Classic Works from Women Writers

by Editors of Canterbury Classics

  I can see her out of every one of my windows!

  It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.

  I see her in that long shaded lane, creeping up and down. I see her in those dark grape arbors, creeping all around the garden.

  I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines.

  I don’t blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight!

  I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can’t do it at night, for I know John would suspect something at once.

  And John is so queer now, that I don’t want to irritate him. I wish he would take another room! Besides, I don’t want anybody to get that woman out at night but myself.

  I often wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at once.

  But, turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one at one time.

  And though I always see her, she may be able to creep faster than I can turn!

  I have watched her sometimes away off in the open country, creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind.

  If only that top pattern could be gotten off from the under one! I mean to try it, little by little.

  I have found out another funny thing, but I shan’t tell it this time! It does not do to trust people too much.

  There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I believe John is beginning to notice. I don’t like the look in his eyes.

  And I heard him ask Jennie a lot of professional questions about me. She had a very good report to give.

  She said I slept a good deal in the daytime.

  John knows I don’t sleep very well at night, for all I’m so quiet!

  He asked me all sorts of questions, too, and pretended to be very loving and kind.

  As if I couldn’t see through him!

  Still, I don’t wonder he acts so, sleeping under this paper for three months.

  It only interests me, but I feel sure John and Jennie are secretly affected by it.

  Hurrah! This is the last day, but it is enough. John is to stay in town over night, and won’t be out until this evening.

  Jennie wanted to sleep with me—the sly thing! but I told her I should undoubtedly rest better for a night all alone.

  That was clever, for really I wasn’t alone a bit! As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her.

  I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.

  A strip about as high as my head and half around the room.

  And then when the sun came and that awful pattern began to laugh at me, I declared I would finish it to-day!

  We go away tomorrow, and they are moving all my furniture down again to leave things as they were before.

  Jennie looked at the wall in amazement, but I told her merrily that I did it out of pure spite at the vicious thing.

  She laughed and said she wouldn’t mind doing it herself, but I must not get tired.

  How she betrayed herself that time!

  But I am here, and no person touches this paper but me—not alive!

  She tried to get me out of the room—it was too patent! But I said it was so quiet and empty and clean now that I believed I would lie down again and sleep all I could; and not to wake me even for dinner—I would call when I woke.

  So now she is gone, and the servants are gone, and the things are gone, and there is nothing left but that great bedstead nailed down, with the canvas mattress we found on it.

  We shall sleep downstairs to-night, and take the boat home to-morrow.

  I quite enjoy the room, now it is bare again.

  How those children did tear about here!

  This bedstead is fairly gnawed!

  But I must get to work.

  I have locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path. I don’t want to go out, and I don’t want to have anybody come in, till John comes.

  I want to astonish him.

  I’ve got a rope up here that even Jennie did not find. If that woman does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her!

  But I forgot I could not reach far without anything to stand on!

  This bed will not move!

  I tried to lift and push it until I was lame, and then I got so angry I bit off a little piece at one corner—but it hurt my teeth.

  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 wallpaper as I did?

  But I am securely fastened now by my well-hidden rope—you don’t get me out in the road there!

  I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard!

  It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please!

  I don’t want to go outside. I won’t, even if Jennie asks me to.

  For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow.

  But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way.

  Why there’s John at the door!

  It is no use, young man, you can’t open it!

  How he does call and pound!

  Now he’s crying for an axe.

  It would be a shame to break down that beautiful door!

  “John dear!” said I in the gentlest voice, “the key is down by the front steps, under a plantain leaf!”

  That silenced him for a few moments.

  Then he said—very quietly indeed, “Open the door, my darling!”

  “I can’t,” said I. “The key is down by the front door under a plantain leaf!”

  And then I said it again, several times, very gently and slowly, and said it so often that he had to go and see, and he got it of course, and came in. He stopped short by the door.

  “What is the matter?” he cried. “For God’s sake, what are you doing!”

  I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder.

  “I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!”

  Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!

  WHY I WROTE

  “THE YELLOW WALLPAPER”

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  This article first appeared in the October 1913 issue of the Forerunner—a montnly magazine owned and edited by Gilman—more than twenty years after the initial publication of “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

  Many and many a reader has asked that. When the story first came out, in the New England Magazine about 1891, a Boston physician made protest in The Transcript. Such a story ought not to be written, he said; it was enough to drive anyone mad to read it.

  Another physician, in Kansas I think, wrote to say that it was the best description of incipient insanity he had ever seen, and—begging my pardon—had I been there?

  Now the story of the story is this:

  For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia—and beyond. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the
country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to “live as domestic a life as far as possible,” to “have but two hours’ intellectual life a day,” and “never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again” as long as I lived. This was in 1887.

  I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over.

  Then, using the remnants of intelligence that remained, and helped by a wise friend, I cast the noted specialist’s advice to the winds and went to work again—work, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite—ultimately recovering some measure of power.

  Being naturally moved to rejoicing by this narrow escape, I wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper,” with its embellishments and additions, to carry out the ideal (I never had hallucinations or objections to my mural decorations) and sent a copy to the physician who so nearly drove me mad. He never acknowledged it.

  The little book is valued by alienists and as a good specimen of one kind of literature. It has, to my knowledge, saved one woman from a similar fate—so terrifying her family that they let her out into normal activity and she recovered.

  But the best result is this. Many years later I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

  It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.

  LETTER TO FANNY KNIGHT

  Jane Austen

  By late 1814, Jane Austen had anonymously published her first three novels, but she earned little fame as an author during her lifetime. In this letter to her twenty-one-year-old niece Fanny Knight, Austen dispenses advice on love and marriage—subjects that are found throughout her novels.

  23 HANS PLACE, WEDNESDAY (Nov. 30, 1814).

  I am very much obliged to you, my dear Fanny, for your letter, and I hope you will write again soon, that I may know you to be all safe and happy at home.

  Our visit to Hendon will interest you, I am sure; but I need not enter into the particulars of it, as your papa will be able to answer almost every question. I certainly could describe her bedroom and her drawers and her closet, better than he can, but I do not feel that I can stop to do it. I was rather sorry to hear that she is to have an instrument; it seems throwing money away. They will wish the twenty-four guineas in the shape of sheets and towels six months hence; and as to her playing, it never can be anything.

  Her purple pelisse rather surprised me. I thought we had known all paraphernalia of that sort. I do not mean to blame her; it looked very well, and I dare say she wanted it. I suspect nothing worse than its being got in secret, and not owned to anybody. I received a very kind note from her yesterday, to ask me to come again and stay a night with them. I cannot do it, but I was pleased to find that she had the power of doing so right a thing. My going was to give them both pleasure very properly.

  I just saw Mr. Hayter at the play, and think his face would please me on acquaintance. I was sorry he did not dine here. It seemed rather odd to me to be in the theatre with nobody to watch for. I was quite composed myself, at leisure for all the agitated Isabella could raise.

  Now, my dearest Fanny, I will begin a subject which comes in very naturally. You frighten me out of my wits by your reference. Your affection gives me the highest pleasure, but indeed you must not let anything depend on my opinion; your own feelings, and none but your own, should determine such an important point. So far, however, as answering your question, I have no scruple. I am perfectly convinced that your present feelings, supposing that you were to marry now, would be sufficient for his happiness; but when I think how very, very far it is from a “now,” and take everything that may be into consideration, I dare not say, “Determine to accept him”; the risk is too great for you, unless your own sentiments prompt it.

  You will think me perverse, perhaps; in my last letter I was urging everything in his favor, and now I am inclining the other way, but I cannot help it; I am at present more impressed with the possible evil that may arise to you from engaging yourself to him—in word or mind—than with anything else. When I consider how few young men you have yet seen much of, how capable you are (yes, I do still think you very capable) of being really in love, and how full of temptation the next six or seven years of your life will probably be (it is the very period of life for the strongest attachments to be formed),—I cannot wish you, with your present very cool feelings, to devote yourself in honor to him. It is very true that you never may attach another man his equal altogether; but if that other man has the power of attaching you more, he will be in your eyes the most perfect.

  I shall be glad if you can revive past feelings, and from your unbiassed self resolve to go on as you have done, but this I do not expect; and without it I cannot wish you to be fettered. I should not be afraid of your marrying him; with all his worth you would soon love him enough for the happiness of both; but I should dread the continuance of this sort of tacit engagement, with such an uncertainty as there is of when it may be completed. Years may pass before he is independent; you like him well enough to marry, but not well enough to wait; the unpleasantness of appearing fickle is certainly great; but if you think you want punishment for past illusions, there it is, and nothing can be compared to the misery of being bound without love,—bound to one, and preferring another; that is a punishment which you do not deserve.

  I know you did not meet, or rather will not meet, to-day, as he called here yesterday; and I am glad of it. It does not seem very likely, at least, that he should be in time for a dinner visit sixty miles off. We did not see him, only found his card when we came home at four. Your Uncle H. merely observed that he was a day after “the fair.” We asked your brother on Monday (when Mr. Hayter was talked of) why he did not invite him too; saying, “I know he is in town, for I met him the other day in Bond St.” Edward answered that he did not know where he was to be found. “Don’t you know his chambers?” “No.”

  I shall be most glad to hear from you again, my dearest Fanny, but it must not be later than Saturday, as we shall be off on Monday long before the letters are delivered; and write something that may do to be read or told. I am to take the Miss Moores back on Saturday, and when I return I shall hope to find your pleasant little flowing scrawl on the table. It will be a relief to me after playing at ma’ams, for though I like Miss H. M. as much as one can at my time of life after a day’s acquaintance, it is uphill work to be talking to those whom one knows so little.

  Only one comes back with me to-morrow, probably Miss Eliza, and I rather dread it. We shall not have two ideas in common. She is young, pretty, chattering, and thinking chiefly, I presume, of dress, company, and admiration. Mr. Sanford is to join us at dinner, which will be a comfort, and in the evening, while your uncle and Miss Eliza play chess, he shall tell me comical things and I will laugh at them, which will be a pleasure to both.

  I called in Keppel Street and saw them all, including dear Uncle Charles, who is to come and dine with us quietly to-day. Little Harriot sat in my lap, and seemed as gentle and affectionate as ever, and as pretty, except not being quite well. Fanny is a fine stout girl, talking incessantly, with an interesting degree of lisp and indistinctness, and very likely may be the handsomest in time. That puss Cassy did not show more pleasure in seeing me than her sisters, but I expected no better. She does not shine in the tender feelings. She will never be a Miss O’Neil, more in the Mrs. Siddons line.

  Thank you, but it is not settled yet whether I do hazard a second edition. We are to see Egerton to-day, when it will probably be determined. People are more ready to borrow and praise than to buy, which I cannot wonder at; but though I like praise as well as anybody, I like what Edward cal
ls “Pewter,” too. I hope he continues careful of his eyes, and finds the good effect of it. I cannot suppose we differ in our ideas of the Christian religion. You have given an excellent description of it. We only affix a different meaning to the word evangelical.

  Yours most affectionately,

  J. AUSTEN.

  MISS KNIGHT,

  Godmersham Park,

  Faversham, Kent.

  COUSIN PHILLIS

  Elizabeth Gaskell

  PART I

  It is a great thing for a lad when he is first turned into the independence of lodgings. I do not think I ever was so satisfied and proud in my life as when, at seventeen, I sate down in a little three-cornered room above a pastry-cook’s shop in the county town of Eltham. My father had left me that afternoon, after delivering himself of a few plain precepts, strongly expressed, for my guidance in the new course of life on which I was entering. I was to be a clerk under the engineer who had undertaken to make the little branch line from Eltham to Hornby. My father had got me this situation, which was in a position rather above his own in life; or perhaps I should say, above the station in which he was born and bred; for he was raising himself every year in men’s consideration and respect. He was a mechanic by trade, but he had some inventive genius, and a great deal of perseverance, and had devised several valuable improvements in railway machinery. He did not do this for profit, though, as was reasonable, what came in the natural course of things was acceptable; he worked out his ideas, because, as he said, “until he could put them into shape, they plagued him by night and by day.” But this is enough about my dear father; it is a good thing for a country where there are many like him. He was a sturdy Independent by descent and conviction; and this it was, I believe, which made him place me in the lodgings at the pastry-cook’s. The shop was kept by the two sisters of our minister at home; and this was considered as a sort of safeguard to my morals, when I was turned loose upon the temptations of the county town, with a salary of thirty pounds a year.