The Yellow Wallpaper

For the summer my husband John has rented an old house in the country, far from town, and we are here for my health.I have been ill since our baby was born — nervous, low, and easily tired — though John says there is really nothing wrong with me.John is a doctor, and a very practical man, and perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.

He does not believe that I am sick, only that I need rest, fresh air, and no excitement at all.Above everything, I am forbidden to work or to write until I am well again.So I write these pages in secret, when John is out seeing patients, and hide them when I hear him on the stairs.

I wanted a pretty room downstairs that opened onto the garden, but John chose the big room at the top of the house instead.It was once a nursery, and the windows are barred, and there are strange rings fixed into the walls.The bed is heavy and will not move, and a gate stands across the top of the stairs.

The worst thing in the room is the wallpaper, a dull, sickly yellow, torn away in patches.Its pattern sprawls and curls in a way that seems to break every rule of good design.When I follow one of its lame, uncertain curves with my eye, it suddenly turns and goes somewhere I did not expect.

I am sure that a little company, and some real work, would do me more good than all this quiet.But whenever I say so, John takes my hand, calls me his “little goose,” and tells me not to think about my illness.My brother is also a doctor, and he says exactly the same thing, so I have stopped arguing.

I lie here for hours, resting as I am told, and my eyes come back again and again to that yellow wall.I am beginning to think there is something in the pattern that no one else has noticed — something that moves.