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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1952 ***
+
+
+
+
+The Yellow Wallpaper
+
+By Charlotte Perkins Gilman
+
+
+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
+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
+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 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
+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 wallpaper!
+
+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 wallpaper 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 another 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 get 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 wallpaper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh
+closer than a brother—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, and 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 wallpaper 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 gone and I am tired
+out. John thought it might do me good to see a little company, so we
+just had mother 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 wallpaper. Perhaps
+because of the wallpaper.
+
+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 principle 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 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.
+
+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 grotesques seem to
+form around a common centre and rush off in headlong 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 cod-liver 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 wish 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 it 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 any 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 wallpaper.
+
+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 another.
+
+John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and watched
+the moonlight on that undulating wallpaper 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 him that 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 did move 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, and
+worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean,
+and the woman 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 wallpaper.
+
+I turned it off with a laugh. I had no intention of telling him it was
+because of the wallpaper—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 wallpaper! 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 round 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 them hard.
+
+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 on 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 another 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 another 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 wallpaper 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!
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 1952 ***