The Yellow Wallpaper

"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."

Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere.

It only interests me, but I feel sure John and Jennie are secretly affected by it.

I have spent hours in trying to analyze it, to find what it smelled like.

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?

I want to astonish him.

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.

How she betrayed herself that time!

Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves and flourishes -- a kind of "debased Romanesque" with delirium tremens -- go waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity.

It is repeated, of course, by the breadths, but not otherwise.

I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and here I am a comparative burden already!

Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.

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.

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.

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 them

And that cultivates deceit, for I don't tell them I'm awake -- O no!

Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves and flourishes -- a kind of "debased Romanesque" with delirium tremens -- go waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity.

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.

Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves and flourishes -- a kind of "debased Romanesque" with delirium tremens -- go waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity.

All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision!

Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day.

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, destr

I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia.

It is not bad -- at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met.

It is not bad -- at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met.

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!

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.

There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours.

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!

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 thing' looked too fierce I could always hop into that chair an

One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.

The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of a fungus.

Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves and flourishes -- a kind of "debased Romanesque" with delirium tremens -- go waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity.

It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw -- not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.

They have used a horizontal breadth for a frieze, and that adds wonderfully to the confusion.

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.

There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, when the crosslights fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation after all, -- the interminable grotesques seem to form around a common centre and rus

There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, when the crosslights fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation after all, -- the interminable grotesques seem to form around a common centre and rush off i

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 must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight!

It strikes me occasionally, just as a scientific hypothesis, -- that perhaps it is the paper!

I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all know how much expression they have!

He seems very queer sometimes, and even Jennie has an inexplicable look.

The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing.

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.

There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, when the crosslights fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation after all, -- the interminable grotesques seem to form around a common centre and rus

Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves and flourishes -- a kind of "debased Romanesque" with delirium tremens -- go waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity.

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.

There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.

It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.

I know well enough that a step like that is improper and might be misconstrued.

I always fancy I see people walking in these numerous paths and arbors, but John has cautioned me not to g ve way to fancy in the least.

She tried to get me out of the room -- it was too patent!

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, destr

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 never saw such ravages as the children have made here.

There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.

"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."

The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.

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 -- a

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.

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.

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.

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.

He said we came here solely on my account, that I was to have perfect rest and all the air I could get.

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.

"
"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.

By daylight she is subdued, quiet.

It is not bad -- at first, and very gentle, but quite the subtlest, most enduring odor I ever met.

I know a little of the principle of design, and I know this thing was not arranged on any laws of I radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or symmetry, or anything else that I ever heard of.

There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours.

Besides, it is such an undertaking to go so far.

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 color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing.

Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves and flourishes -- a kind of "debased Romanesque" 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.

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.