The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Writings by Charlotte Perkins Gilman Read Free Book Online Page A

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