【英文文学】The Yellow Wallpaper 黄色墙纸.docx

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1、【英文文学】The Yellow Wallpaper 黄色墙纸Chapter 1It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicitybut that would be asking too much of fate!Stil

2、l 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 superstiti

3、on, 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 PERHAPS(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)PERHAPS that is one reason I do not get well faster.You see he does not

4、 believe I am sick!And what can one do?If a physician of high standing, and ones own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depressiona slight hysterical tendencywhat is one to do?My brother is also a physician, and also of high

5、standing, and he says the same thing.So I take phosphates or phosphiteswhichever 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 ch

6、ange, would do me good.But what is one to do?I did write for a while in spite of them; but it DOES exhaust me a good dealhaving to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition.I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulusbut John says the ver

7、y 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

8、 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 gardenlarge and shady, full of box-bordered paths, and lined with long grape-covered arbors with seats under them.There

9、 were greenhouses, too, but they are all broken now.There was some legal trouble, I believe, something about the heirs and coheirs; anyhow, the place has been empty for years.That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I dont carethere is something strange about the houseI can feel it.I even said s

10、o to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt was a DRAUGHT, and shut the window.I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. Im 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 pa

11、ins to control myselfbefore him, at least, and that makes me very tired.I dont 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 hangings! but John would not hear of it.He said there was only one window and

12、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 direction.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

13、 here solely on my account, that I was to have perfect rest and all the air I could get. Your exercise depends on your strength, my dear, said he, and your food somewhat on your appetite; but air you can absorb all the time. So we took the nursery at the top of the house.It is a big, airy room, the

14、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 windows 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

15、. It is stripped offthe paperin 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 co

16、nfuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicideplunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.The color is repellent, almost revo

17、lting; a smouldering 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.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 ha

18、tes to have me write a word.We have been here two weeks, and I havent felt like writing before, since that first day.I am sitting by the window now, up in this atrocious nursery, and there is nothing to hinder my writing as much as I please, save lack of strength.John is away all day, and even some

19、nights when his cases are serious.I am glad my case is not serious!But these nervous troubles are dreadfully 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 on me so not to do my dut

20、y 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

21、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 g

22、ive 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 good, he said, and really, dear, I dont care to renovate the house just for a thr

23、ee 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 to the cellar, if I wished, and have it whitewashed into the bargain.But he is right enough about the beds and windows

24、and things.It is an airy and comfortable room as any one need wish, and, of course, I would not be so silly as to make him uncomfortable just for a whim.Im really getting quite fond of the big room, all but that horrid paper.Out of one window I can see the garden, those mysterious deepshaded arbors,

25、 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 belonging to the estate. There is a beautiful shaded lane that runs down there from the house. I always fancy I see people walking in these numerous paths and arbo

26、rs, 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 weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try.I think

27、 sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve 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 dow

28、n 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 t

29、he pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down.I get positively angry with the impertinence of it and the everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl, and those absurd, unblinking eyes are everywhere. There is one place where two breadths didnt match, and

30、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 c

31、hildren 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

32、 in this room is no worse than inharmonious, however, for we had to bring it all from downstairs. I suppose when this was used as a playroom they had to take the nursery things out, and no wonder! I never saw such ravages as the children have made here.The wall-paper, as I said before, is torn off i

33、n spots, and it sticketh closer than a brotherthey must have had perseverance as well as hatred.Then the floor is scratched and gouged 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.Bu

34、t I dont mind it a bitonly the paper.There comes Johns 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 housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick!But

35、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 wall-paper has a kind of sub-pattern in a diff

36、erent shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then.But in the places where it isnt faded and where the sun is just soI can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front des

37、ign.Theres sister on the stairs!Well, the Fourth of July is over! The people are 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 didnt do a thing. Jennie sees to everything now.But it tir

38、ed me all the same.John says if I dont pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.But I dont 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 dont feel

39、 as if it was worth while to turn my hand over for anything, and Im getting dreadfully fretful and querulous.I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.Of course I dont 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 ser

40、ious 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.Im getting really fond of the room in spite of the wall-paper. Perhaps BECAUSE of the wall-paper.It dwells

41、 in my mind so!I lie here on this great immovable bedit is nailed down, I believeand follow that pattern about by the hour. It is as good as gymnastics, I assure you. I start, well say, at the bottom, down in the corner over there where it has not been touched, and I determine for the thousandth tim

42、e that I WILL follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion.I know a little of the principle of design, and I know this thing was not arranged on any laws of radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or symmetry, or anything else that I ever heard of.It is repeated, of course, by the br

43、eadths, but not otherwise.Looked at in one way each breadth stands alone, the bloated curves and flourishesa kind of debased Romanesque with delirium tremensgo waddling up and down in isolated columns of fatuity.But, on the other hand, they connect diagonally, and the sprawling outlines run off in g

44、reat 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 won

45、derfully to the confusion.There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, when the crosslights fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation after all,the interminable grotesques seem to form around a common centre and rush off in headlong plunges of e

46、qual distraction.It makes me tired to follow it. I will take a nap I guess.I dont know why I should write this.I dont want to.I dont feel able.And I know John would think it absurd. But I MUST say what I feel and think in some wayit is such a relief!But the effort is getting to be greater than the r

47、elief.Half the time now I am awfully lazy, and lie down ever so much.John says I musnt lose my strength, and has me take cod liver oil and lots of tonics and things, to say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat.Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I tried to have a real ear

48、nest reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia.But he said I wasnt able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there; and I did not make out a very good case for myself, for I was crying before I had finished.Chapter 2It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. J