Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John andmyself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say ahaunted 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 queerabout it. Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why havestood so long untenanted?John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that inmarriage. John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience withfaith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openlyat any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down infigures. John is a physician, and perhaps-(I would not say it to aliving soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a greatrelief to my mind)-perhaps that is one reason I do not getwell 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 thematter with one but temporary nervous depression-aslight hysterical tendency-what is one to do?My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing.3So I take phosphates or phosphites-whichever it is, andtonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and amabsolutely forbidden to "work" until I am well again. Personally, I disagree with their idea