"I'm sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition."

"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..."










This, from the NY Times, via Sly Civilian

...women literally dissolving into the woodwork.






"...Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision!

I am getting angry enough to do something desperate. To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try.

Besides I wouldn't do it. Of course not. I know well enough that a step like that is improper and might be misconstrued.

I don't like to look out of the windows even -- there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast.

I wonder if they all come out of that wall-paper as I did?..."



--The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman