ldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others. It also has a smell a peculiar odor that creeps all over the house. It is like the color of the paper! A yellow smell. She becomes really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because of the wallpaper. The wallpaper is stripped off in places with sprawling, flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin. Because of her denial of emotional and mental stimulus, she begins to associate with a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design. She believes there are things and shapes behind the pattern in the wallpaper that only she can see. It appears to be the shape of a woman, or possibly many women. The wallpaper is in motion and she can see a faint figure behind the bars, shaking the pattern. The patterns seem to change by the amount of light on the wallpaper. By daylight, the woman-shapes are quiet and hardly noticeable. However, by moonlight the woman behind it is as plain as can be. The woman or women behind the pattern move around the room fast, shaking the pattern as they go. She begins to believe that the woman gets out from behind the pattern. She knows this because she can see her out of the windows. The wallpaper constrains the woman or women and she believes that she must free those women by tearing off the wallpaper. She sees the women creeping off in the open country, creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a wind. She associates herself with the women and wonders if they all came out of that wallpaper as I did? On the last day, all of the furniture is moved back downstairs. She likes the room now. It is bare again. She locks the bedroom door and creeps around the room just as those women. She has locked the door and thrown the key out the window. It has fallen under a plantain leaf. Her husband ...
