Passages from The Yellow Wallpaper

A smell so insistent it can only be described as a colour.

It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning thehouse—to reach the smell.But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is likeis the color of the paper! A yellow smell.

Some wallpaper is merely ugly. This one appears to be watching.

But I must not think about that. This paper looks to me as if it knewwhat a vicious influence it had!There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neckand two bulbous eyes stare at you upside-down.

Stare at a pattern long enough and you start to hear it argue.

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.

Anyone who was a child alone in a quiet room will recognise this.

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.

The moment the pattern you were following turns and follows you.

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.

How to obey a doctor who tells you to stop imagining.

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.

A woman is forbidden the one thing that might help her: thinking.

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.

The rest cure begins with a choice of room nobody asked her about.

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.