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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

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THE YELLOW WALLPAPER

By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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    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