparent over-emphasis on biography. One of Anderson's students, Santiago, politely critiqued Aaron's interpretation by suggesting that the story could "question all [doctors], not just one." Santiago then proposed that the story's critique of male authority might be more complex than mere condemnation. "The fact that this wom[a]n in the story is being 'helped['] by her husband," Santiago suggests, "also tells the reader that there is reason to believe that men don't intend harm to women. In their patern[al]istic attitude, however, the[y] do more harm to women than if they would allow them to be on their own and develo[p] their own lives" (emphasis added). Another of Anderson's students supported Aaron's interpretation enthusiastically, without any qualification whatsoever. These responses were more productive according to our initial goals, but were overshadowed by the level of conflict in Aaron's thread.
In retrospect, a number of factors probably contributed to the us-them effect. Some of these derived from our lack of foresight in setting up the interclass newsgroup. We assumed that students would enjoy, or at least not object to, computer-mediated discussion with other students studying the same material. What seemed unimportant at the time--the fact that they had never met these other students and would encounter them for the first (and perhaps the only) time in a disembodied electronic setting--could have been quite significant. In the newsgroup, some students may have felt that they lacked familiar bearings for locating and identifying themselves socially; as a result, they invested heavily in the only identity that was clearly articulated--that of membership in a particular class. This apparent result dovetailed with the very terms in which we presented the newsgroup: as a forum for the interaction of two classes, not necessarily for the interaction of forty different people. This contextual framing may have helped to subsume and suppress a broader, potential diversity of student perspectives into convenient, class-based "blocks" of attitude and orientation. The fact that Evans' class discussed the work and emphasized certain interpretive approaches before posting any messages may have amplified this delimiting process. In other words, the way we integrated the newsgroup perhaps contributed to the formation of the us-them effect.
Nevertheless, an unforeseen development caused us to reconsider our first assumption that apparently excessive conflict sabotaged a productive learning environment. To Evans' pleasant surprise, over the weekend Aaron voluntarily composed a detailed, thoughtful response to Amber's criticisms. Without it being assigned in any way, Aaron had independently conducted research about the topic that Amber had mentioned--unipolar depression--and showed how his findings did not undermine his earlier biographical interpretation. Before Aaron posted this response, he e-mailed it to Evans to ask for feedback. Aaron said that Amber's response had upset him considerably and that he wanted to reply to her politely but forcefully. Since the goal was for students to express their own views in the newsgroup, Evans declined to comment formally on the drafted message and suggested only that Aaron correct some misspelled words. Aaron then posted the message, which, among other things, correlated his research about depression with details of the narrator's behavior in "The Yellow Wall-Paper." He showed how knowledge of unipolar depression did not necessarily conflict with his earlier claims about Gilman's critique of Weir Mitchell. For example, footnoting a psychology textbook with asterisks, Aaron wrote:
Aaron concluded his message effectively: Though he was motivated by potentially unproductive agon, Aaron channeled his feelings into constructive results. While not directly addressing Amber's concern about turn-of-the-century attitudes toward depression, he acknowledged the relevance of unipolar depression for articulating the narrator's depressed state. He learned about elements of psychology that could have informed an analytical essay about "The Yellow Wall-Paper." His message also demonstrates that he learned something about defending his position in rhetorically effective ways. Finally, what excites us the most is that Aaron's message shows how participating in a process of creating literary knowledge mattered to him. He actually cared about analyzing literature, investing deeply in a particular interpretive position. This investment did not stop him from adapting and qualifying his position when confronted with alternative perspectives, even though the us-them effect initially seemed to forestall such a possibility. These results made us reconsider our initial evaluation of the us-them effect itself and to acknowledge the potential pedagogical effectiveness of even "flame-like" conflict and disagreement. Still Aaron's case was unique; overall the us-them effect made the newsgroup more troubling.Linear link: InterChange
| EJournal Home Page | Vol. 2, No. 1: Contents |
Computers, Writing, Rhetoric and Literature