Gilman Yellow Wallpaper
The Library of America • Story of the Week
Excerpt from American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps (The Library of America, 2009), pages 131–47.
© 2009 Literary Classics of the U.S., Inc.
Originally appeared in New England Magazine (January 1892).
Republished in The Yellow Wall Paper (1899).
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.
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Excerpt from American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps (The Library of America, 2009), pages 131–47.
© 2009 Literary Classics of the U.S., Inc.
Originally appeared in New England Magazine (January 1892).
Republished in The Yellow Wall Paper (1899).
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.
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