The Room

A short story which acts as a sequel to "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Here I am, finally. I’m going against father’s wishes, I know, but I just had to see. Of course, he didn’t actually forbid me from coming here. I can tell, though, that he disapproves, by the way that he gets quiet when I bring it up, and seems to withdraw into himself. To him, this place symbolizes his greatest failures, both as a physician and as a husband. At least I complied with his wish for me to come with an escort. 

    But you know, now that I’m here, and settled, this place is quite beautiful. Aside from “The Room”, which upon a cursory glance is completely ghastly, the colonial style of this house has the sort of elegance, which tends to linger about old places such as these. On the way up to the house, the beauty of the winding path that my coach took was astounding. It is late spring, so everything is blooming and blossoming, and if I opened the window right now, I would get scents of the wonderful blooms in the gardens, though I can’t tell what they are. The minute I walked in the door, I asked my escort to help me open up all the windows in the house; the air inside was thick with dust and stale, I could hardly breathe! But now, it smells like the outside, for the most part. The Room is the only place with closed windows now, because of the bars set across them.

I’m in the downstairs bedroom, the one with the lovely wallpaper and a clear view of the east courtyard. The only undesirable trait of this particular room is it is dark most of the day, because the house blocks the sun out. It’s barely past three, and I’ve had to light a lamp in order to write.

I think that I’ll be taking a nap before tea. The journey here was horribly long and boring, and the heat inside the coach was stifling. I’ll write more after tea.

    I feel much better after lying down. My escort suggested that I take today to get acquainted with the house itself before examining The Room. He’s such a sweet boy, and I do believe that father hired him because of that trait. I believe his name is Paul. In any case, I don’t think I will take his advice; I’m far too excited to wait to see this Room, especially at night. In mother’s diary, she said that the patterns changed at night. I want to see if it really does, or if that was merely part of her condition.

    

    That room has got to be the most disgusting shade of yellow I have ever laid eyes on. What’s left of the wallpaper is so abstractly nauseating that I had the very sudden urge to sit down upon the bed within the room. It seems to be nailed down. And the amount of dust in there is astounding! A great plume of it rose up when I sat down! It mustn’t have been cleaned since my mother.

    Still, now that I look at the pattern a bit closer, it is quite enthralling. The lines leap and gambol about in perfect randomness, and don’t seem to start or end in any particular direction. And beneath the lines, there’s more; diagonal and horizontal lines, it’s all perfectly maddening. The room smells horribly musty, and I do wish I could get through the bars to open the windows. Ah, here comes Paul, no doubt to see whether I’m still all here. I think I shall leave this room for now, as the patterns are giving me a headache.    

The damage in this room is horrendous; it’s almost impossible to think that one woman could destroy something so thoroughly. The wallpaper above the bed is completely gone, just at arm’s length, too. I can reach to the highest point of the ripped up paper if I sit upon the bed with my back against the headboard. There’s a line around the baseboards, all the way around the bedroom, (except the bed, of course, since it can’t be moved.) The wall is even missing in some places, as if something was clawing to get out. The chaos of the room makes it positively frightening to be in it alone.

    Mother’s journal mentions a woman behind the wallpaper. On the scraps that are still left, I’ve been searching for her, but simply can’t find her. I’ve tried all hours of the day and night, so that the lighting would be different, but I simply can’t find her. There is definitely a background pattern, but I can’t make out a woman from it, I simply can’t.

    

I’ve been spending more and more time in The Room, and I must admit, I am finding it harder and harder to leave. The disgusting yellow of the walls blotched by the spaces that have been ripped open; it beckons me to study it. I simply need to find out every little piece of the pattern in the wallpaper. I will not let myself go insane, however; I could not do that to father, especially after being so spoilt about wanting to come in the first place. 

Paul is being so good about only letting me up here every few hours, making sure I’ve time away from the room. I think it lets me keep my head much easier than if I were inside it all the time. We took a walk in the garden this afternoon, he and I. He seems to know quite a bit about plants. He would point out flowers or trees to me, and tell me what they were. There were a bunch of flowers in the west courtyard called Red Camellias, and he plucked me a couple. He told me they reminded him of me, then teased me for blushing, the scoundrel.

Ah, here he comes, likely to tell me supper’s ready.

I think I’ve finally seen her or at least, a silhouette of her. The woman behind the patterns on the wallpaper in The Room, I mean. When I told Paul this, he didn’t seem nearly as delighted as I was. But, he did take me down to the village for a late breakfast, under the pretense of celebration. I personally think it was to get me out of the house. Mother’s journal said she crept, and I can agree that she does. I saw her at nighttime, last night, in fact, and there she was, behind the pattern of the wallpaper. 

Perhaps I should take a break from my examination of the room.

Oh, I must go downstairs now; I do think I just heard Paul calling me, saying that father called.

She’s clearer now! Even after a fortnight, she’s quite clearly a woman now! And, indeed, she creeps! She creeps all along the walls quite tirelessly. I can’t see her in the daytime, though, only at night. Paul only lets me upstairs an hour at a time, now, saying the room is affecting me. He’s such a sweet boy, and frets constantly that I am in the most perfect of comforts. 

Father called again this afternoon, he’s checking up regularly. He says something about my voice frightens him, and he wants me to come home. I want to as well, but I simply must figure out the pattern behind the wallpaper. 

She’s quite a funny woman. She creeps ever so quickly about the room, and doesn’t even pause if there’s something in her way. I’m watching her right now as I’m writing; I sit up here on the bed so I don’t get in her way. She goes around the bed. There she goes again, this must be the twelfth time she’s passed me. Really, she is quite funny, but I can’t see her very well unless it’s by moonlight, and moonlight makes it very hard to wr

 

I’ve been home nearly a month now, and I seem to be getting better. The woman still visits sometimes, but she must be getting bored of me, for all I do is sit here, painting or drawing. This is the first time since I got admitted that I’ve picked up my journal, and I must say, being able to put my thoughts down in writing again is such a relief. 

Paul had bodily pulled me from the room when I got cut off the last time. He tells me I was creeping about the room like father had found mother doing, and it frightened him. We left that night, and I got admitted to the institute once we arrived back home. He visits me every day, you know, always bringing me bouquets of Red Camellias, and sits and talks with me for hours on end. Such a sweet boy. 

I think I’ll be let out when I stop talking about the woman. Oh, the nurse saw me, I think I need to put the journal away. I’ll write again as soon as I can.