



Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer





THE YELLOW WALLPAPER

By Charlotte Perkins Gilman




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 in 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 order 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