The Birth-Mark
Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Published: 1843
Type(s): Short Fiction
Source: http://gutenberg.org
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About Hawthorne:
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, where his birthplace is now a museum. William Hathorne, who
emigrated from England in 1630, was the first of Hawthorne's ancestors
to arrive in the colonies. After arriving, William persecuted Quakers.
William's son John Hathorne was one of the judges who oversaw the
Salem Witch Trials. (One theory is that having learned about this, the author added the "w" to his surname in his early twenties, shortly after
graduating from college.) Hawthorne's father, Nathaniel Hathorne, Sr.,
was a sea captain who died in 1808 of yellow fever, when Hawthorne
was only four years old, in Raymond, Maine.
Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College at the expense of an uncle from
1821 to 1824, befriending classmates Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and
future president Franklin Pierce. While there he joined the Delta Kappa
Epsilon fraternity. Until the publication of his Twice-Told Tales in 1837,
Hawthorne wrote in the comparative obscurity of what he called his
"owl's nest" in the family home. As he looked back on this period of his
life, he wrote: "I have not lived, but only dreamed about living." And yet
it was this period of brooding and writing that had formed, as Malcolm
Cowley was to describe it, "the central fact in Hawthorne's career," his
"term of apprenticeship" that would eventually result in the "richly meditated fiction."
Hawthorne was hired in 1839 as a weigher and gauger at the Boston
Custom House. He had become engaged in the previous year to the illustrator and transcendentalist Sophia Peabody. Seeking a possible home
for himself and Sophia, he joined the transcendentalist utopian community at Brook Farm in 1841; later that year, however, he left when he
became dissatisfied with farming and the experiment. (His Brook Farm
adventure would prove an inspiration for his novel The Blithedale Romance.) He married Sophia in 1842; they moved to The Old Manse in
Concord, Massachusetts, where they lived for three years. There he
wrote most of the tales collected in Mosses from an Old Manse.
Hawthorne and his wife then moved to Salem and later to the
Berkshires, returning in 1852 to Concord and a new home The Wayside,
previously owned by the Alcotts. Their neighbors in Concord included
Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
Like Hawthorne, Sophia was a reclusive person. She was bedridden
with headaches until her sister introduced her to Hawthorne, after which
her headaches seem to have abated. The Hawthornes enjoyed a long
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marriage, often taking walks in the park. Sophia greatly admired her
husband's work. In one of her journals, she writes: "I am always so
dazzled and bewildered with the richness, the depth, the... jewels of
beauty in his productions that I am always looking forward to a second
reading where I can ponder and muse and fully take in the miraculous
wealth of thoughts."
In 1846, Hawthorne was appointed surveyor (determining the quantity and value of imported goods) at the Salem Custom House. Like his
earlier appointment to the custom house in Boston, this employment was
vulnerable to the politics of the spoils system. A Democrat, Hawthorne
lost this job due to the change of administration in Washington after the
presidential election of 1848.
Hawthorne's career as a novelist was boosted by The Scarlet Letter in
1850, in which the preface refers to his three-year tenure in the Custom
House at Salem. The House of the Seven Gables (1851) and The
Blithedale Romance (1852) followed in quick succession.
In 1852, he wrote the campaign biography of his old friend Franklin
Pierce. With Pierce's election as president, Hawthorne was rewarded in
1853 with the position of United States consul in Liverpool. In 1857, his
appointment ended and the Hawthorne family toured France and Italy.
They returned to The Wayside in 1860, and that year saw the publication
of The Marble Faun. Failing health (which biographer Edward Miller
speculates was stomach cancer) prevented him from completing several
more romances. Hawthorne died in his sleep on May 19, 1864, in Plymouth, New Hampshire while on a tour of the White Mountains with
Pierce. He was buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord, Massachusetts. Wife Sophia and daughter Una were originally buried in England.
However, in June 2006, they were re-interred in plots adjacent to
Nathaniel.
Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne had three children: Una, Julian, and
Rose. Una was a victim of mental illness and died young. Julian moved
out west, served a jail term for embezzlement and wrote a book about
his father. Rose married George Parsons Lathrop and they became Roman Catholics. After George's death, Rose became a Dominican nun. She
founded the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne to care for victims of incurable cancer.
Source: Wikipedia
Also available on Feedbooks for Hawthorne:
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The Scarlet Letter (1850)
The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
Rappaccini's Daughter (1844)
A Bell's Biography (1837)
The Minister's Black Veil (1837)
A Book of Autographs (1844)
Biographical Stories (1842)
Young Goodman Brown (1835)
The Marble Faun (1860)
The Blithedale Romance (1852)
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In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an
eminent proficient in every branch of natural philosophy, who not long
before our story opens had made experience of a spiritual affinity more
attractive than any chemical one. He had left his laboratory to the care of
an assistant, cleared his fine countenance from the furnace smoke,
washed the stain of acids from his fingers, and persuaded a beautiful
woman to become his wife. In those days when the comparatively recent
discovery of electricity and other kindred mysteries of Nature seemed to
open paths into the region of miracle, it was not unusual for the love of
science to rival the love of woman in its depth and absorbing energy. The
higher intellect, the imagination, the spirit, and even the heart might all
find their congenial aliment in pursuits which, as some of their ardent
votaries believed, would ascend from one step of powerful intelligence
to another, until the philosopher should lay his hand on the secret of creative force and perhaps make new worlds for himself. We know not
whether Aylmer possessed this degree of faith in man's ultimate control
over Nature. He had devoted himself, however, too unreservedly to scientific studies ever to be weaned from them by any second passion. His
love for his young wife might prove the stronger of the two; but it could
only be by intertwining itself with his love of science, and uniting the
strength of the latter to his own.
Such a union accordingly took place, and was attended with truly remarkable consequences and a deeply impressive moral. One day, very
soon after their marriage, Aylmer sat gazing at his wife with a trouble in
his countenance that grew stronger until he spoke.
"Georgiana," said he, "has it never occurred to you that the mark upon
your cheek might be removed?"
"No, indeed," said she, smiling; but perceiving the seriousness of his
manner, she blushed deeply. "To tell you the truth it has been so often
called a charm that I was simple enough to imagine it might be so."
"Ah, upon another face perhaps it might," replied her husband; "but
never on yours. No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from
the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we hesitate
whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the visible
mark of earthly imperfection."
"Shocks you, my husband!" cried Georgiana, deeply hurt; at first reddening with momentary anger, but then bursting into tears. "Then why
did you take me from my mother's side? You cannot love what shocks
you!"
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To explain this conversation it must be mentioned that in the centre of
Georgiana's left cheek there was a singular mark, deeply interwoven, as
it were, with the texture and substance of her face. In the usual state of
her complexion—a healthy though delicate bloom—the mark wore a tint
of deeper crimson, which imperfectly defined its shape amid the surrounding rosiness. When she blushed it gradually became more indistinct, and finally vanished amid the triumphant rush of blood that
bathed the whole cheek with its brilliant glow. But if any shifting motion
caused her to turn pale there was the mark again, a crimson stain upon
the snow, in what Aylmer sometimes deemed an almost fearful distinctness. Its shape bore not a little similarity to the human hand, though of
the smallest pygmy size. Georgiana's lovers were wont to say that some
fairy at her birth hour had laid her tiny hand upon the infant's cheek,
and left this impress there in token of the magic endowments that were
to give her such sway over all hearts. Many a desperate swain would
have risked life for the privilege of pressing his lips to the mysterious
hand. It must not be concealed, however, that the impression wrought
by this fairy sign manual varied exceedingly, according to the difference
of temperament in the beholders. Some fastidious persons—but they
were exclusively of her own sex—affirmed that the bloody hand, as they
chose to call it, quite destroyed the effect of Georgiana's beauty, and
rendered her countenance even hideous. But it would be as reasonable to
say that one of those small blue stains which sometimes occur in the
purest statuary marble would convert the Eve of Powers to a monster.
Masculine observers, if the birthmark did not heighten their admiration,
contented themselves with wishing it away, that the world might possess one living specimen of ideal loveliness without the semblance of a
flaw. After his marriage,—for he thought little or nothing of the matter
before,—Aylmer discovered that this was the case with himself.
Had she been less beautiful,—if Envy's self could have found aught
else to sneer at,—he might have felt his affection heightened by the prettiness of this mimic hand, now vaguely portrayed, now lost, now stealing forth again and glimmering to and fro with every pulse of emotion
that throbbed within her heart; but seeing her otherwise so perfect, he
found this one defect grow more and more intolerable with every moment of their united lives. It was the fatal flaw of humanity which
Nature, in one shape or another, stamps ineffaceably on all her productions, either to imply that they are temporary and finite, or that their perfection must be wrought by toil and pain. The crimson hand expressed
the ineludible gripe in which mortality clutches the highest and purest of
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earthly mould, degrading them into kindred with the lowest, and even
with the very brutes, like whom their visible frames return to dust. In
this manner, selecting it as the symbol of his wife's liability to sin, sorrow, decay, and death, Aylmer's sombre imagination was not long in
rendering the birthmark a frightful object, causing him more trouble and
horror than ever Georgiana's beauty, whether of soul or sense, had given
him delight.
At all the seasons which should have been their happiest, he invariably and without intending it, nay, in spite of a purpose to the contrary,
reverted to this one disastrous topic. Trifling as it at first appeared, it so
connected itself with innumerable trains of thought and modes of feeling
that it became the central point of all. With the morning twilight Aylmer
opened his eyes upon his wife's face and recognized the symbol of imperfection; and when they sat together at the evening hearth his eyes
wandered stealthily to her cheek, and beheld, flickering with the blaze of
the wood fire, the spectral hand that wrote mortality where he would
fain have worshipped. Georgiana soon learned to shudder at his gaze. It
needed but a glance with the peculiar expression that his face often wore
to change the roses of her cheek into a deathlike paleness, amid which
the crimson hand was brought strongly out, like a bass-relief of ruby on
the whitest marble.
Late one night when the lights were growing dim, so as hardly to betray the stain on the poor wife's cheek, she herself, for the first time, voluntarily took up the subject.
"Do you remember, my dear Aylmer," said she, with a feeble attempt
at a smile, "have you any recollection of a dream last night about this
odious hand?"
"None! none whatever!" replied Aylmer, starting; but then he added,
in a dry, cold tone, affected for the sake of concealing the real depth of
his emotion, "I might well dream of it; for before I fell asleep it had taken
a pretty firm hold of my fancy."
"And you did dream of it?" continued Georgiana, hastily; for she
dreaded lest a gush of tears should interrupt what she had to say. "A terrible dream! I wonder that you can forget it. Is it possible to forget this
one expression?—'It is in her heart now; we must have it out!' Reflect,
my husband; for by all means I would have you recall that dream."
The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot confine
her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers them to break
forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that perchance belong to a
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deeper one. Aylmer now remembered his dream. He had fancied himself
with his servant Aminadab, attempting an operation for the removal of
the birthmark; but the deeper went the knife, the deeper sank the hand,
until at length its tiny grasp appeared to have caught hold of Georgiana's
heart; whence, however, her husband was inexorably resolved to cut or
wrench it away.
When the dream had shaped itself perfectly in his memory, Aylmer sat
in his wife's presence with a guilty feeling. Truth often finds its way to
the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practise an
unconscious self-deception during our waking moments. Until now he
had not been aware of the tyrannizing influence acquired by one idea
over his mind, and of the lengths which he might find in his heart to go
for the sake of giving himself peace.
"Aylmer," resumed Georgiana, solemnly, "I know not what may be the
cost to both of us to rid me of this fatal birthmark. Perhaps its removal
may cause cureless deformity; or it may be the stain goes as deep as life
itself. Again: do we know that there is a possibility, on any terms, of unclasping the firm gripe of this little hand which was laid upon me before
I came into the world?"
"Dearest Georgiana, I have spent much thought upon the subject,"
hastily interrupted Aylmer. "I am convinced of the perfect practicability
of its removal."
"If there be the remotest possibility of it," continued Georgiana, "let the
attempt be made at whatever risk. Danger is nothing to me; for life,
while this hateful mark makes me the object of your horror and disgust,—life is a burden which I would fling down with joy. Either remove
this dreadful hand, or take my wretched life! You have deep science. All
the world bears witness of it. You have achieved great wonders. Cannot
you remove this little, little mark, which I cover with the tips of two
small fingers? Is this beyond your power, for the sake of your own peace,
and to save your poor wife from madness?"
"Noblest, dearest, tenderest wife," cried Aylmer, rapturously, "doubt
not my power. I have already given this matter the deepest
thought—thought which might almost have enlightened me to create a
being less perfect than yourself. Georgiana, you have led me deeper than
ever into the heart of science. I feel myself fully competent to render this
dear cheek as faultless as its fellow; and then, most beloved, what will be
my triumph when I shall have corrected what Nature left imperfect in
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her fairest work! Even Pygmalion, when his sculptured woman assumed
life, felt not greater ecstasy than mine will be."
"It is resolved, then," said Georgiana, faintly smiling. "And, Aylmer,
spare me not, though you should find the birthmark take refuge in my
heart at last."
Her husband tenderly kissed her cheek—her right cheek—not that
which bore the impress of the crimson hand.
The next day Aylmer apprised his wife of a plan that he had formed
whereby he might have opportunity for the intense thought and constant
watchfulness which the proposed operation would require; while Georgiana, likewise, would enjoy the perfect repose essential to its success.
They were to seclude themselves in the extensive apartments occupied
by Aylmer as a laboratory, and where, during his toilsome youth, he had
made discoveries in the elemental powers of Nature that had roused the
admiration of all the learned societies in Europe. Seated calmly in this
laboratory, the pale philosopher had investigated the secrets of the
highest cloud region and of the profoundest mines; he had satisfied himself of the causes that kindled and kept alive the fires of the volcano; and
had explained the mystery of fountains, and how it is that they gush
forth, some so bright and pure, and others with such rich medicinal virtues, from the dark bosom of the earth. Here, too, at an earlier period, he
had studied the wonders of the human frame, and attempted to fathom
the very process by which Nature assimilates all her precious influences
from earth and air, and from the spiritual world, to create and foster
man, her masterpiece. The latter pursuit, however, Aylmer had long laid
aside in unwilling recognition of the truth—against which all seekers
sooner or later stumble—that our great creative Mother, while she
amuses us with apparently working in the broadest sunshine, is yet
severely careful to keep her own secrets, and, in spite of her pretended
openness, shows us nothing but results. She permits us, indeed, to mar,
but seldom to mend, and, like a jealous patentee, on no account to make.
Now, however, Aylmer resumed these half-forgotten investigations; not,
of course, with such hopes or wishes as first suggested them; but because
they involved much physiological truth and lay in the path of his proposed scheme for the treatment of Georgiana.
As he led her over the threshold of the laboratory, Georgiana was cold
and tremulous. Aylmer looked cheerfully into her face, with intent to reassure her, but was so startled with the intense glow of the birthmark
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upon the whiteness of her cheek that he could not restrain a strong convulsive shudder. His wife fainted.
"Aminadab! Aminadab!" shouted Aylmer, stamping violently on the
floor.
Forthwith there issued from an inner apartment a man of low stature,
but bulky frame, with shaggy hair hanging about his visage, which was
grimed with the vapors of the furnace. This personage had been
Aylmer's underworker during his whole scientific career, and was admirably fitted for that office by his great mechanical readiness, and the
skill with which, while incapable of comprehending a single principle,
he executed all the details of his master's experiments. With his vast
strength, his shaggy hair, his smoky aspect, and the indescribable earthiness that incrusted him, he seemed to represent man's physical nature;
while Aylmer's slender figure, and pale, intellectual face, were no less
apt a type of the spiritual element.
"Throw open the door of the boudoir, Aminadab," said Aylmer, "and
burn a pastil."
"Yes, master," answered Aminadab, looking intently at the lifeless
form of Georgiana; and then he muttered to himself, "If she were my
wife, I'd never part with that birthmark."
When Georgiana recovered consciousness she found herself breathing
an atmosphere of penetrating fragrance, the gentle potency of which had
recalled her from her deathlike faintness. The scene around her looked
like enchantment. Aylmer had converted those smoky, dingy, sombre
rooms, where he had spent his brightest years in recondite pursuits, into
a series of beautiful apartments not unfit to be the secluded abode of a
lovely woman. The walls were hung with gorgeous curtains, which imparted the combination of grandeur and grace that no other species of
adornment can achieve; and as they fell from the ceiling to the floor, their
rich and ponderous folds, concealing all angles and straight lines, appeared to shut in the scene from infinite space. For aught Georgiana
knew, it might be a pavilion among the clouds. And Aylmer, excluding
the sunshine, which would have interfered with his chemical processes,
had supplied its place with perfumed lamps, emitting flames of various
hue, but all uniting in a soft, impurpled radiance. He now knelt by his
wife's side, watching her earnestly, but without alarm; for he was confident in his science, and felt that he could draw a magic circle round her
within which no evil might intrude.
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"Where am I? Ah, I remember," said Georgiana, faintly; and she placed
her hand over her cheek to hide the terrible mark from her husband's
eyes.
"Fear not, dearest!" exclaimed he. "Do not shrink from me! Believe me,
Georgiana, I even rejoice in this single imperfection, since it will be such
a rapture to remove it."
"Oh, spare me!" sadly replied his wife. "Pray do not look at it again. I
never can forget that convulsive shudder."
In order to soothe Georgiana, and, as it were, to release her mind from
the burden of actual things, Aylmer now put in practice some of the light
and playful secrets which science had taught him among its profounder
lore. Airy figures, absolutely bodiless ideas, and forms of unsubstantial
beauty came and danced before her, imprinting their momentary footsteps on beams of light. Though she had some indistinct idea of the
method of these optical phenomena, still the illusion was almost perfect
enough to warrant the belief that her husband possessed sway over the
spiritual world. Then again, when she felt a wish to look forth from her
seclusion, immediately, as if her thoughts were answered, the procession
of external existence flitted across a screen. The scenery and the figures
of actual life were perfectly represented, but with that bewitching, yet indescribable difference which always makes a picture, an image, or a
shadow so much more attractive than the original. When wearied of this,
Aylmer bade her cast her eyes upon a vessel containing a quantity of
earth. She did so, with little interest at first; but was soon startled to perceive the germ of a plant shooting upward from the soil. Then came the
slender stalk; the leaves gradually unfolded themselves; and amid them
was a perfect and lovely flower.
"It is magical!" cried Georgiana. "I dare not touch it."
"Nay, pluck it," answered Aylmer,—"pluck it, and inhale its brief perfume while you may. The flower will wither in a few moments and leave
nothing save its brown seed vessels; but thence may be perpetuated a
race as ephemeral as itself."
But Georgiana had no sooner touched the flower than the whole plant
suffered a blight, its leaves turning coal-black as if by the agency of fire.
"There was too powerful a stimulus," said Aylmer, thoughtfully.
To make up for this abortive experiment, he proposed to take her portrait by a scientific process of his own invention. It was to be effected by
rays of light striking upon a polished plate of metal. Georgiana assented;
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but, on looking at the result, was affrighted to find the features of the
portrait blurred and indefinable; while the minute figure of a hand appeared where the cheek should have been. Aylmer snatched the metallic
plate and threw it into a jar of corrosive acid.
Soon, however, he forgot these mortifying failures. In the intervals of
study and chemical experiment he came to her flushed and exhausted,
but seemed invigorated by her presence, and spoke in glowing language
of the resources of his art. He gave a history of the long dynasty of the alchemists, who spent so many ages in quest of the universal solvent by
which the golden principle might be elicited from all things vile and
base. Aylmer appeared to believe that, by the plainest scientific logic, it
was altogether within the limits of possibility to discover this longsought medium; "but," he added, "a philosopher who should go deep
enough to acquire the power would attain too lofty a wisdom to stoop to
the exercise of it." Not less singular were his opinions in regard to the
elixir vitae. He more than intimated that it was at his option to concoct a
liquid that should prolong life for years, perhaps interminably; but that it
would produce a discord in Nature which all the world, and chiefly the
quaffer of the immortal nostrum, would find cause to curse.
"Aylmer, are you in earnest?" asked Georgiana, looking at him with
amazement and fear. "It is terrible to possess such power, or even to
dream of possessing it."
"Oh, do not tremble, my love," said her husband. "I would not wrong
either you or myself by working such inharmonious effects upon our
lives; but I would have you consider how trifling, in comparison, is the
skill requisite to remove this little hand."
At the mention of the birthmark, Georgiana, as usual, shrank as if a
redhot iron had touched her cheek.
Again Aylmer applied himself to his labors. She could hear his voice
in the distant furnace room giving directions to Aminadab, whose harsh,
uncouth, misshapen tones were audible in response, more like the grunt
or growl of a brute than human speech. After hours of absence, Aylmer
reappeared and proposed that she should now examine his cabinet of
chemical products and natural treasures of the earth. Among the former
he showed her a small vial, in which, he remarked, was contained a
gentle yet most powerful fragrance, capable of impregnating all the
breezes that blow across a kingdom. They were of inestimable value, the
contents of that little vial; and, as he said so, he threw some of the
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perfume into the air and filled the room with piercing and invigorating
delight.
"And what is this?" asked Georgiana, pointing to a small crystal globe
containing a gold-colored liquid. "It is so beautiful to the eye that I could
imagine it the elixir of life."
"In one sense it is," replied Aylmer; "or, rather, the elixir of immortality. It is the most precious poison that ever was concocted in this world.
By its aid I could apportion the lifetime of any mortal at whom you
might point your finger. The strength of the dose would determine
whether he were to linger out years, or drop dead in the midst of a
breath. No king on his guarded throne could keep his life if I, in my
private station, should deem that the welfare of millions justified me in
depriving him of it."
"Why do you keep such a terrific drug?" inquired Georgiana in horror.
"Do not mistrust me, dearest," said her husband, smiling; "its virtuous
potency is yet greater than its harmful one. But see! here is a powerful
cosmetic. With a few drops of this in a vase of water, freckles may be
washed away as easily as the hands are cleansed. A stronger infusion
would take the blood out of the cheek, and leave the rosiest beauty a pale
ghost."
"Is it with this lotion that you intend to bathe my cheek?" asked Georgiana, anxiously.
"Oh, no," hastily replied her husband; "this is merely superficial. Your
case demands a remedy that shall go deeper."
In his interviews with Georgiana, Aylmer generally made minute inquiries as to her sensations and whether the confinement of the rooms
and the temperature of the atmosphere agreed with her. These questions
had such a particular drift that Georgiana began to conjecture that she
was already subjected to certain physical influences, either breathed in
with the fragrant air or taken with her food. She fancied likewise, but it
might be altogether fancy, that there was a stirring up of her system—a
strange, indefinite sensation creeping through her veins, and tingling,
half painfully, half pleasurably, at her heart. Still, whenever she dared to
look into the mirror, there she beheld herself pale as a white rose and
with the crimson birthmark stamped upon her cheek. Not even Aylmer
now hated it so much as she.
To dispel the tedium of the hours which her husband found it necessary to devote to the processes of combination and analysis, Georgiana
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turned over the volumes of his scientific library. In many dark old tomes
she met with chapters full of romance and poetry. They were the works
of philosophers of the middle ages, such as Albertus Magnus, Cornelius
Agrippa, Paracelsus, and the famous friar who created the prophetic
Brazen Head. All these antique naturalists stood in advance of their centuries, yet were imbued with some of their credulity, and therefore were
believed, and perhaps imagined themselves to have acquired from the
investigation of Nature a power above Nature, and from physics a sway
over the spiritual world. Hardly less curious and imaginative were the
early volumes of the Transactions of the Royal Society, in which the
members, knowing little of the limits of natural possibility, were continually recording wonders or proposing methods whereby wonders might
be wrought.
But to Georgiana the most engrossing volume was a large folio from
her husband's own hand, in which he had recorded every experiment of
his scientific career, its original aim, the methods adopted for its development, and its final success or failure, with the circumstances to which
either event was attributable. The book, in truth, was both the history
and emblem of his ardent, ambitious, imaginative, yet practical and laborious life. He handled physical details as if there were nothing beyond
them; yet spiritualized them all, and redeemed himself from materialism
by his strong and eager aspiration towards the infinite. In his grasp the
veriest clod of earth assumed a soul. Georgiana, as she read, reverenced
Aylmer and loved him more profoundly than ever, but with a less entire
dependence on his judgment than heretofore. Much as he had accomplished, she could not but observe that his most splendid successes were
almost invariably failures, if compared with the ideal at which he aimed.
His brightest diamonds were the merest pebbles, and felt to be so by
himself, in comparison with the inestimable gems which lay hidden beyond his reach. The volume, rich with achievements that had won renown
for its author, was yet as melancholy a record as ever mortal hand had
penned. It was the sad confession and continual exemplification of the
shortcomings of the composite man, the spirit burdened with clay and
working in matter, and of the despair that assails the higher nature at
finding itself so miserably thwarted by the earthly part. Perhaps every
man of genius in whatever sphere might recognize the image of his own
experience in Aylmer's journal.
So deeply did these reflections affect Georgiana that she laid her face
upon the open volume and burst into tears. In this situation she was
found by her husband.
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"It is dangerous to read in a sorcerer's books," said he with a smile,
though his countenance was uneasy and displeased. "Georgiana, there
are pages in that volume which I can scarcely glance over and keep my
senses. Take heed lest it prove as detrimental to you."
"It has made me worship you more than ever," said she.
"Ah, wait for this one success," rejoined he, "then worship me if you
will. I shall deem myself hardly unworthy of it. But come, I have sought
you for the luxury of your voice. Sing to me, dearest."
So she poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of
his spirit. He then took his leave with a boyish exuberance of gayety, assuring her that her seclusion would endure but a little longer, and that
the result was already certain. Scarcely had he departed when Georgiana
felt irresistibly impelled to follow him. She had forgotten to inform
Aylmer of a symptom which for two or three hours past had begun to
excite her attention. It was a sensation in the fatal birthmark, not painful,
but which induced a restlessness throughout her system. Hastening after
her husband, she intruded for the first time into the laboratory.
The first thing that struck her eye was the furnace, that hot and feverish worker, with the intense glow of its fire, which by the quantities of
soot clustered above it seemed to have been burning for ages. There was
a distilling apparatus in full operation. Around the room were retorts,
tubes, cylinders, crucibles, and other apparatus of chemical research. An
electrical machine stood ready for immediate use. The atmosphere felt
oppressively close, and was tainted with gaseous odors which had been
tormented forth by the processes of science. The severe and homely simplicity of the apartment, with its naked walls and brick pavement,
looked strange, accustomed as Georgiana had become to the fantastic elegance of her boudoir. But what chiefly, indeed almost solely, drew her
attention, was the aspect of Aylmer himself.
He was pale as death, anxious and absorbed, and hung over the furnace as if it depended upon his utmost watchfulness whether the liquid
which it was distilling should be the draught of immortal happiness or
misery. How different from the sanguine and joyous mien that he had
assumed for Georgiana's encouragement!
"Carefully now, Aminadab; carefully, thou human machine; carefully,
thou man of clay!" muttered Aylmer, more to himself than his assistant.
"Now, if there be a thought too much or too little, it is all over."
"Ho! ho!" mumbled Aminadab. "Look, master! look!"
15
Aylmer raised his eyes hastily, and at first reddened, then grew paler
than ever, on beholding Georgiana. He rushed towards her and seized
her arm with a gripe that left the print of his fingers upon it.
"Why do you come hither? Have you no trust in your husband?" cried
he, impetuously. "Would you throw the blight of that fatal birthmark
over my labors? It is not well done. Go, prying woman, go!"
"Nay, Aylmer," said Georgiana with the firmness of which she possessed no stinted endowment, "it is not you that have a right to complain. You mistrust your wife; you have concealed the anxiety with
which you watch the development of this experiment. Think not so unworthily of me, my husband. Tell me all the risk we run, and fear not
that I shall shrink; for my share in it is far less than your own."
"No, no, Georgiana!" said Aylmer, impatiently; "it must not be."
"I submit," replied she calmly. "And, Aylmer, I shall quaff whatever
draught you bring me; but it will be on the same principle that would induce me to take a dose of poison if offered by your hand."
"My noble wife," said Aylmer, deeply moved, "I knew not the height
and depth of your nature until now. Nothing shall be concealed. Know,
then, that this crimson hand, superficial as it seems, has clutched its
grasp into your being with a strength of which I had no previous conception. I have already administered agents powerful enough to do aught
except to change your entire physical system. Only one thing remains to
be tried. If that fail us we are ruined."
"Why did you hesitate to tell me this?" asked she.
"Because, Georgiana," said Aylmer, in a low voice, "there is danger."
"Danger? There is but one danger—that this horrible stigma shall be
left upon my cheek!" cried Georgiana. "Remove it, remove it, whatever
be the cost, or we shall both go mad!"
"Heaven knows your words are too true," said Aylmer, sadly. "And
now, dearest, return to your boudoir. In a little while all will be tested."
He conducted her back and took leave of her with a solemn tenderness
which spoke far more than his words how much was now at stake. After
his departure Georgiana became rapt in musings. She considered the
character of Aylmer, and did it completer justice than at any previous
moment. Her heart exulted, while it trembled, at his honorable love—so
pure and lofty that it would accept nothing less than perfection nor
miserably make itself contented with an earthlier nature than he had
dreamed of. She felt how much more precious was such a sentiment than
16
that meaner kind which would have borne with the imperfection for her
sake, and have been guilty of treason to holy love by degrading its perfect idea to the level of the actual; and with her whole spirit she prayed
that, for a single moment, she might satisfy his highest and deepest conception. Longer than one moment she well knew it could not be; for his
spirit was ever on the march, ever ascending, and each instant required
something that was beyond the scope of the instant before.
The sound of her husband's footsteps aroused her. He bore a crystal
goblet containing a liquor colorless as water, but bright enough to be the
draught of immortality. Aylmer was pale; but it seemed rather the consequence of a highly-wrought state of mind and tension of spirit than of
fear or doubt.
"The concoction of the draught has been perfect," said he, in answer to
Georgiana's look. "Unless all my science have deceived me, it cannot
fail."
"Save on your account, my dearest Aylmer," observed his wife, "I
might wish to put off this birthmark of mortality by relinquishing mortality itself in preference to any other mode. Life is but a sad possession
to those who have attained precisely the degree of moral advancement at
which I stand. Were I weaker and blinder it might be happiness. Were I
stronger, it might be endured hopefully. But, being what I find myself,
methinks I am of all mortals the most fit to die."
"You are fit for heaven without tasting death!" replied her husband
"But why do we speak of dying? The draught cannot fail. Behold its effect upon this plant."
On the window seat there stood a geranium diseased with yellow
blotches, which had overspread all its leaves. Aylmer poured a small
quantity of the liquid upon the soil in which it grew. In a little time,
when the roots of the plant had taken up the moisture, the unsightly
blotches began to be extinguished in a living verdure.
"There needed no proof," said Georgiana, quietly. "Give me the goblet
I joyfully stake all upon your word."
"Drink, then, thou lofty creature!" exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid admiration. "There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy sensible
frame, too, shall soon be all perfect."
She quaffed the liquid and returned the goblet to his hand.
"It is grateful," said she with a placid smile. "Methinks it is like water
from a heavenly fountain; for it contains I know not what of unobtrusive
17
fragrance and deliciousness. It allays a feverish thirst that had parched
me for many days. Now, dearest, let me sleep. My earthly senses are
closing over my spirit like the leaves around the heart of a rose at
sunset."
She spoke the last words with a gentle reluctance, as if it required almost more energy than she could command to pronounce the faint and
lingering syllables. Scarcely had they loitered through her lips ere she
was lost in slumber. Aylmer sat by her side, watching her aspect with the
emotions proper to a man the whole value of whose existence was involved in the process now to be tested. Mingled with this mood,
however, was the philosophic investigation characteristic of the man of
science. Not the minutest symptom escaped him. A heightened flush of
the cheek, a slight irregularity of breath, a quiver of the eyelid, a hardly
perceptible tremor through the frame,—such were the details which, as
the moments passed, he wrote down in his folio volume. Intense thought
had set its stamp upon every previous page of that volume, but the
thoughts of years were all concentrated upon the last.
While thus employed, he failed not to gaze often at the fatal hand, and
not without a shudder. Yet once, by a strange and unaccountable impulse he pressed it with his lips. His spirit recoiled, however, in the very
act, and Georgiana, out of the midst of her deep sleep, moved uneasily
and murmured as if in remonstrance. Again Aylmer resumed his watch.
Nor was it without avail. The crimson hand, which at first had been
strongly visible upon the marble paleness of Georgiana's cheek, now
grew more faintly outlined. She remained not less pale than ever; but the
birthmark with every breath that came and went, lost somewhat of its
former distinctness. Its presence had been awful; its departure was more
awful still. Watch the stain of the rainbow fading out the sky, and you
will know how that mysterious symbol passed away.
"By Heaven! it is well-nigh gone!" said Aylmer to himself, in almost irrepressible ecstasy. "I can scarcely trace it now. Success! success! And
now it is like the faintest rose color. The lightest flush of blood across her
cheek would overcome it. But she is so pale!"
He drew aside the window curtain and suffered the light of natural
day to fall into the room and rest upon her cheek. At the same time he
heard a gross, hoarse chuckle, which he had long known as his servant
Aminadab's expression of delight.
"Ah, clod! ah, earthly mass!" cried Aylmer, laughing in a sort of frenzy,
"you have served me well! Matter and spirit—earth and heaven —have
18
both done their part in this! Laugh, thing of the senses! You have earned
the right to laugh."
These exclamations broke Georgiana's sleep. She slowly unclosed her
eyes and gazed into the mirror which her husband had arranged for that
purpose. A faint smile flitted over her lips when she recognized how
barely perceptible was now that crimson hand which had once blazed
forth with such disastrous brilliancy as to scare away all their happiness.
But then her eyes sought Aylmer's face with a trouble and anxiety that
he could by no means account for.
"My poor Aylmer!" murmured she.
"Poor? Nay, richest, happiest, most favored!" exclaimed he. "My peerless bride, it is successful! You are perfect!"
"My poor Aylmer," she repeated, with a more than human tenderness,
"you have aimed loftily; you have done nobly. Do not repent that with so
high and pure a feeling, you have rejected the best the earth could offer.
Aylmer, dearest Aylmer, I am dying!"
Alas! it was too true! The fatal hand had grappled with the mystery of
life, and was the bond by which an angelic spirit kept itself in union with
a mortal frame. As the last crimson tint of the birthmark—that sole token
of human imperfection—faded from her cheek, the parting breath of the
now perfect woman passed into the atmosphere, and her soul, lingering
a moment near her husband, took its heavenward flight. Then a hoarse,
chuckling laugh was heard again! Thus ever does the gross fatality of
earth exult in its invariable triumph over the immortal essence which, in
this dim sphere of half development, demands the completeness of a
higher state. Yet, had Alymer reached a profounder wisdom, he need not
thus have flung away the happiness which would have woven his mortal life of the selfsame texture with the celestial. The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he failed to look beyond the shadowy
scope of time, and, living once for all in eternity, to find the perfect future in the present.
19
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20
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Food for the mind
21
"I am sitting by the Window in th is Atrocious Nursery."
THE YELLO\N \\TALL-PAPER.
By Cltarlotte Perkins Stetson.
T is very seldom
that mere ordi
nary P""ople like
John and myself
secure ancestral
hall s for the
summer.
A colonial man
sion, 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 perltaps - (I
would not say it to a living soul, of
course, but this is dead paper and a
great relief to my mind - ) per/zaps that
is one reason I do not get well faster.
You see he does not believe I am sick! .
And what can one do?
THE YELLOW WALL-PARER.
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.
Personally, I disagree with their ideas.
Personally, I believe that congenial
work, with excitement and change, would
do me good.
But what is one to do?
I did write for a while 111 spite of
them; but it does exhaust me a good
deal-having to be so sly about it, or
else meet with heavy opposition.
I sometimes fancy that in my condi
tion 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. It
makes me think of English places that
you read about, for there are hedges and
walls and gates that lock, and lots of
separate little houses for the gardeners
and people.
There is a delicious garden! I never
saw such a garden -large and shady,
full of box-bordered paths, and lined with
long grape-covered arbors with seats under
them.
There were greenhouses, too, but they
are all broken now.
There was some legal trouble, I be
lieve, something about the heirs and co
heirs; anyhow, the place has been empty
for years.
That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid,
but I don't care - there is something
strange about the house - I can feel it.
I even said so to John one moonlight
evening, but he said what I felt was a
drauglzt, and shut the window.
I get unreasonably angry with John
sometimes. I'm sure I never used to be
so sensitive. I think it is due to this
nervous condition.
But John says if I feel so, I shall neglect
proper self-control; so I take pains to
control myself-before him, at least, and
that makes me very tired.
I don't like our room a bit. I wanted
one downstairs that opened on the piazza
and had roses all over the window, and
such pretty old-fashioned chintz hang
ings! but John would not hear of it.
He said there was only one window
and not room for two beds, and no near
room for him if he took another.
He is very careful and loving, and
hardly lets me stir without special direc
tion.
I have a schedule prescription for each
hour in the day; he takes all care from
me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to
value it ·more.
He said we came here solely on my
account, that I was to have perfect rest
and all the air I could get. "Your ex
erc ise depends on your strength, my
dear," said he," and your food somewhat
on your appetite; but air you can ab
sorb all the time." So we took the nur
sery at the top of the house.
It is a big, airy room, the whole floor
nearly, with windows that look all ways,
and air and sunshine galore.
It was
nursery first and then playroom and
gymnasium, I should judge; for the win
dows are barred for little children, and
there are rings and things in the walls.
The paint and paper look as if a boys'
school had used it. It is stripped off
the paper - in great patches all around
the head of my bed, about as far as I can
reach, and in a great place on the other
side of the room low down. I never saw
a worse paper in my life.
One of those sprawling flamboyant
patterns committing every artistic sin.
It is dull enough to confuse the eye in
following, pronounced enough to con
stantly irritate and provoke study, and
when you follow the lame uncertain
curves for a little distance they suddenly
commit suicide - plunge off at outrage
ous angles, destroy themselves in un
heard of contradictions.
THE YELLOW
The color is repellant, almost revolt
ing ; a smouldering unclean yellow,
strangely faded by the slow-turning sun
light.
It is a dull yet lurid orange in some
places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.
No wonder the children hated it! I
should hate it myself if I had to live in
this room long.
There comes John, and I must put this
away, - he hates to have me write a
word.
•
•
•
•
*
•
We have been here two·weeks, and I
haven't felt like writing before, since that
first day.
I am sitting by the window now, up in
this atrocious nursery, and there is noth
ing to hinder my writing as much as I
please, save lack of strength.
John is away all day, and even some
nights when his cases are serious.
I am glad my case is not serious!
But these nervous troubles are dread
fully depressing.
John does not know how much I really
suffer. He knows there is no reason to
suffer, and that satisfies him.
Of course it is only nervousness. It does
weigh o"n me so not to do my duty in
any way!
I meant to be such a help to John,
such a real rest and comfort, and here I
am a comparative burden already!
Nobody would believe what an effort it
is to do what little I am able, - to dress
and entertain, and order things.
It is fortunate Mary is so good with
the baby. Such a dear baby!
And yet I cannot be with him, it makes
me so nervous.
I suppose John never was nervous in
his life. He laughs at me so about this
wall-paper!
At first he meant to repaper the room,
but afterwards he said that I was letting
it get the better of me, and that nothing
was worse for a nervous patient than to
give way to such fancies.
He said that after the wall-paper was
changed it would be the heavy bedstead,
and then the barred windows, and then
that gate at the head of the stairs, and so
on.
"You know the place is doing you
·WAL~PAPER.
649
good," he said, "and really, dear, I don't
care to renovate the house just for a
three months' rental."
"Then do let us go downstairs," I
said, "there are such pretty rooms there."
Then he took me in his arms and
called me a blessed little goose, and said
he would go down cellar, if I wished, and
have it whitewashed into the bargain.
But he is right enough about the beds
and windows and things.
It is an airy and comfortable room as
anyone need wish, and, of course, I would
not be so silly as to make him uncomfort
able just for a whim.
I'm really getting quite fond of the
big room, all but that horrid paper.
Out of one window I can see the
garden, those mysterious deep-shaded
arbors, the riotous old-fashioned flowers,
and bushes and gnarly trees.
Out of another I get a lovely view of
the bay and a little private wharf be
longing to the estate. There is a beauti
ful 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 weak
ness like mine is sure to lead to all man
ner of excited fancies, and that I ought
to use my will and good sense to check
the tendency. So I try.
I think sometimes that if I were only
well enough to write_ a little it would re
lieve the press of ideas and rest me.
But I find I get pretty tired when I try.
It is so discouraging not to have any
advice and companionship about my
work. When I get really well, John says
we will ask Cousin Henry and Julia down
for a long visit; but he says he would as
soon put fireworks in my pillow-case as to
let me have those stimulating people
about now.
I wish I could get well faster.
But I must not think about that. This
paper looks to me as if it knew what a
vicious influence it had!
There is a recurrent spot where the.
pattern lolls like a broken neck and two
bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.
I get positively angry with the imperti
j
650
THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER.
nence of it and the everlastingness. Up
and down and sideways they crawl, and
those absurd, unblinking eyes are every
where. There is one place where two
breaths didn't match, and the eyes go all
up and down the line, one a little higher
than the other.
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 chil
dren could find in a toy-store.
I remember what a kindly wink the
knobs of our big, old bureau used to
have, and there was one chair that always
seemed like a strong friend.
I used to feel that if any of the other
things looked too fierce I could always
hop into that chair and be safe.
The furniture in this room is no worse
than inharmonious, however, for we had
to bring it all from downstairs. I sup
pose when this was used as a playroom
they had to take the nursery things out,
and no wonder! I never saw such
raV .lges as the children have made here.
The wall-paper, as I said before, is torn
off in spots, and it sticketh closer than a
brother - they must have had persever
ance as well as hatred.
Then the floor is scratched and gou~ed
and splintered, the plaster itself is dug
out here and there, and this great heavy
bed which is all we found in the room,
looks as if it had been through the wars.
H But I don't mind it a bit only the
paper.
There comes John's sister. Such a
dear girl as she is, and so careful of me !
I must not let her find me writing.
She is a perfect and enthusiastic house
keeper, and hopes for no better profes
sion. I verily believe she thinks it is the
writing which made me sick!
But I can write when she is out, and
see her a long way off from these windows.
There is one that commands the road,
a lovely shaded winding road, and one
that just looks off over the country. A
lovely country, too, full of great elms and
velvet meadows.
This wallpaper has a kind of su b
pattern in a different shade, a particularly
irritating one, for you can only see It In
certain lights, and not clearly then.
But in the places where it isn't faded
and where the sun is just so - I can see a
strange, provoking, formless sort of figure,
that seems to skulk about behind that silly
and conspicuous front design.
There's sister on the stairs!
*
*
*
*
*
*
Well, the Fourth of July is over! The
people are all gone and I am tired out.
John thought it might do me good to see
a little company, so we just had mother
and Nellie and the children down for a
week.
Of course I didn't do a thing. Jennie
sees to everything now.
But it tired me all the same.
John says if I don't pick up faster he
shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.
But I don't want to go there at all. I
had a friend who was in his hands once,
and she says he is just like John and my
brother, only more so !
Besides, it is such an undertaking to
go so far.
I don't feel as if it was worth while to
turn my hand over for anything, and I'm
getting dreadfully fretful and querulous.
I cry at nothing, and cry most of the
time.
Of course I don't when John is here,
or anybody else, but when I am alone.
And I am alone a good deal just now.
John is kept in town very often by serious
cases, and Jennie is good and lets me
alone when I want her to.
So I walk a little in the garden or
down that lovely lane, sit on the porch
under the roses, and lie down up here a
good deal.
I'm getting really fond of the room in
spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because
of the wallpaper.
It dwells in my mind so !
I lie here on this great immovable bed
- it is nailed down, I believe - and fol
low that pattern about by the hour. It it
as good as gymnastics, I assure you. I
start, we'll say, at the bottom, down in
the corner over there where it has nos
been touched, and I determine for the
thousandth time that I will follow that
pointless pattern to some sort of a con
clusion.
THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER.
651
I know a little of the principle of absurd. But I must say what I feel
design, and I know this thing was not and think in some way - it is such aarranged on any laws of radiation, or relief !
alternation, or repetition, or symmetry, or
But the effort is getting to be greater
anything else that I ever heard of.
than the relief.
It is repeated, of course, by the
Half the time now I am awfully lazy,.
breadths, but not otherwise.
and lie down ever so much.
John says I mustn't lose my strength,.
Looked at in one way each breadth
stands alone, the bloated curves and and has me take cod liver oil and lots of
flourishes - a kind
of " debased Romanesque" with delirium tremens - go
waddling up and
down in isolated
columns of fatuity.
But, on the other
hand, they connect
diagonally, and the
sprawling
outlines
run off in great
slanting waves of
optic horror, like a
lot of wallowing seaweeds in full chase.
The whole thing
goes
horizontally,
too, at least it seems
so, and I exhaust
myself in trying to
distinguish the order
of its going in that
"direction.
They have used a
horizontal breadth
for a frieze, and that
adds wonderfully to
the confusion.
There is one end
of the room where
Sh e didn't know I was in the Room.
it is almost intact,
and there, when the
crosslights fade and the low sun shines tonics and things, to say nothing of aledirectly upon it, I can almost fancy radia- and wine and rare meat.
Dear John! He loves me very dearlYr
tion after all, - the interminable grotesque seem to form around a common and hates to have me sick. I tried to
centre and rush off in headlong plunges have a real earnest reasonable talk with.
him the other day, and tell him how I
of equal distraction.
It makes me tired to follow it. I will wish he would let me go and make a visit
to Cousin Henry and Julia.
take a nap I guess.
But he said I wasn't able to go, nor"
*
*
*
*
*
*
able to stand it after I got there j and I
I don't know why I should write this.
did not make out a very good case for
I don't want to.
myself, for I was crying before I had finI don't feel able.
And I know John would think it ished.
o
II
Il
THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER.
·652
It is getting to be a great effort for me
to think straight. Just this nervous weak
ness I suppose.
And dear John gathered me up in his
arms, and just carried me upstairs and
laid me on the bed, and sat by me and
read to me till it tired my head.
He said I was his darling and his COl).1
fort and all he had, and that I must take
.care of myself for his sake, and keep
well.
He says no one but myself can help
me out of it, that I must use my will and
self-control and not let any silly fancies
run away with me.
There's one comfort, the baby is well
.and happy, and does not have to occupy
this nursery with the horrid wallpaper.
If we had not used it, that blessed
child would have! What a fortunate es
cape! Why, I wouldn't have a child of
mine, an impressionable little thing, live
in such a room for worlds.
I never thought of it before, but it is
lucky that John kept me here after all, I
.can stand it so much easier than a baby,
you see.
Of course I never mention it to them
.any more - I am too wise, - but I keep
watch of it all the same.
There are things in that paper that
nobody knows but me, or ever will.
Behind that outside pattern the dim
shapes get clearer every day.
It is always the same shape, only very
num::!rous.
And it is like a woman stooping down
.and creeping about behind that pattern.
I don't like it a bit. I wonder - I be
-gin to think - I wish John would take
,me away from here!
*
*
*
*
*
*
It is so hard to talk with John about
my case, because he is so wise, and be
.cause he loves me so.
But I tried it last night.
It was moonlight. The moon shines
in all around just as the sun does.
I hate to see it sometimes, it creeps so
slowly, and always comes in by one win
,dow or another.
John was asleep and I hated to waken
nim, so I kept still and watched the
moonlight on that undulating wallpaper
till I felt creepy.
The faint figure behind seemed to
shake the pattern, just as if she wanted
to get out.
I got up softly and went to feel and see
if the paper did move, and when I came
back John was awake.
"What is it, little girl?" he said.
"Don't go walking about like that
you'll get cold."
I thought it was a good time to talk,
so I told him that I really was not gain
ing here, and that I wished he would
take me away.
"Why, darling!" said he, "our lease
will be up in three weeks, and I can't see
how to leave before.
" The repairs are not done at home, and
I cannot possibly leave town just now.
Of course if you were in any danger, I
could and would, but you really are bet
·ter, dear, whether you can 6ee it or not.
I am a doctor, dear, and I know. You
are gaining flesh and color, your appetite is
better, I feel really much easier about you."
"I don't weigh a bit more," said I,
"nor as much; and my appetite may be
better in the evening when you are here,
but it is worse in the morning when you
are awav!"
" Ble~s her little heart!" s:1id he with
a big hug, "she sha ll be as sick as she
pleases! But now let's improve the shin
ing hours by going to sleep, and talk
about it in the morning! "
"And you won't go away?" I asked
gloomily.
"Why, how can I, dear? It is only
three weeks more and then we will take
a nice little trip of a few days while
Jennie is getting the house ready. Really
dear you are better! "
" Better in body perhaps - " I began,
and stopped short, for he sat up straight
and looked at me with such a stern, re
proachful look that I could not say
another word.
"My darling," said he, " I beg of you,
for my sake and for our child's sake, as
well as for your own, that you will never
for one instant let that idea enter your
mind! There is nothing so dangerous,
so fascinating, to a temperament like
yours. It is a false and foolish fancy.
Can you not trust me as a physician when
I tell you so? "
THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER.
653
Indeed he started the habit by making
me lie down for an hour after each meal.
It is a very bad habit I am convinced,.
for you see I don't sleep.
And that cultivates deceit, for I don't
tell them I'm awake - 0 no !
The fact is I am getting a little afraid
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of John.
He seems very queer sometimes, and
On a pattern like this, by daylight,
there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of even Jennie has an inexplicable look.
It strikes me occasionally, just as a
law, that is a ' constant irritant to a nor
scientific hypothesis,- that perhaps it is·
mal mind.
The color is hideous enough, and un the paper!
I have watched John when he did not
reliable enough, and infuriating enough,
know I was looking, and come into the
but the pattern is torturing.
You think you have mastered it, but room suddenly on the most innocent ex
just as you get well underway in following, cuses, and I've caught him several times.
it turns a back-somersault and there you looking at the paper! And Jennie too. I
are. It slaps you in the face, knocks caught Jennie with her hand on it once_
She didn't know I was in the room,.
you down, and tramples upon you. It is
and when I asked her in a quiet, a very
like a bad dream.
The outside pattern is a florid ara quiet voice, with the most restrained man
besque, reminding one of a fungus. If ner possible, what she was doing with the
you can imagine a toadstool in joints, an paper - she turned around as if she had
interminable string of toadstools, budding been caught stealing, and looked quite
and sprouting in endless convolutions angry - asked me why I should frighten .
her so !
why, that is something like it.
Then she said that the paper stained
That is, sometimes!
There is one marked peculiarity about everything it touched, that she had found
this paper, a thing nobody seems to yellow smooches on all my clothes and
notice but myself, and that is that it John's, and she wished we would be more'
careful!
changes as the light changes.
When the sun shoots in through the
Did not that sound innocent? But I
east window - I always watch for that know she was studying that pattern, and
first long, straight ray - it changes so I am determined that nobody shall find
quickly that I never can quite believe it. it out but myself!
That is why I watch it always.
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By moonligh[ - the moon shines in all
Life is very much more excltmg now
night when there is a moon - I wouldn't than it used to be. You see I have some
thing more to expect, to look forward to,.
know it was the same paper.
At night in any kind of light, in twi to watch . I really do eat better, and am
light, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of more quiet than I was.
all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The
John is so pleased to see me improve!
outside pattern I mean, and the woman He laughed a little the other day, and
behind it is as plain as can be.
said I seemed to be flourishing in spite
I didn't realize for a long time what of my wall-paper.
the thing was that showed behind, that
I turned it off with a laugh. I had no
dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure intention of telling him it was because of
the wall-paper - he would make fun of
it is a woman.
By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I me. He might even want to take me away.
fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so
I don't want to leave now until I have
still.
It is so puzzling. It keeps me found it out. There is a week more, and
quiet by the hour.
I think that will be enough.
I lie down ever so much now. John says
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it is good for me, and to sleep all I can.
I'm feeling ever so much better! I
So of course I said no more on that
score, and we went to sleep before long.
He thought I was asleep first, but I
wasn't, and lay there for hours trying to
.decide whether that front pattern and the
back pattern really did move together or
separately.
THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER.
654
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