Welcome!
First, we will have our vocabulary quiz.
Then, we will read a short story called The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
I will call on you individually by name to read a short passage. Read loudly enough so that your classmates can hear you. I'll tell you when to stop.
As we read, look out for links to madness, patriarchy, and the supernatural.
When you see something that ties into one of those themes, mark the text with M for madness, S for supernatural, and P for patriarchy.
The narrator of this text can be viewed as a tragic heroine
struggling against a patriarchal society, an outsider whose illness is used to
set her apart from others, a young woman who chronicles her own descent into
madness, or perhaps the victim of supernatural forces. She could be any or all
of these and more. What theme stands out to you—madness,
patriarchy, or the supernatural? Is the narrator ultimately a victim or a hero?
Explain your reasoning.
We will be reading a short story called "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Learning Targets:
I can determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text.
I can analyze the impact of the author's choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed).
I can determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including words with multiple meanings or language that is particularly fresh, engaging, or beautiful.
I can analyze how an author's choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.
I can evaluate a speaker's point of view, reasoning, and use of evidence and rhetoric, assessing the stance, premises, links among ideas, word choice, points of emphasis, and tone used.
The Yellow Wallpaper background info:
From the web:
https://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/charlotte-perkins-gilmans-yellow-wall-paper-writing-womenFor many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia—and beyond. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still good physique responded so promptly that he concluded that there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to 'live as domestic a life as possible,' to 'have but two hours' intelligent life a day,' and 'never to touch pen, brush or pencil again as long as I lived.' This was in 1887…"
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "Why I Wrote the Yellow Wall-paper," 1913
"Every kind of creature is developed by the exercise of its functions. If denied the exercise of its functions, it can not develop in the fullest degree."
—Charlotte Perkins Stetson (Gilman),
from Hearing of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., January 28, 1896
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story "The Yellow Wall-paper" was written during a time of great change. In the early- to mid-nineteenth century, "domestic ideology" positioned American middle class women as the spiritual and moral leaders of their home. Such "separate spheres" ideals suggested that a woman's place was in the private domain of the home, where she should carry out her prescribed roles of wife and mother. Men, on the other hand, would rule the public domain through work, politics, and economics. By the middle of the century, this way of thinking began to change as the seeds of early women's rights were planted.
By the end of the 1800s, feminists were gaining momentum in favor of change. The concept of "The New Woman," for example, began to circulate in the 1890s–1910s as women pushed for broader roles outside their home-roles that could draw on women's intelligence and non-domestic skills and talents.
Gilman advocated revised roles for women, whom, Gilman believed, should be on much more equal economic, social, and political footing with men. In her famous work of nonfiction Women and Economics (1898), Gilman argued that women should strive-and be able-to work outside the home. Gilman also believed that women should be financially independent from men, and she promoted the then-radical idea that men and women even should share domestic work.
First appearing in the New England Magazine in January 1892, "The Yellow Wall-paper," according to many literary critics, is a narrative study of Gilman's own depression and "nervousness." Gilman, like the narrator of her story, sought medical help from the famous neurologist S. Weir Mitchell. Mitchell prescribed his famous "rest cure," which restricted women from anything that labored and taxed their minds (e.g., thinking, reading, writing) and bodies. More than just a psychological study of postpartum depression, Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-paper" offers a compelling study of Gilman's own feminism and of roles for women in the 1890s and 1910s.
From the web (http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/naw:@field%28DOCID+@lit%28rbnawsan9903div6%29%29)
Hearing of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., January 28, 1896
STATEMENT OF MRS. CHARLOTTE PERKINS STETSON, OF CALIFORNIA.
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen: I wish to speak a word for suffrage rather on the ground that has been taken, that a majority of women do not want it. That is perfectly true. The great advantage of woman suffrage to the world is that it will improve the race by improving the women. Suffrage is not a function which is supposed to benefit all humanity by the exercise of the superior powers of those who vote, but it is a function which develops the class who use it. You are better men because in your country you have the right of suffrage; it has improved the quality of citizenship. As a human function it develops the people who use it.
We hear a great deal of the superior mothers of great men; how about the inferior mothers of all the little men? We hear much of the mothers of Washington and Abraham Lincoln; but we should remember that Charles J. Guiteau and Jesse Pomeroy also had mothers. Mothers are not all superior. I think a great benefit would come from the improvement in the quality of the human race. You can not have as good a citizen, as good a class of people, where half the people are no part of the Government, no part of the society in which they live. Women stand in the world, but not of it; they do not have any integral part, and that limits their development; it limits the development of the soul and brain and all activities; and that is why our men are not better, and why the world is not better. I do not rest the claim on the better quality of the women. For unnumbered thousands of years women have suffered from repression, and it has hurt them and hindered them, limited them and interfered with their development, and in checking the development of the mothers of the race you restrict the development of the race.
Page 6 { page image }There is no better way to improve the quality of the people on earth than to improve the mothers of that people. To my mind, the strongest claim for suffrage, therefore, is that women need it; it matters not whether they know enough to want it. It is for you who do know, or should know, to see to it that they have this right of suffrage, and that all other citizens have it, in order that they may become full, intelligent citizens of this country. It will add not only to human affairs, but it is the best thing of all tending to the better work of economy in government and social life. It will give you another set of people, who are now just women; it will be an advantage in every way; and every thoughtful mind of this century should look at its effect on the women, the children, and the men of the race through the development of women.
Every kind of creature is developed by the exercise of its functions. If denied the exercise of its functions, it can not develop in the fullest degree. And to debar any part of the race from its development is to carry along with society a dead weight, a part of the organism which is not living, organic matter, which is a thing to be carried instead of to help. To give suffrage to this half of the race will develop it as it never has been developed before. You know how America and England stand in proportion to the freedom and development of their women. This is the argument I wish to present to you, gentlemen. [Applause.]
Miss Anthony. I hope our delegates here will not indulge in applause, but give that privilege exclusively to the committee. I want them to clap and cheer as much as they please.
Now I shall call Colorado, represented by Anna L. Diggs, who, since Colorado has become a State and we were able to put a second star on the woman's flag, has moved to Colorado in order that she may be free.
Audiobook reading of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
(31:47 total running time)
https://youtu.be/I_vM37z8iek
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
(1860– 1935)
The Yellow Wall Paper
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 En glish 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-b ordered 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 co-heirs; 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 an other.
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 playground 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 repellant, 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 re paper 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 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 as airy and comfortable a 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
deep-shaded arbors, the riotous old-fashioned flowers, and
bushes and gnarly trees.
Out of an other 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 fire-works 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 got 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 br other— 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, an 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 sulk about behind that silly and conspicuous
front design.
There’s sister on the stairs!
Well, the Fourth of July is over! The people are all gone and I
am tired out. John thought it might do me good to see a little
company, so we just had m other 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.
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 principles 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 Roman -
esque” 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 cross-lights fade and the low sun shines
directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation, after all,— the interminable
gro tesques seem to form around a common centre
and rush off in head-long 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 mustn’t lose my strength, and has me take codliver
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 wished 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 he 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 my 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 an other.
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 thought it was a good time to talk, so I told himthat 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,—
I lay there for hours trying to decide whether that front pattern
and the back pattern really didmove 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
under way 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, candlelight, lamplight,
andworst of all bymoonlight, it becomes bars! The outside
pattern, Imean, and thewoman 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,— oh, 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 around 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 themhard.
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 in that long shaded lane, creeping up and down. I see
her in those dark grape arbors, creeping all around the garden.
I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along,
and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines.
I don’t blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be
caught creeping by daylight!
I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can’t do it
at night, for I know John would suspect something at once.
And John is so queer, now, that I don’t want to irritate him.
I wish he would take an other room! Besides, I don’t want anybody
to get that woman out at night but myself.
I often wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at
once.
But, turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one at one
time.
And though I always see her she may be able to creep faster
than I can turn!
I have watched her sometimes away off in the open country,
creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind.
*
If only that top pattern could be gotten off from the under
one! I mean to try it, little by little.
I have found out an other funny thing, but I shan’t tell it this
time! It does not do to trust people too much.
There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I
believe John is beginning to notice. I don’t like the look in his
eyes.
And I heard him ask Jennie a lot of professional questions
about me. She had a very good report to give.
She said I slept a good deal in the daytime.
John knows I don’t sleep very well at night, for all I’m so
quiet!
He asked me all sorts of questions, too, and pretended to be
very loving and kind.
As if I couldn’t see through him!
Still, I don’t wonder he acts so, sleeping under this paper for
three months.
It only interests me, but I feel sure John and Jennie are secretly
affected by it.
*
Hurrah! This is the last day, but it is enough. John is to stay in
town over night, and won’t be out until this evening.
Jennie wanted to sleep with me— the sly thing! but I told
her I should undoubtedly rest better for a night all alone.
That was clever, for really I wasn’t alone a bit! As soon as it
was moonlight, and that poor thing began to crawl and shake
the pattern, I got up and ran to help her.
I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before
morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.
A strip about as high as my head and half around the room.
And then when the sun came and that awful pattern began
to laugh at me I declared I would finish it to-day!
We go away to-morrow, and they are moving all my furniture
down again to leave things as they were before.
Jennie looked at the wall in amazement, but I told her merrily
that I did it out of pure spite at the vicious thing.
She laughed and said she wouldn’t mind doing it herself,
but I must not get tired.
How she betrayed herself that time!
But I am here, and no person touches this paper but me—
not alive!
She tried to get me out of the room— it was too patent! But
I said it was so quiet and empty and clean now that I believed
I would lie down again and sleep all I could; and not to wake
me even for dinner— I would call when I woke.
So now she is gone, and the servants are gone, and the things
are gone, and there is nothing left but that great bedstead
nailed down, with the canvas mattress we found on it.
We shall sleep downstairs to-night, and take the boat home
to-morrow.
I quite enjoy the room, now it is bare again.
How those children did tear about here!
This bedstead is fairly gnawed!
But I must get to work.
I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the
front path.
I don’t want to go out, and I don’t want to have anybody
come in, till John comes.
I want to astonish him.
I’ve got a rope up here that even Jennie did not find. If that
woman does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her!
But I forgot I could not reach far without anything to
stand on!
This bed will not move!
I tried to lift and push it until I was lame, and then I got so
angry I bit off a little piece at one corner— but it hurt my teeth.
Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the
floor. It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those
strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus
growths just shriek with derision!
I am getting angry enough to do something desperate. To
jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the
bars are too strong even to try.
Besides, I wouldn’t do it. Of course not. I know well enough
that a step like that is improper and might be misconstrued.
I don’t like to look out of the windows even— there are so
many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast.
I wonder if they all come out of that wall paper, as I did?
But I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope—
you don’t get me out in the road there!
I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it
comes night, and that is hard!
It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep
around as I please!
I don’t want to go outside. I won’t, even if Jennie asks me to.
For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything
is green instead of yellow.
But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder
just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose
my way.
Why, there’s John at the door!
It is no use, young man, you can’t open it!
How he does call and pound!
Now he’s crying for an axe.
It would be a shame to break down that beautiful door!
“John, dear!” said I in the gentlest voice, “the key is down
by the front steps, under a plantain leaf !”
That silenced him for a few moments.
Then he said— very quietly indeed, “Open the door, my
darling!”
“I can’t,” said I. “The key is down by the front door, under
a plantain leaf !”
And then I said it again, several times, very gently and
slowly, and said it so often that he had to go and see, and he
got it, of course, and came in. He stopped short by the door.
“What is the matter?” he cried.
“For God’s sake, what are you doing?”
I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over
my shoulder.
“I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane! And
I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!”
Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and
right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over
him every time!
Quick Write:
The narrator of this text can be viewed as a tragic heroine struggling against a patriarchal society, an outsider whose illness is used to set her apart from others, a young woman who chronicles her own descent into madness, or perhaps the victim of supernatural forces. She could be any or all of these and more. In a quick write of two paragraphs, you will explain to me your “reading” of the meaning of the text. What theme stands out to you—madness, patriarchy, or the supernatural? Is the narrator ultimately a victim or a hero?
Explain your reasoning.
Vocabulary for November 28th
1. felicity (noun) - intense happiness
2. hysterical (adj) - extremely emotional
3. congenial (adj) - friendly, pleasant
4. sly (adj) - deceitful or cunning
5. stimulus (noun) - a thing that rouses activity or energy in someone
6. base (adj) - without moral principles
7. galore (adj) - in abundance
8. flamboyant (adj) - colorful, elaborate, fancy
9. repellent (adj) - sickening, awful
10. lurid (adj) - very vivid in color
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