The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Writings

Project Gutenberg's The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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Title: The Yellow Wallpaper
Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Release Date: November 25, 2008 [EBook #1952]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YELLOW WALLPAPER ***
Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer, and David Widger

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself
secure ancestral halls for the summer.

A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted
house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be
asking too much of fate!

Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about
it.

Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so
long untenanted?

John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in
marriage.

John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith,
an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk
of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.

John is a physician, and PERHAPS—(I would not say it to a living
soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my
mind)—PERHAPS that is one reason I do not get well faster.

You see he does not believe I am sick!

And what can one do?

If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures
friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with
one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical
tendency—what is one to do?

My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and
he says the same thing.

So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics,
and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to
"work" until I am well again.

Personally, I disagree with their ideas.

Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and
change, would do me good.

But what is one to do?

I did write for a while in spite of them; but it DOES exhaust me
a good deal—having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy
opposition.

I sometimes fancy that my condition if I had less opposition and
more society and stimulus—but John says the very worst thing I can
do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me
feel bad.

So I will let it alone and talk about the house.

The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back
from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me
think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges
and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses
for the gardeners and people.

There is a DELICIOUS garden! I never saw such a garden—large and
shady, full of box-bordered paths, and lined with long
grape-covered arbors with seats under them.

There were greenhouses, too, but they are all broken now.

There was some legal trouble, I believe, something about the
heirs and coheirs; anyhow, the place has been empty for years.

That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I don't care—there
is something strange about the house—I can feel it.

I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I
felt was a DRAUGHT, and shut the window.

I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. I'm sure I never
used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous
condition.

But John says if I feel so, I shall neglect proper self-control;
so I take pains to control myself—before him, at least, and that
makes me very tired.

I don't like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened
on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty
old-fashioned chintz hangings! but John would not hear of it.

He said there was only one window and not room for two beds, and
no near room for him if he took another.

He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without
special direction.

I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he
takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to
value it more.

He said we came here solely on my account, that I was to have
perfect rest and all the air I could get. "Your exercise depends on
your strength, my dear," said he, "and your food somewhat on your
appetite; but air you can absorb all the time." So we took the
nursery at the top of the house.

It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows
that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery
first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the
windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and
things in the walls.

The paint and paper look as if a boys' school had used it. It is
stripped off—the paper—in great patches all around the head of my
bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other
side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my
life.

One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every
artistic sin.

It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced
enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you
follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they
suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy
themselves in unheard of contradictions.

The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean
yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.

It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur
tint in others.

No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I
had to live in this room long.

There comes John, and I must put this away,—he hates to have me
write a word.

We have been here two weeks, and I haven't felt like writing
before, since that first day.

I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery,
and there is nothing to hinder my writing as much as I please, save
lack of strength.

John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are
serious.

I am glad my case is not serious!

But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing.

John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is
no REASON to suffer, and that satisfies him.

Of course it is only nervousness. It does weigh on me so not to
do my duty in any way!

I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort,
and here I am a comparative burden already!

Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am
able,—to dress and entertain, and other things.

It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear
baby!

And yet I CANNOT be with him, it makes me so nervous.

I suppose John never was nervous in his life. He laughs at me so
about this wall-paper!

At first he meant to repaper the room, but afterwards he said
that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was
worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies.

He said that after the wall-paper was changed it would be the
heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at
the head of the stairs, and so on.

"You know the place is doing you good," he said, "and really,
dear, I don't care to renovate the house just for a three months'
rental."

"Then do let us go downstairs," I said, "there are such pretty
rooms there."

Then he took me in his arms and called me a blessed little
goose, and said he would go down to the cellar, if I wished, and
have it whitewashed into the bargain.

But he is right enough about the beds and windows and
things.

It is an airy and comfortable room as any one need wish, and, of
course, I would not be so silly as to make him uncomfortable just
for a whim.

I'm really getting quite fond of the big room, all but that
horrid paper.

Out of one window I can see the garden, those mysterious
deepshaded arbors, the riotous old-fashioned flowers, and bushes
and gnarly trees.

Out of another I get a lovely view of the bay and a little
private wharf belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded
lane that runs down there from the house. I always fancy I see
people walking in these numerous paths and arbors, but John has
cautioned me not to give way to fancy in the least. He says that
with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous
weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited
fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check
the tendency. So I try.

I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a
little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me.

But I find I get pretty tired when I try.

It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship
about my work. When I get really well, John says we will ask Cousin
Henry and Julia down for a long visit; but he says he would as soon
put fireworks in my pillow-case as to let me have those stimulating
people about now.

I wish I could get well faster.

But I must not think about that. This paper looks to me as if it
KNEW what a vicious influence it had!

There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken
neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.

I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the
everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those
absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere. There is one place where
two breadths didn't match, and the eyes go all up and down the
line, one a little higher than the other.

I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and
we all know how much expression they have! I used to lie awake as a
child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and
plain furniture than most children could find in a toy store.

I remember what a kindly wink the knobs of our big, old bureau
used to have, and there was one chair that always seemed like a
strong friend.

I used to feel that if any of the other things looked too fierce
I could always hop into that chair and be safe.

The furniture in this room is no worse than inharmonious,
however, for we had to bring it all from downstairs. I suppose when
this was used as a playroom they had to take the nursery things
out, and no wonder! I never saw such ravages as the children have
made here.

The wall-paper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it
sticketh closer than a brother—they must have had perseverance as
well as hatred.

Then the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered, the
plaster itself is dug out here and there, and this great heavy bed
which is all we found in the room, looks as if it had been through
the wars.

But I don't mind it a bit—only the paper.

There comes John's sister. Such a dear girl as she is, and so
careful of me! I must not let her find me writing.

She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no
better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing
which made me sick!

But I can write when she is out, and see her a long way off from
these windows.

There is one that commands the road, a lovely shaded winding
road, and one that just looks off over the country. A lovely
country, too, full of great elms and velvet meadows.

This wall-paper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade,
a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain
lights, and not clearly then.

But in the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is just
so—I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that
seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front
design.

There's sister on the stairs!

Well, the Fourth of July is over! The people are gone and I am
tired out. John thought it might do me good to see a little
company, so we just had mother and Nellie and the children down for
a week.

Of course I didn't do a thing. Jennie sees to everything
now.

But it tired me all the same.

John says if I don't pick up faster he shall send me to Weir
Mitchell in the fall.

But I don't want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in
his hands once, and she says he is just like John and my brother,
only more so!

Besides, it is such an undertaking to go so far.

I don't feel as if it was worth while to turn my hand over for
anything, and I'm getting dreadfully fretful and querulous.

I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.

Of course I don't when John is here, or anybody else, but when I
am alone.