Very first demo! The Yellow Wallpaper

Transcript

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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 even say haunted and reached the height of romantic facility. But that would be asking too much of fate. Still, I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it else. Why would it be let so cheaply and why would have stood so long unintended? John laughs at me of course. But one expects that in a marriage, John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith and 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 this to a living soul, of course, but this is a dead paper and great relief in my mind. Perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster. You see, he does not believe I'm 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 nervousness, 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 phosphates, whichever it is and tonics and journeys and air and exercise. And I am absolutely forbidden to work until I am. Well, again, personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work with excitement 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 great 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.