The Yellow Wallpaper

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.
 
 

Dettagli