The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Writings (2 page)

And I am alone a good deal just now. John is kept in town very
often by serious cases, and Jennie is good and lets me alone when I
want her to.

So I walk a little in the garden or down that lovely lane, sit
on the porch under the roses, and lie down up here a good deal.

I'm getting really fond of the room in spite of the wall-paper.
Perhaps BECAUSE of the wall-paper.

It dwells in my mind so!

I lie here on this great immovable bed—it is nailed down, I
believe—and follow that pattern about by the hour. It is as good as
gymnastics, I assure you. I start, we'll say, at the bottom, down
in the corner over there where it has not been touched, and I
determine for the thousandth time that I WILL follow that pointless
pattern to some sort of a conclusion.

I know a little of the principle of design, and I know this
thing was not arranged on any laws of radiation, or alternation, or
repetition, or symmetry, or anything else that I ever heard of.

It is repeated, of course, by the breadths, but not
otherwise.

Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the bloated
curves and flourishes—a kind of "debased Romanesque" with delirium
tremens—go waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity.

But, on the other hand, they connect diagonally, and the
sprawling outlines run off in great slanting waves of optic horror,
like a lot of wallowing seaweeds in full chase.

The whole thing goes horizontally, too, at least it seems so,
and I exhaust myself in trying to distinguish the order of its
going in that direction.

They have used a horizontal breadth for a frieze, and that adds
wonderfully to the confusion.

There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and
there, when the crosslights fade and the low sun shines directly
upon it, I can almost fancy radiation after all,—the interminable
grotesques seem to form around a common centre and rush off in
headlong plunges of equal distraction.

It makes me tired to follow it. I will take a nap I guess.

I don't know why I should write this.

I don't want to.

I don't feel able.

And I know John would think it absurd. But I MUST say what I
feel and think in some way—it is such a relief!

But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief.

Half the time now I am awfully lazy, and lie down ever so
much.

John says I musn't lose my strength, and has me take cod liver
oil and lots of tonics and things, to say nothing of ale and wine
and rare meat.

Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I
tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other
day, and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to
Cousin Henry and Julia.

But he said I wasn't able to go, nor able to stand it after I
got there; and I did not make out a very good case for myself, for
I was crying before I had finished.

It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight.
Just this nervous weakness I suppose.

And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me
upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till
it tired my head.

He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and
that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well.

He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use
my will and self-control and not let any silly fancies run away
with me.

There's one comfort, the baby is well and happy, and does not
have to occupy this nursery with the horrid wall-paper.

If we had not used it, that blessed child would have! What a
fortunate escape! Why, I wouldn't have a child of mine, an
impressionable little thing, live in such a room for worlds.

I never thought of it before, but it is lucky that John kept me
here after all, I can stand it so much easier than a baby, you
see.

Of course I never mention it to them any more—I am too wise,—but
I keep watch of it all the same.

There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever
will.

Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every
day.

It is always the same shape, only very numerous.

And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind
that pattern. I don't like it a bit. I wonder—I begin to think—I
wish John would take me away from here!

It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so
wise, and because he loves me so.

But I tried it last night.

It was moonlight. The moon shines in all around just as the sun
does.

I hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so slowly, and always
comes in by one window or another.

John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and
watched the moonlight on that undulating wall-paper till I felt
creepy.

The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if
she wanted to get out.

I got up softly and went to feel and see if the paper DID move,
and when I came back John was awake.

"What is it, little girl?" he said. "Don't go walking about like
that—you'll get cold."

I though it was a good time to talk, so I told him that I really
was not gaining here, and that I wished he would take me away.

"Why darling!" said he, "our lease will be up in three weeks,
and I can't see how to leave before.

"The repairs are not done at home, and I cannot possibly leave
town just now. Of course if you were in any danger, I could and
would, but you really are better, dear, whether you can see it or
not. I am a doctor, dear, and I know. You are gaining flesh and
color, your appetite is better, I feel really much easier about
you."

"I don't weigh a bit more," said I, "nor as much; and my
appetite may be better in the evening when you are here, but it is
worse in the morning when you are away!"

"Bless her little heart!" said he with a big hug, "she shall be
as sick as she pleases! But now let's improve the shining hours by
going to sleep, and talk about it in the morning!"

"And you won't go away?" I asked gloomily.

"Why, how can I, dear? It is only three weeks more and then we
will take a nice little trip of a few days while Jennie is getting
the house ready. Really dear you are better!"

"Better in body perhaps—" I began, and stopped short, for he sat
up straight and looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look
that I could not say another word.

"My darling," said he, "I beg of you, for my sake and for our
child's sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one
instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so
dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a
false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when I
tell you so?"

So of course I said no more on that score, and we went to sleep
before long. He thought I was asleep first, but I wasn't, and lay
there for hours trying to decide whether that front pattern and the
back pattern really did move together or separately.

On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of
sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a
normal mind.

The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and
infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing.

You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well
underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you
are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon
you. It is like a bad dream.

The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of a
fungus. If you can imagine a toadstool in joints, an interminable
string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless
convolutions—why, that is something like it.

That is, sometimes!

There is one marked peculiarity about this paper, a thing nobody
seems to notice but myself, and that is that it changes as the
light changes.

When the sun shoots in through the east window—I always watch
for that first long, straight ray—it changes so quickly that I
never can quite believe it.

That is why I watch it always.

By moonlight—the moon shines in all night when there is a moon—I
wouldn't know it was the same paper.

At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candle light,
lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The
outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can
be.

I didn't realize for a long time what the thing was that showed
behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a
woman.

By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern
that keeps her so still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me quiet by
the hour.

I lie down ever so much now. John says it is good for me, and to
sleep all I can.

Indeed he started the habit by making me lie down for an hour
after each meal.

It is a very bad habit I am convinced, for you see I don't
sleep.

And that cultivates deceit, for I don't tell them I'm awake—O
no!

The fact is I am getting a little afraid of John.

He seems very queer sometimes, and even Jennie has an
inexplicable look.

It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific
hypothesis,—that perhaps it is the paper!

I have watched John when he did not know I was looking, and come
into the room suddenly on the most innocent excuses, and I've
caught him several times LOOKING AT THE PAPER! And Jennie too. I
caught Jennie with her hand on it once.

She didn't know I was in the room, and when I asked her in a
quiet, a very quiet voice, with the most restrained manner
possible, what she was doing with the paper—she turned around as if
she had been caught stealing, and looked quite angry—asked me why I
should frighten her so!

Then she said that the paper stained everything it touched, that
she had found yellow smooches on all my clothes and John's, and she
wished we would be more careful!

Did not that sound innocent? But I know she was studying that
pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but
myself!

Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be. You see
I have something more to expect, to look forward to, to watch. I
really do eat better, and am more quiet than I was.

John is so pleased to see me improve! He laughed a little the
other day, and said I seemed to be flourishing in spite of my
wall-paper.

I turned it off with a laugh. I had no intention of telling him
it was BECAUSE of the wall-paper—he would make fun of me. He might
even want to take me away.

I don't want to leave now until I have found it out. There is a
week more, and I think that will be enough.

I'm feeling ever so much better! I don't sleep much at night,
for it is so interesting to watch developments; but I sleep a good
deal in the daytime.

In the daytime it is tiresome and perplexing.

There are always new shoots on the fungus, and new shades of
yellow all over it. I cannot keep count of them, though I have
tried conscientiously.

It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think
of all the yellow things I ever saw—not beautiful ones like
buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.

But there is something else about that paper—the smell! I
noticed it the moment we came into the room, but with so much air
and sun it was not bad. Now we have had a week of fog and rain, and
whether the windows are open or not, the smell is here.

It creeps all over the house.

I find it hovering in the dining-room, skulking in the parlor,
hiding in the hall, lying in wait for me on the stairs.

It gets into my hair.

Even when I go to ride, if I turn my head suddenly and surprise
it—there is that smell!

Such a peculiar odor, too! I have spent hours in trying to
analyze it, to find what it smelled like.

It is not bad—at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest,
most enduring odor I ever met.

In this damp weather it is awful, I wake up in the night and
find it hanging over me.

It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning
the house—to reach the smell.

But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it
is like is the COLOR of the paper! A yellow smell.

There is a very funny mark on this wall, low down, near the
mopboard. A streak that runs round the room. It goes behind every
piece of furniture, except the bed, a long, straight, even SMOOCH,
as if it had been rubbed over and over.

I wonder how it was done and who did it, and what they did it
for. Round and round and round—round and round and round—it makes
me dizzy!

I really have discovered something at last.

Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have
finally found out.

The front pattern DOES move—and no wonder! The woman behind
shakes it!

Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and
sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling
shakes it all over.

Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very
shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them
hard.

And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody
could climb through that pattern—it strangles so; I think that is
why it has so many heads.

They get through, and then the pattern strangles them off and
turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white!

If those heads were covered or taken off it would not be half so
bad.

I think that woman gets out in the daytime!

And I'll tell you why—privately—I've seen her!

I can see her out of every one of my windows!

It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and
most women do not creep by daylight.

I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and
when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines.