Description
If you are looking for powerful paired texts for literary analysis, this lesson features The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, two foundational works of feminist literature from the late nineteenth century. Both short stories are commonly taught in secondary ELA classrooms and work especially well for Women’s History Month and thematic units focused on gender, identity, and autonomy.
Students engage in a structured paired texts analysis lesson that guides them through comparing how each author explores similar ideas within the same historical period. Because both texts were written in the 1800s and are in the public domain, students can focus on close reading, historical context, and author’s purpose without barriers to access.
Using a graphic organizer, students compare multiple literary elements across both texts and examine how structure, narration, and stylistic choices contribute to meaning. Students then respond to a Response to Literature (RTL) or Text Dependent Analysis (TDA) writing prompt, supported by a detailed rubric aligned to Common Core standards. An answer guide is included to support instruction and assessment.
Throughout the lesson, students practice analyzing theme, comparing text structure, and citing strong textual evidence to support both explicit ideas and inferred meaning. The lesson also emphasizes drawing evidence from literary texts to support analysis, reflection, and research, building higher-level writing and reasoning skills.
Students analyze key literary devices, including plot, conflict, theme, characterization, point of view, text structure, mood, tone, and symbolism, making this resource ideal for middle school and high school ELA classrooms, short story units, paired text analysis, and essay writing instruction.