literature assignments

Assignment 1

 In no less than 250 words, please discuss the theme of both texts(The yellow wallpaper AND a jury of her peers)  In your discussion be sure to use the literary terms we have reviewed this week (antagonist, protagonist, plot, exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution). Also, be sure to use evidence from the text to support your claim(s).  Please annotate this stories . 

Assignment 2

  After reviewing and taking notes on The Elements of Fiction power point, complete this quiz.(10 questions) 

1)Who is considered the protagonist of a story? 

Select one or more:

a. The narrator    b. The good guy      c. the bad guy 

2)Who is the antagonist of a story? 

Select one or more:

a. the bad guy    b. the narrator    c. the good guy 

3)Point of View is the vantage point from which a  story is told. 

Select one:

True     False 

4)What is first person point of view? 

Select one or more:

a. When the narrator refers to himself/herself by name or by he/she

b. When the narrator is all-knowing

c. When the story is told by a person who refers to herself or himself as “I” 

 5)What is the plot of the story? 

Select one or more:

a. Where the story takes place

b. the events of the story

c. the tension or problem of the story 

 6)A story cannot occur without conflict. 

Select one:
True     False 

 7)What is the setting of a story? 

Select one or more:

a. the tension or problem in the story

b. Where the story takes place

c. The events of the story 

8)What is the conflict of a story? 

Select one or more:

a. where the story takes place

b. the tension or problem of the story

c. The events of the story 

9)Which of the following are plot types? check all that apply.

Select one or more:

a. Man vs. Self

b. Man vs. Technology

c. Man vs. Society

d. Man vs. Man 

 10)The theme of  a story is the message, insight, advice, shared with readers as s/he investigates the elements of fiction as a whole.

Select one:

True   False 

A Jury of Her Peers
by Susan Glaspell (1917)

When Martha Hale opened the storm-door and got
a cut of the north wind, she ran back for her big
woolen scarf. As she hurriedly wound that round her
head her eye made a scandalized sweep of her
kitchen. It was no ordinary thing that called her away-
-it was probably further from ordinary than anything
that had ever happened in Dickson County. But what
her eye took in was that her kitchen was in no shape
for leaving: her bread all ready for mixing, half the
flour sifted and half unsifted.

She hated to see things half done; but she had

been at that when the team from town stopped to get
Mr. Hale, and then the sheriff came running in to say
his wife wished Mrs. Hale would come too–adding,
with a grin, that he guessed she was getting scary and
wanted another woman along. So she had dropped
everything right where it was.

“Martha!” now came her husband’s impatient voice.

“Don’t keep folks waiting out here in the cold.”

She again opened the storm-door, and this time

joined the three men and the one woman waiting for
her in the big two-seated buggy.

After she had the robes tucked around her she

took another look at the woman who sat beside her on
the back seat. She had met Mrs. Peters the year
before at the county fair, and the thing she
remembered about her was that she didn’t seem like a
sheriff’s wife. She was small and thin and didn’t have a
strong voice. Mrs. Gorman, sheriff’s wife before
Gorman went out and Peters came in, had a voice that
somehow seemed to be backing up the law with every
word. But if Mrs. Peters didn’t look like a sheriff’s wife,
Peters made it up in looking like a sheriff. He was to a
dot the kind of man who could get himself elected
sheriff–a heavy man with a big voice, who was
particularly genial with the law-abiding, as if to make
it plain that he knew the difference between criminals
and non-criminals. And right there it came into Mrs.
Hale’s mind, with a stab, that this man who was so
pleasant and lively with all of them was going to the
Wrights’ now as a sheriff.

“The country’s not very pleasant this time of year,”

Mrs. Peters at last ventured, as if she felt they ought
to be talking as well as the men.

Mrs. Hale scarcely finished her reply, for they had

gone up a little hill and could see the Wright place
now, and seeing it did not make her feel like talking.
It looked very lonesome this cold March morning. It
had always been a lonesome-looking place. It was
down in a hollow, and the poplar trees around it were
lonesome-looking trees. The men were looking at it

and talking about what had happened. The county
attorney was bending to one side of the buggy, and
kept looking steadily at the place as they drew up to
it.

“I’m glad you came with me,” Mrs. Peters said

nervously, as the two women were about to follow the
men in through the kitchen door.

Even after she had her foot on the door-step, her

hand on the knob, Martha Hale had a moment of
feeling she could not cross that threshold. And the
reason it seemed she couldn’t cross it now was simply
because she hadn’t crossed it before. Time and time
again it had been in her mind, “I ought to go over and
see Minnie Foster”–she still thought of her as Minnie
Foster, though for twenty years she had been Mrs.
Wright. And then there was always something to do
and Minnie Foster would go from her mind. But now
she could come.

The men went over to the stove. The women stood

close together by the door. Young Henderson, the
county attorney, turned around and said, “Come up to
the fire, ladies.”

Mrs. Peters took a step forward, then stopped. “I’m

not–cold,” she said.

And so the two women stood by the door, at first

not even so much as looking around the kitchen.

The men talked for a minute about what a good

thing it was the sheriff had sent his deputy out that
morning to make a fire for them, and then Sheriff
Peters stepped back from the stove, unbuttoned his
outer coat, and leaned his hands on the kitchen table
in a way that seemed to mark the beginning of official
business. “Now, Mr. Hale,” he said in a sort of semi-
official voice, “before we move things about, you tell
Mr. Henderson just what it was you saw when you
came here yesterday morning.”

The county attorney was looking around the

kitchen.

“By the way,” he said, “has anything been moved?”

He turned to the sheriff. “Are things just as you left
them yesterday?”

Peters looked from cupboard to sink; from that to

a small worn rocker a little to one side of the kitchen
table.

“It’s just the same.”

“Somebody should have been left here yesterday,”

said the county attorney.

Susan Glaspell Jury of Her Peers 2

“Oh–yesterday,” returned the sheriff, with a little
gesture as of yesterday having been more than he
could bear to think of. “When I had to send Frank to
Morris Center for that man who went crazy–let me tell
you. I had my hands full yesterday. I knew you could
get back from Omaha by today, George, and as long as
I went over everything here myself–”

“Well, Mr. Hale,” said the county attorney, in a

way of letting what was past and gone go, “tell just
what happened when you came here yesterday
morning.”

Mrs. Hale, still leaning against the door, had that

sinking feeling of the mother whose child is about to
speak a piece. Lewis often wandered along and got
things mixed up in a story. She hoped he would tell
this straight and plain, and not say unnecessary things
that would just make things harder for Minnie Foster.
He didn’t begin at once, and she noticed that he
looked queer–as if standing in that kitchen and having
to tell what he had seen there yesterday morning
made him almost sick.

“Yes, Mr. Hale?” the county attorney reminded.

“Harry and I had started to town with a load of

potatoes,” Mrs. Hale’s husband began.

Harry was Mrs. Hale’s oldest boy. He wasn’t with

them now, for the very good reason that those
potatoes never got to town yesterday and he was
taking them this morning, so he hadn’t been home
when the sheriff stopped to say he wanted Mr. Hale to
come over to the Wright place and tell the county
attorney his story there, where he could point it all
out. With all Mrs. Hale’s other emotions came the fear
now that maybe Harry wasn’t dressed warm enough–
they hadn’t any of them realized how that north wind
did bite.

“We come along this road,” Hale was going on,

with a motion of his hand to the road over which they
had just come, “and as we got in sight of the house I
says to Harry, ‘I’m goin’ to see if I can’t get John Wright
to take a telephone.’ You see,” he explained to
Henderson, “unless I can get somebody to go in with
me they won’t come out this branch road except for a
price I can’t pay. I’d spoke to Wright about it once
before; but he put me off, saying folks talked too
much anyway, and all he asked was peace and quiet–
guess you know about how much he talked himself.
But I thought maybe if I went to the house and talked
about it before his wife, and said all the women-folks
liked the telephones, and that in this lonesome stretch
of road it would be a good thing–well, I said to Harry
that that was what I was going to say–though I said at
the same time that I didn’t know as what his wife
wanted made much difference to John–”

Now there he was!–saying things he didn’t need to
say. Mrs. Hale tried to catch her husband’s eye, but
fortunately the county attorney interrupted with:

“Let’s talk about that a little later, Mr. Hale. I do

want to talk about that but, I’m anxious now to get
along to just what happened when you got here.”

When he began this time, it was very deliberately

and carefully:

“I didn’t see or hear anything. I knocked at the

door. And still it was all quiet inside. I knew they must
be up–it was past eight o’clock. So I knocked again,
louder, and I thought I heard somebody say, ‘Come in.’
I wasn’t sure–I’m not sure yet. But I opened the door–
this door,” jerking a hand toward the door by which
the two women stood. “and there, in that rocker”–
pointing to it–“sat Mrs. Wright.”

Everyone in the kitchen looked at the rocker. It

came into Mrs. Hale’s mind that that rocker didn’t look
in the least like Minnie Foster–the Minnie Foster of
twenty years before. It was a dingy red, with wooden
rungs up the back, and the middle rung was gone, and
the chair sagged to one side.

“How did she–look?” the county attorney was

inquiring.

“Well,” said Hale, “she looked–queer.”

“How do you mean–queer?”

As he asked it he took out a note-book and pencil.

Mrs. Hale did not like the sight of that pencil. She kept
her eye fixed on her husband, as if to keep him from
saying unnecessary things that would go into that
note-book and make trouble.

Hale did speak guardedly, as if the pencil had

affected him too.

“Well, as if she didn’t know what she was going to

do next. And kind of–done up.”

“How did she seem to feel about your coming?”

“Why, I don’t think she minded–one way or other.

She didn’t pay much attention. I said, ‘Ho’ do, Mrs.
Wright? It’s cold, ain’t it?’ And she said. ‘Is it?’–and
went on pleatin’ at her apron.

“Well, I was surprised. She didn’t ask me to come

up to the stove, or to sit down, but just set there, not
even lookin’ at me. And so I said: ‘I want to see John.’

“And then she–laughed. I guess you would call it a

laugh.

Susan Glaspell Jury of Her Peers 3

“I thought of Harry and the team outside, so I said,
a little sharp, ‘Can I see John?’ ‘No,’ says she–kind of
dull like. ‘Ain’t he home?’ says I. Then she looked at
me. ‘Yes,’ says she, ‘he’s home.’ ‘Then why can’t I see
him?’ I asked her, out of patience with her now. ‘Cause
he’s dead’ says she, just as quiet and dull–and fell to
pleatin’ her apron. ‘Dead?’ says, I, like you do when you
can’t take in what you’ve heard.

“She just nodded her head, not getting a bit

excited, but rockin’ back and forth.

“‘Why–where is he?’ says I, not knowing what to

say.

“She just pointed upstairs–like this”–pointing to

the room above.

“I got up, with the idea of going up there myself.

By this time I–didn’t know what to do. I walked from
there to here; then I says: ‘Why, what did he die of?’

“‘He died of a rope around his neck,’ says she; and

just went on pleatin’ at her apron.”

Hale stopped speaking, and stood staring at the

rocker, as if he were still seeing the woman who had
sat there the morning before. Nobody spoke; it was as
if every one were seeing the woman who had sat there
the morning before.

“And what did you do then?” the county attorney at

last broke the silence.

“I went out and called Harry. I thought I might–

need help. I got Harry in, and we went upstairs.” His
voice fell almost to a whisper. “There he was–lying
over the–”

“I think I’d rather have you go into that upstairs,”

the county attorney interrupted, “where you can point
it all out. Just go on now with the rest of the story.”

“Well, my first thought was to get that rope off. It

looked–”

He stopped, his face twitching.

“But Harry, he went up to him, and he said. ‘No,

he’s dead all right, and we’d better not touch
anything.’ So we went downstairs.

“She was still sitting that same way. ‘Has anybody

been notified?’ I asked. ‘No, says she, unconcerned.

“‘Who did this, Mrs. Wright?’ said Harry. He said it

businesslike, and she stopped pleatin’ at her apron. ‘I
don’t know,’ she says. ‘You don’t know?’ says Harry.
‘Weren’t you sleepin’ in the bed with him?’ ‘Yes,’ says

she, ‘but I was on the inside. ‘Somebody slipped a rope
round his neck and strangled him, and you didn’t wake
up?’ says Harry. ‘I didn’t wake up,’ she said after him.

“We may have looked as if we didn’t see how that

could be, for after a minute she said, ‘I sleep sound.’

“Harry was going to ask her more questions, but I

said maybe that weren’t our business; maybe we ought
to let her tell her story first to the coroner or the
sheriff. So Harry went fast as he could over to High
Road–the Rivers’ place, where there’s a telephone.”

“And what did she do when she knew you had gone

for the coroner?” The attorney got his pencil in his
hand all ready for writing.

“She moved from that chair to this one over here”–

Hale pointed to a small chair in the corner–“and just
sat there with her hands held together and lookin
down. I got a feeling that I ought to make some
conversation, so I said I had come in to see if John
wanted to put in a telephone; and at that she started
to laugh, and then she stopped and looked at me–
scared.”

At the sound of a moving pencil the man who was

telling the story looked up.

“I dunno–maybe it wasn’t scared,” he hastened: “I

wouldn’t like to say it was. Soon Harry got back, and
then Dr. Lloyd came, and you, Mr. Peters, and so I
guess that’s all I know that you don’t.”

He said that last with relief, and moved a little, as

if relaxing. Everyone moved a little. The county
attorney walked toward the stair door.

“I guess we’ll go upstairs first–then out to the barn

and around there.”

He paused and looked around the kitchen.

“You’re convinced there was nothing important

here?” he asked the sheriff. “Nothing that would–point
to any motive?”

The sheriff too looked all around, as if to re-

convince himself.

“Nothing here but kitchen things,” he said, with a

little laugh for the insignificance of kitchen things.

The county attorney was looking at the cupboard–

a peculiar, ungainly structure, half closet and half
cupboard, the upper part of it being built in the wall,
and the lower part just the old-fashioned kitchen
cupboard. As if its queerness attracted him, he got a
chair and opened the upper part and looked in. After a
moment he drew his hand away sticky.

Susan Glaspell Jury of Her Peers 4

“Here’s a nice mess,” he said resentfully.

The two women had drawn nearer, and now the

sheriff’s wife spoke.

“Oh–her fruit,” she said, looking to Mrs. Hale for

sympathetic understanding.

She turned back to the county attorney and

explained: “She worried about that when it turned so
cold last night. She said the fire would go out and her
jars might burst.”

Mrs. Peters’ husband broke into a laugh.

“Well, can you beat the women! Held for murder,

and worrying about her preserves!”

The young attorney set his lips.

“I guess before we’re through with her she may

have something more serious than preserves to worry
about.”

“Oh, well,” said Mrs. Hale’s husband, with good-

natured superiority, “women are used to worrying over
trifles.”

The two women moved a little closer together.

Neither of them spoke. The county attorney seemed
suddenly to remember his manners–and think of his
future.

“And yet,” said he, with the gallantry of a young

politician. “for all their worries, what would we do
without the ladies?”

The women did not speak, did not unbend. He

went to the sink and began washing his hands. He
turned to wipe them on the roller towel–whirled it for
a cleaner place.

“Dirty towelsl Not much of a housekeeper, would

you say, ladies?”

He kicked his foot against some dirty pans under

the sink.

“There’s a great deal of work to be done on a

farm,” said Mrs. Hale stiffly.

“To be sure. And yet”–with a little bow to her–‘I

know there are some Dickson County farm-houses that
do not have such roller towels.” He gave it a pull to
expose its full length again.

“Those towels get dirty awful quick. Men’s hands

aren’t always as clean as they might be.

“Ah, loyal to your sex, I see,” he laughed. He
stopped and gave her a keen look, “But you and Mrs.
Wright were neighbors. I suppose you were friends,
too.”

Martha Hale shook her head.

“I’ve seen little enough of her of late years. I’ve not

been in this house–it’s more than a year.”

“And why was that? You didn’t like her?”

“I liked her well enough,” she replied with spirit.

“Farmers’ wives have their hands full, Mr. Henderson.
And then–” She looked around the kitchen.

“Yes?” he encouraged.

“It never seemed a very cheerful place,” said she,

more to herself than to him.

“No,” he agreed; “I don’t think anyone would call it

cheerful. I shouldn’t say she had the home-making
instinct.”

“Well, I don’t know as Wright had, either,” she

muttered.

“You mean they didn’t get on very well?” he was

quick to ask.

“No; I don’t mean anything,” she answered, with

decision. As she turned a lit- tle away from him, she
added: “But I don’t think a place would be any the
cheerfuller for John Wright’s bein’ in it.”

“I’d like to talk to you about that a little later, Mrs.

Hale,” he said. “I’m anxious to get the lay of things
upstairs now.”

He moved toward the stair door, followed by the

two men.

“I suppose anything Mrs. Peters does’ll be all right?”

the sheriff inquired. “She was to take in some clothes
for her, you know–and a few little things. We left in
such a hurry yesterday.”

The county attorney looked at the two women

they were leaving alone there among the kitchen
things.

“Yes–Mrs. Peters,” he said, his glance resting on

the woman who was not Mrs. Peters, the big farmer
woman who stood behind the sheriff’s wife. “Of course
Mrs. Peters is one of us,” he said, in a manner of
entrusting responsibility. “And keep your eye out, Mrs.
Peters, for anything that might be of use. No telling;
you women might come upon a clue to the motive–
and that’s the thing we need.”

Susan Glaspell Jury of Her Peers 5

Mr. Hale rubbed his face after the fashion of a

showman getting ready for a pleasantry.

“But would the women know a clue if they did

come upon it?” he said; and, having delivered himself
of this, he followed the others through the stair door.

The women stood motionless and silent, listening

to the footsteps, first upon the stairs, then in the
room above them.

Then, as if releasing herself from something

strange. Mrs. Hale began to arrange the dirty pans
under the sink, which the county attorney’s disdainful
push of the foot had deranged.

“I’d hate to have men comin’ into my kitchen,” she

said testily–“snoopin’ round and criticizin’.”

“Of course it’s no more than their duty,” said the

sheriff’s wife, in her manner of timid acquiescence.

“Duty’s all right,” replied Mrs. Hale bluffly; “but I

guess that deputy sheriff that come out to make the
fire might have got a little of this on.” She gave the
roller towel a pull. ‘Wish I’d thought of that sooner!
Seems mean to talk about her for not having things
slicked up, when she had to come away in such a
hurry.”

She looked around the kitchen. Certainly it was

not “slicked up.” Her eye was held by a bucket of sugar
on a low shelf. The cover was off the wooden bucket,
and beside it was a paper bag–half full.

Mrs. HaIe moved toward it.

“She was putting this in there,” she said to herself-

-slowly.

She thought of the flour in her kitchen at home–

half sifted, half not sifted. She had been interrupted,
and had left things half done. What had interrupted
Minnie Foster? Why had that work been left half done?
She made a move as if to finish it,–unfinished things
always bothered her,–and then she glanced around
and saw that Mrs. Peters was watching her–and she
didn’t want Mrs. Peters to get that feeling she had got
of work begun and then–for some reason–not
finished.

“It’s a shame about her fruit,” she said, and walked

toward the cupboard that the county attorney had
opened, and got on the chair, murmuring: “I wonder if
it’s all gone.”

It was a sorry enough looking sight, but “Here’s one

that’s all right,” she said at last. She held it toward the

light. “This is cherries, too.” She looked again. “I
declare I believe that’s the only one.”

With a sigh, she got down from the chair, went to

the sink, and wiped off the bottle.

“She’Il feel awful bad, after all her hard work in

the hot weather. I remember the afternoon I put up
my cherries last summer.

She set the bottle on the table, and, with another

sigh, started to sit down in the rocker. But she did not
sit down. Something kept her from sitting down in that
chair. She straightened–stepped back, and, half
turned away, stood looking at it, seeing the woman
who had sat there “pleatin’ at her apron.”

The thin voice of the sheriff’s wife broke in upon

her: “I must be getting those things from the front-
room closet.” She opened the door into the other
room, started in, stepped back. “You coming with me,
Mrs. Hale?” she asked nervously. “You–you could help
me get them.”

They were soon back–the stark coldness of that

shut-up room was not a thing to linger in.

“My!” said Mrs. Peters, dropping the things on the

table and hurrying to the stove.

Mrs. Hale stood examining the clothes the woman

who was being detained in town had said she wanted.

“Wright was close!” she exclaimed, holding up a

shabby black skirt that bore the marks of much making
over. “I think maybe that’s why she kept so much to
herself. I s’pose she felt she couldn’t do her part; and
then, you don’t enjoy things when you feel shabby. She
used to wear pretty clothes and be lively–when she
was Minnie Foster, one of the town girls, singing in the
choir. But that–oh, that was twenty years ago.”

With a carefulness in which there was something

tender, she folded the shabby clothes and piled them
at one corner of the table. She looked up at Mrs.
Peters, and there was something in the other woman’s
look that irritated her.

“She don’t care,” she said to herself. “Much

difference it makes to her whether Minnie Foster had
pretty clothes when she was a girl.”

Then she looked again, and she wasn’t so sure; in

fact, she hadn’t at any time been perfectly sure about
Mrs. Peters. She had that shrinking manner, and yet
her eyes looked as if they could see a long way into
things.

“This all you was to take in?” asked Mrs. Hale.

Susan Glaspell Jury of Her Peers 6

“No,” said the sheriffs wife; “she said she wanted
an apron. Funny thing to want, ” she ventured in her
nervous little way, “for there’s not much to get you
dirty in jail, goodness knows. But I suppose just to
make her feel more natural. If you’re used to wearing
an apron–. She said they were in the bottom drawer
of this cupboard. Yes–here they are. And then her
little shawl that always hung on the stair door.”

She took the small gray shawl from behind the

door leading upstairs, and stood a minute looking at it.

Suddenly Mrs. Hale took a quick step toward the

other woman, “Mrs. Peters!”

“Yes, Mrs. Hale?”

“Do you think she–did it?’

A frightened look blurred the other thing in Mrs.

Peters’ eyes.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said, in a voice that

seemed to shink away from the subject.

“Well, I don’t think she did,” affirmed Mrs. Hale

stoutly. “Asking for an apron, and her little shawl.
Worryin’ about her fruit.”

“Mr. Peters says–.” Footsteps were heard in the

room above; she stopped, looked up, then went on in
a lowered voice: “Mr. Peters says–it looks bad for her.
Mr. Henderson is awful sarcastic in a speech, and he’s
going to make fun of her saying she didn’t–wake up.”

For a moment Mrs. Hale had no answer. Then,

“Well, I guess John Wright didn’t wake up–when they
was slippin’ that rope under his neck,” she muttered.

“No, it’s strange,” breathed Mrs. Peters. “They

think it was such a–funny way to kill a man.”

She began to laugh; at sound of the laugh,

abruptly stopped.

“That’s just what Mr. Hale said,” said Mrs. Hale, in

a resolutely natural voice. “There was a gun in the
house. He says that’s what he can’t understand.”

“Mr. Henderson said, coming out, that what was

needed for the case was a motive. Something to show
anger–or sudden feeling.”

‘Well, I don’t see any signs of anger around here,”

said Mrs. Hale, “I don’t–” She stopped. It was as if her
mind tripped on something. Her eye was caught by a
dish-towel in the middle of the kitchen table. Slowly
she moved toward the table. One half of it was wiped
clean, the other half messy. Her eyes made a slow,
almost unwilling turn to the bucket of sugar and the

half empty bag beside it. Things begun–and not
finished.

After a moment she stepped back, and said, in

that manner of releasing herself:

“Wonder how they’re finding things upstairs? I hope

she had it a little more red up up there. You know,”–
she paused, and feeling gathered,–“it seems kind of
sneaking: locking her up in town and coming out here
to get her own house to turn against her!”

“But, Mrs. Hale,” said the sheriff’s wife, “the law is

the law.”

“I s’pose ’tis,” answered Mrs. Hale shortly.

She turned to the stove, saying something about

that fire not being much to brag of. She worked with it
a minute, and when she straightened up she said
aggressively:

“The law is the law–and a bad stove is a bad

stove. How’d you like to cook on this?”–pointing with
the poker to the broken lining. She opened the oven
door and started to express her opinion of the oven;
but she was swept into her own thoughts, thinking of
what it would mean, year after year, to have that
stove to wrestle with. The thought of Minnie Foster
trying to bake in that oven–and the thought of her
never going over to see Minnie Foster–.

She was startled by hearing Mrs. Peters say: “A

person gets discouraged–and loses heart.”

The sheriff’s wife had looked from the stove to the

sink–to the pail of water which had been carried in
from outside. The two women stood there silent,
above them the footsteps of the men who were
looking for evidence against the woman who had
worked in that kitchen. That look of seeing into
things, of seeing through a thing to something else,
was in the eyes of the sheriff’s wife now. When Mrs.
Hale next spoke to her, it was gently:

“Better loosen up your things, Mrs. Peters. We’ll

not feel them when we go out.”

Mrs. Peters went to the back of the room to hang

up the fur tippet she was wearing. A moment later she
exclaimed, “Why, she was piecing a quilt,” and held up
a large sewing basket piled high with quilt pieces.

Mrs. Hale spread some of the blocks on the table.

“It’s log-cabin pattern,” she said, putting several of

them together, “Pretty, isn’t it?”

Susan Glaspell Jury of Her Peers 7

They were so engaged with the quilt that they did
not hear the footsteps on the stairs. Just as the stair
door opened Mrs. Hale was saying:

“Do you suppose she was going to quilt it or just

knot it?”

The sheriff threw up his hands.

“They wonder whether she was going to quilt it or

just knot it!”

There was a laugh for the ways of women, a

warming of hands over the stove, and then the county
attorney said briskly:

“Well, let’s go right out to the barn and get that

cleared up.”

“I don’t see as there’s anything so strange,” Mrs.

Hale said resentfully, after the outside door had
closed on the three men–“our taking up our time with
little things while we’re waiting for them to get the
evidence. I don’t see as it’s anything to laugh about.”

“Of course they’ve got awful important things on

their minds,” said the sheriff’s wife apologetically.

They returned to an inspection of the block for the

quilt. Mrs. Hale was looking at the fine, even sewing,
and preoccupied with thoughts of the woman who had
done that sewing, when she heard the sheriff’s wife
say, in a queer tone:

“Why, look at this one.”

She turned to take the block held out to her.

“The sewing,” said Mrs. Peters, in a troubled way,

“All the rest of them have been so nice and even–but–
this one. Why, it looks as if she didn’t know what she
was about!”

Their eyes met–something flashed to life, passed

between them; then, as if with an effort, they seemed
to pull away from each other. A moment Mrs. Hale sat
there, her hands folded over that sewing which was so
unlike all the rest of the sewing. Then she had pulled a
knot and drawn the threads.

“Oh, what are you doing, Mrs. Hale?” asked the

sheriff’s wife, startled.

“Just pulling out a stitch or two that’s not sewed

very good,” said Mrs. Hale mildly.

“I don’t think we ought to touch things,” Mrs.

Peters said, a little helplessly.

“I’ll just finish up this end,” answered Mrs. Hale,
still in that mild, matter-of-fact fashion.

She threaded a needle and started to replace bad

sewing with good. For a little while she sewed in
silence. Then, in that thin, timid voice, she heard:

“Mrs. Hale!”

“Yes, Mrs. Peters?”

‘What do you suppose she was so–nervous about?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said Mrs. Hale, as if dismissing

a thing not important enough to spend much time on.
“I don’t know as she was–nervous. I sew awful queer
sometimes when I’m just tired.”

She cut a thread, and out of the corner of her eye

looked up at Mrs. Peters. The small, lean face of the
sheriff’s wife seemed to have tightened up. Her eyes
had that look of peering into something. But next
moment she moved, and said in her thin, indecisive
way:

‘Well, I must get those clothes wrapped. They may

be through sooner than we think. I wonder where I
could find a piece of paper–and string.”

“In that cupboard, maybe,” suggested to Mrs. Hale,

after a glance around.

One piece of the crazy sewing remained unripped.

Mrs. Peter’s back turned, Martha Hale now scrutinized
that piece, compared it with the dainty, accurate
sewing of the other blocks. The difference was
startling. Holding this block made her feel queer, as if
the distracted thoughts of the woman who had
perhaps turned to it to try and quiet herself were
communicating themselves to her.

Mrs. Peters’ voice roused her.

“Here’s a bird-cage,” she said. “Did she have a bird,

Mrs. Hale?”

‘Why, I don’t know whether she did or not.” She

turned to look at the cage Mrs. Peters was holding up.
“I’ve not been here in so long.” She sighed. “There was
a man round last year selling canaries cheap–but I
don’t know as she took one. Maybe she did. She used
to sing real pretty herself.”

Mrs. Peters looked around the kitchen.

“Seems kind of funny to think of a bird here.” She

half laughed–an attempt to put up a barrier. “But she
must have had one–or why would she have a cage? I
wonder what happened to it.”

Susan Glaspell Jury of Her Peers 8

“I suppose maybe the cat got it,” suggested Mrs.
Hale, resuming her sewing.

“No; she didn’t have a cat. She’s got that feeling

some people have about cats–being afraid of them.
When they brought her to our house yesterday, my cat
got in the room, and she was real upset and asked me
to take it out.”

“My sister Bessie was like that,” laughed Mrs. Hale.

The sheriff’s wife did not reply. The silence made

Mrs. Hale turn round. Mrs. Peters was examining the
bird-cage.

“Look at this door,” she said slowly. “It’s broke. One

hinge has been pulled apart.”

Mrs. Hale came nearer.

“Looks as if someone must have been–rough with

it.”

Again their eyes met–startled, questioning,

apprehensive. For a moment neither spoke nor stirred.
Then Mrs. Hale, turning away, said brusquely:

“If they’re going to find any evidence, I wish they’d

be about it. I don’t like this place.”

“But I’m awful glad you came with me, Mrs. Hale.”

Mrs. Peters put the bird-cage on the table and sat
down. “It would be lonesome for me–sitting here
alone.”

“Yes, it would, wouldn’t it?” agreed Mrs. Hale, a

certain determined naturalness in her voice. She had
picked up the sewing, but now it dropped in her lap,
and she murmured in a different voice: “But I tell you
what I do wish, Mrs. Peters. I wish I had come over
sometimes when she was here. I wish–I had.”

“But of course you were awful busy, Mrs. Hale.

Your house–and your children.”

“I could’ve come,” retorted Mrs. Hale shortly. “I

stayed away because it weren’t cheerful–and that’s
why I ought to have come. I”–she looked around–“I’ve
never liked this place. Maybe because it’s down in a
hollow and you don’t see the road. I don’t know what it
is, but it’s a lonesome place, and always was. I wish I
had come over to see Minnie Foster sometimes. I can
see now–” She did not put it into words.

“Well, you mustn’t reproach yourself,” counseled

Mrs. Peters. “Somehow, we just don’t see how it is
with other folks till–something comes up.”

“Not having children makes less work,” mused Mrs.

Hale, after a silence, “but it makes a quiet house–and

Wright out to work all day–and no company when he
did come in. Did you know John Wright, Mrs. Peters?”

“Not to know him. I’ve seen him in town. They say

he was a good man.”

“Yes–good,” conceded John Wright’s neighbor

grimly. “He didn’t drink, and kept his word as well as
most, I guess, and paid his debts. But he was a hard
man, Mrs. Peters. Just to pass the time of day with
him–.” She stopped, shivered a little. “Like a raw wind
that gets to the bone.” Her eye fell upon the cage on
the table before her, and she added, almost bitterly:
“I should think she would’ve wanted a bird!”

Suddenly she leaned forward, looking intently at

the cage. “But what do you s’pose went wrong with it?”

“I don’t know,” returned Mrs. Peters; “unless it got

sick and died.”

But after she said it she reached over and swung

the broken door. Both women watched it as if
somehow held by it.

“You didn’t know–her?” Mrs. Hale asked, a gentler

note in her voice.

“Not till they brought her yesterday,” said the

sheriff’s wife.

“She–come to think of it, she was kind of like a

bird herself. Real sweet and pretty, but kind of timid
and–fluttery. How–she–did–change.”

That held her for a long time. Finally, as if struck

with a happy thought and relieved to get back to
everyday things, she exclaimed:

“Tell you what, Mrs. Peters, why don’t you take the

quilt in with you? It might take up her mind.”

“Why, I think that’s a real nice idea, Mrs. Hale,”

agreed the sheriff’s wife, as if she too were glad to
come into the atmosphere of a simple kindness. “There
couldn’t possibly be any objection to that, could there?
Now, just what will I take? I wonder if her patches are
in here–and her things?”

They turned to the sewing basket.

“Here’s some red,” said Mrs. Hale, bringing out a

roll of cloth. Underneath that was a box. “Here, maybe
her scissors are in here–and her things.” She held it
up. “What a pretty box! I’ll warrant that was something
she had a long time ago–when she was a girl.”

She held it in her hand a moment; then, with a

little sigh, opened it.

Susan Glaspell Jury of Her Peers 9

Instantly her hand went to her nose.

“Why–!”

Mrs. Peters drew nearer–then turned away.

“There’s something wrapped up in this piece of

silk,” faltered Mrs. Hale.

“This isn’t her scissors,” said Mrs. Peters, in a

shrinking voice.

Her hand not steady, Mrs. Hale raised the piece of

silk. “Oh, Mrs. Peters!” she cried. “It’s–”

Mrs. Peters bent closer.

“It’s the bird,” she whispered.

“But, Mrs. Peters!” cried Mrs. Hale. “Look at it! Its

neck–look at its neck! It’s all–other side to.”

She held the box away from her.

The sheriff’s wife again bent closer.

“Somebody wrung its neck,” said she, in a voice

that was slow and deep.

And then again the eyes of the two women met–

this time clung together in a look of dawning
comprehension, of growing horror. Mrs. Peters looked
from the dead bird to the broken door of the cage.
Again their eyes met. And just then there was a sound
at the outside door. Mrs. Hale slipped the box under
the quilt pieces in the basket, and sank into the chair
before it. Mrs. Peters stood holding to the table. The
county attorney and the sheriff came in from outside.

“Well, ladies,” said the county attorney, as one

turning from serious things to little pleasantries, “have
you decided whether she was going to quilt it or knot
it?”

“We think,” began the sheriff’s wife in a flurried

voice, “that she was going to–knot it.”

He was too preoccupied to notice the change that

came in her voice on that last.

“Well, that’s very interesting, I’m sure,” he said

tolerantly. He caught sight of the bird-cage.

“Has the bird flown?”

“We think the cat got it,” said Mrs. Hale in a voice

curiously even.

He was walking up and down, as if thinking

something out.

“Is there a cat?” he asked absently.

Mrs. Hale shot a look up at the sheriff’s wife.

“Well, not now,” said Mrs. Peters. “They’re

superstitious, you know; they Ieave.”

She sank into her chair.

The county attorney did not heed her. “No sign at

all of anyone having come in from the outside,” he said
to Peters, in the manner of continuing an interrupted
conversation. “Their own rope. Now let’s go upstairs
again and go over it, picee by piece. It would have to
have been someone who knew just the–”

The stair door closed behind them and their voices

were lost.

The two women sat motionless, not looking at

each other, but as if peering into something and at the
same time holding back. When they spoke now it was
as if they were afraid of what they were saying, but as
if they could not help saying it.

“She liked the bird,” said Martha Hale, low and

slowly. “She was going to bury it in that pretty box.”

When I was a girl,” said Mrs. Peters, under her

breath, “my kitten–there was a boy took a hatchet,
and before my eyes–before I could get there–” She
covered her face an instant. “If they hadn’t held me
back I would have”–she caught herself, looked upstairs
where footsteps were heard, and finished weakly–
“hurt him.”

Then they sat without speaking or moving.

“I wonder how it would seem,” Mrs. Hale at last

began, as if feeling her way over strange ground–
“never to have had any children around?” Her eyes
made a slow sweep of the kitchen, as if seeing what
that kitchen had meant through all the years “No,
Wright wouldn’t like the bird,” she said after that–“a
thing that sang. She used to sing. He killed that too.”
Her voice tightened.

Mrs. Peters moved uneasily.

“Of course we don’t know who killed the bird.”

“I knew John Wright,” was Mrs. Hale’s answer.

“It was an awful thing was done in this house that

night, Mrs. Hale,” said the sheriff’s wife. “Killing a man
while he slept–slipping a thing round his neck that
choked the life out of him.”

Mrs. Hale’s hand went out to the bird cage.

Susan Glaspell Jury of Her Peers 10

“We don’t know who killed him,” whispered Mrs.

Peters wildly. “We don’t know.”

Mrs. Hale had not moved. “If there had been years

and years of–nothing, then a bird to sing to you, it
would be awful–still–after the bird was still.”

It was as if something within her not herself had

spoken, and it found in Mrs. Peters something she did
not know as herself.

“I know what stillness is,” she said, in a queer,

monotonous voice. “When we homesteaded in Dakota,
and my first baby died–after he was two years old–
and me with no other then–”

Mrs. Hale stirred.

“How soon do you suppose they’ll be through

looking for the evidence?”

“I know what stillness is,” repeated Mrs. Peters, in

just that same way. Then she too pulled back. “The
law has got to punish crime, Mrs. Hale,” she said in her
tight little way.

“I wish you’d seen Minnie Foster,” was the answer,

“when she wore a white dress with blue ribbons, and
stood up there in the choir and sang.”

The picture of that girl, the fact that she had lived

neighbor to that girl for twenty years, and had let her
die for lack of life, was suddenly more than she could
bear.

“Oh, I wish I’d come over here once in a while!” she

cried. “That was a crime! Who’s going to punish that?”

“We mustn’t take on,” said Mrs. Peters, with a

frightened look toward the stairs.

“I might ‘a’ known she needed help! I tell you, it’s

queer, Mrs. Peters. We live close together, and we live
far apart. We all go through the same things–it’s all
just a different kind of the same thing! If it weren’t–
why do you and I understand? Why do we know–what
we know this minute?”

She dashed her hand across her eyes. Then, seeing

the jar of fruit on the table she reached for it and
choked out:

“If I was you I wouldn’t tell her her fruit was gone!

Tell her it ain’t. Tell her it’s all right–all of it. Here–
take this in to prove it to her! She–she may never
know whether it was broke or not.”

She turned away.

Mrs. Peters reached out for the bottle of fruit as if
she were glad to take it–as if touching a familiar
thing, having something to do, could keep her from
something else. She got up, looked about for
something to wrap the fruit in, took a petticoat from
the pile of clothes she had brought from the front
room, and nervously started winding that round the
bottle.

“My!” she began, in a high, false voice, “it’s a good

thing the men couldn’t hear us! Getting all stirred up
over a little thing like a–dead canary.” She hurried
over that. “As if that could have anything to do with–
with–My, wouldn’t they laugh?”

Footsteps were heard on the stairs.

“Maybe they would,” muttered Mrs. Hale–“maybe

they wouldn’t.”

“No, Peters,” said the county attorney incisively;

“it’s all perfectly clear, except the reason for doing it.
But you know juries when it comes to women. If there
was some definite thing–something to show.
Something to make a story about. A thing that would
connect up with this clumsy way of doing it.”

In a covert way Mrs. Hale looked at Mrs. Peters.

Mrs. Peters was looking at her. Quickly they looked
away from each other. The outer door opened and Mr.
Hale came in.

“I’ve got the team round now,” he said. “Pretty

cold out there.”

“I’m going to stay here awhile by myself,” the

county attorney suddenly announced. “You can send
Frank out for me, can’t you?” he asked the sheriff. “I
want to go over everything. I’m not satisfied we can’t
do better.”

Again, for one brief moment, the two women’s

eyes found one another.

The sheriff came up to the table.

“Did you want to see what Mrs. Peters was going to

take in?”

The county attorney picked up the apron. He

laughed.

“Oh, I guess they’re not very dangerous things the

ladies have picked out.”

Mrs. Hale’s hand was on the sewing basket in which

the box was concealed. She felt that she ought to take
her hand off the basket. She did not seem able to. He
picked up one of the quilt blocks which she had piled
on to cover the box. Her eyes felt like fire. She had a

Susan Glaspell Jury of Her Peers 11

feeling that if he took up the basket she would snatch
it from him.

But he did not take it up. With another little

laugh, he turned away, saying:

“No; Mrs. Peters doesn’t need supervising. For that

matter, a sheriff’s wife is married to the law. Ever
think of it that way, Mrs. Peters?”

Mrs. Peters was standing beside the table. Mrs.

Hale shot a look up at her; but she could not see her
face. Mrs. Peters had turned away. When she spoke,
her voice was muffled.

“Not–just that way,” she said.

“Married to the law!” chuckled Mrs. Peters’

husband. He moved toward the door into the front
room, and said to the county attorney:

“I just want you to come in here a minute, George.

We ought to take a look at these windows.”

“Oh–windows,” said the county attorney

scoffingly.

“We’ll be right out, Mr. Hale,” said the sheriff to

the farmer, who was still waiting by the door.

Hale went to look after the horses. The sheriff

followed the county attorney into the other room.
Again–for one final moment–the two women were
alone in that kitchen.

Martha Hale sprang up, her hands tight together,

looking at that other woman, with whom it rested. At
first she could not see her eyes, for the sheriff’s wife
had not turned back since she turned away at that
suggestion of being married to the law. But now Mrs.
Hale made her turn back. Her eyes made her turn
back. Slowly, unwillingly, Mrs. Peters turned her head
until her eyes met the eyes of the other woman. There
was a moment when they held each other in a steady,
burning look in which there was no evasion or
flinching. Then Martha Hale’s eyes pointed the way to
the basket in which was hidden the thing that would
make certain the conviction of the other woman–that
woman who was not there and yet who had been there
with them all through that hour.

For a moment Mrs. Peters did not move. And then

she did it. With a rush forward, she threw back the
quilt pieces, got the box, tried to put it in her
handbag. It was too big. Desperately she opened it,
started to take the bird out. But there she broke–she
could not touch the bird. She stood there helpless,
foolish.

There was the sound of a knob turning in the inner
door. Martha Hale snatched the box from the sheriff’s
wife, and got it in the pocket of her big coat just as
the sheriff and the county attorney came back into the
kitchen.

“Well, Henry,” said the county attorney

facetiously, “at least we found out that she was not
going to quilt it. She was going to–what is it you call
it, ladies?”

Mrs. Hale’s hand was against the pocket of her

coat.

“We call it–knot it, Mr. Henderson.”

The Elements of Fiction

Tools for Analyzing and Composing Prose

Characters
Protagonist
The hero/heroin—main character
What is at stake for the protagonist?
What is his/her greatest fear?
What is her greatest desire?
Antagonist
The “bad” gal/guy
Stands directly in the path of the protagonist achieving his/her greatest desire.
Usually embodies the protagonists greatest fear
Minor characters
Play a role in assisting the protagonist achieve his/her goal
Helps to move the plot forward in some way.

Point of View
The vantage point from which a narrative is told
first-person
third-person point of view –person narratives come in two types:
3rd person omniscient
3rd person limited

1st Person

– the author tells the story through a character who refers to himself or herself as “I.”

3rd Person Omniscient
assumes the vantage point of an all-knowing narrator able not only to recount the action thoroughly and reliably but also to enter the mind of any character in the work or any time in order to reveal his or her thoughts, feelings, and beliefs directly to the reader.

3rd Person Limited

recounts the story through the eyes of a single character (or occasionally more than one, but not all or the narrator would be an omniscient narrator).

Setting
Where is this story taking place?
Location (country, state, City, small town, etc.)
Place (an apartment, on the train, etc.)
When is the story?
The time period

Plot
Plot—events that take place in the story, which is centered around the conflict
Conflict, no matter how subtle, is the crux of all stories. A story cannot exist without conflict

Plot Types
Man vs Man
Man vs Self
Man vs Society
Man vs Technology

The Plot Arc

Theme

What is the message, insight, advice, shared with readers as s/he investigates the elements of fiction as a whole.

“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 ·WAL~PAPER. 649

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

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 sub­
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
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
breadths, but not otherwise.

Looked at in one way each breadth
stands alone, the bloated curves and
flourishes – a kind
of ” debased Roma-
nesque” with deli-
rium 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 sea-
weeds 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
it is almost intact,
and there, when the
crosslights fade and the low sun shines
directly upon it, I can almost fancy radia-
tion after all, – the interminable gro-
tesque seem to form around a common
centre and rush off in headlong plunges
of equal distraction.

It makes me tired to follow it. I will
take a nap I guess.

* * * * * *
I don’t know why I should write this.
I don’t want to.
I don’t feel able.
And I know John would think it

absurd. But I must say what I feel
and think in some way – it is such a-
relief !

But the effort is getting to be greater
than the relief.

Half the time now I am awfully lazy,.
and lie down ever so much.

o John says I mustn’t lose my strength,.
and has me take cod liver oil and lots of

II Sh e didn’t know I was in the Room. Il

tonics and things, to say nothing of ale-
and wine and rare meat.

Dear John! He loves me very dearlYr
and hates to have me sick. I tried to
have a real earnest 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 wasn’t able to go, nor”
able to stand it after I got there j and I
did not make out a very good case for
myself, for I was crying before I had fin-
ished.

·652 THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER.

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

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.

* * * * * *
On a pattern like this, by daylight,

there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of
law, that is a ‘ constant irritant to a nor­
mal mind.

The color is hideous enough, and un­
reliable enough, and infuriating enough,
but the pattern is torturing.

You think you have mastered it, but
just as you get well underway in following,
it turns a back-somersault and there you
are. It slaps you in the face, knocks
you down, and tramples upon you. It is
like a bad dream.

The outside pattern is a florid ara­
besque, reminding one of a fungus. If
you can imagine a toadstool in joints, an
interminable string of toadstools, budding
and sprouting in endless convolutions­
why, that is something like it.

That is, sometimes!
There is one marked peculiarity about

this paper, a thing nobody seems to
notice but myself, and that is that it
changes as the light changes.

When the sun shoots in through the
east window – I always watch for that
first long, straight ray – it changes so
quickly that I never can quite believe it.

That is why I watch it always.
By moonligh[ – the moon shines in all

night when there is a moon – I wouldn’t
know it was the same paper.

At night in any kind of light, in twi­
light, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of
all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The
outside pattern I mean, and the woman
behind it is as plain as can be.

I didn’t realize for a long time what
the thing was that showed behind, that
dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure
it is a woman.

By daylight she is subdued, quiet. I
fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so
still. It is so puzzling. It keeps me
quiet by the hour.

I lie down ever so much now. John says
it is good for me, and to sleep all I can.

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
of John.

He seems very queer sometimes, and
even Jennie has an inexplicable look.

It strikes me occasionally, just as a
scientific hypothesis,- that perhaps it is·
the paper!

I have watched John when he did not
know I was looking, and come into the
room suddenly on the most innocent ex­
cuses, and I’ve caught him several times.
looking at the paper! And Jennie too. I
caught Jennie with her hand on it once_

She didn’t know I was in the room,.
and when I asked her in a quiet, a very
quiet voice, with the most restrained man­
ner possible, what she was doing with the
paper – she turned around as if she had
been caught stealing, and looked quite
angry – asked me why I should frighten .
her so !

Then she said that the paper stained
everything it touched, that she had found
yellow smooches on all my clothes and
John’s, and she wished we would be more’
careful!

Did not that sound innocent? But I
know she was studying that pattern, and
I am determined that nobody shall find
it out but myself!

* * * * * *
Life is very much more excltmg now

than it used to be. You see I have some­
thing more to expect, to look forward to,.
to watch. I really do eat better, and am
more quiet than I was.

John is so pleased to see me improve!
He laughed a little the other day, and
said I seemed to be flourishing in spite
of my wall-paper.

I turned it off with a laugh. I had no
intention of telling him it was because of
the wall-paper – he would make fun of
me. He might even want to take me away.

I don’t want to leave now until I have
found it out. There is a week more, and
I think that will be enough.

* * * * * *
I’m feeling ever so much better! I

654 THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER.

<1on't sleep much at night, for it is so in­ teresting to watch developments j but I :sleep a good deal in the daytime.

In the daytime it is tiresome and per­
p lexing.

There are always new shoots on the
fungus, and new shades of yellow all over
jt. I cannot keep count of them, though
I have tried conscientiously.

It is the strangest yellow, that wall­
paper! It makes me think of all the
yellow things I ever saw – not beautiful
()nes like buttercups, but old foul, bad yel­
low things.

But there is something else about tha

t

paper – the smell! I noticed it the mo­
ment we came into the room, but with so
much air and sun it was not bad. Now
we have had a week of fog and rain, and
whether the windows are open or not, the
:smell is here.

It creeps all over the house.
I find it hovering in the dining-room,

skulking in the parlor, hiding in the hall,
lying in wait for me on the stairs.

It gets into my hair.
. Even when I go to ride, if I turn my
bead suddenly and surprise it – there is
that smell !

Such a peculiar odor, too! I have
:spent hours in trying to analyze it, to find
what it smelled like.

It is not bad – at first, and very
gentle, hut quite the subtlest, most endur­
ing odor I ever met.

In this damp weather it is awful, I
wake up in the night and fihd it hanging
()ver me.

It used to disturb me at first. I
thought seriously of burning the house­
to reach the smell.

But now I am used to it. The only
thing I can think of that it is like is the
~olor of the paper! A yellow smell.

There is a very funny mark on this
wall, low down, near the mopboard. A
streak that runs round the room. It goes
behind every piece of furnitnre, except
the bed, a long, straight, even smoocll, as
if it had been rubbed over and over.

I ‘wonder how it was done and who did
it, and what they did it for. Round and
round and round – round and round and
round – it makes me di zzy!

* * * ¥ * *

i

t

t

t

I really have discovered something at
last.

Through watching so much at night,
when it changes so, I have finally founu out.

The front pattern does move – and no
wonder! The woman behind shakes it!

Sometimes I think there are a great
many women behind, and sometime;, .:;~:!y
one, and she crawls around fast, and her
crawling shakes it all over.

Then in the very ‘ bright spots she
keeps still, and in the very shady spots
she just takes hold of the bars and shakes
them hard.

And she is all the time trying to climb
through. But nobody could climb through
that pattern – it strangles so; I think
that is why it has so many heads.

They get through, and then the pat­
tern strangles them off and turns them
upside down, and makes their eyes white!

If those heads were covered or taken
off it would not be half so bad.

* * * * * *
I think that woman gets out in the

daytime!
And I’ll tell you why – privately ­

I’ve seen her!
I can see her out of everyone of my

windows!
It is the same woman, I know, for she

s 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
hose dark grape ‘ arbors, creeping all

around the garden.
I see her on that long road under the

rees, creeping along, and when a car­
riage comes she hides under the black­
berry 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
ake 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.

655 THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER.

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 got­

ten 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, sleep­

ing 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 to stay in town over
night, and won’t be out until this evening.

Jennie wanted to sleep with me – the
sly thing! but T told her I should un­
doubtedly rest better for a night all
alone. .

That was clever, for really I wasn’t
alone a bit! As soon as it was moon­
light 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 de­
clared I would finish it to-dav !

We go away to-morrow, ~nd they are

moving all my furniture down again to
leave things as they were before.

Jennie looked at the wall in amaze­
ment, 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 be­
lieved 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 bed­
stead nailed down, with the canvas mat­
tress 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 ] ohn
comes.

I want to astonish him.
I’ve got a rope up here that even J en­

nie 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 with­
out 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

I am getting angry enough to do some­
thing desperate. To jump out of the

656 THE YELLOW WALL-PAPER.

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
thJ.t is improper and might be miscon·
strued.

I don’t like to look out of the windows
evell – there are so many of those creep­
ing women, and they creep so fast.

I wonder if they all come out of that
wall-p3.per 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 be­
hind 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!

I t is no use, young man, you can’t open it r
How he does call and pound!
Now he’s crying for an axe.
It would be a shame to break dOWI1l

that beautiful door!
” John dear! ” said I in the gentlest

voice, “the key is down by the front:
steps, under a plaintain leaf! ”

That silenced him for a few moments_
Then he said – very quietly indeed.

” Open the door, my darling! ”
” I can’t,” said 1. “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 stop­
ped 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!

• Yellow Wall-Paper 647
• Yellow Wall-Paper 648
• Yellow Wall-Paper 649
• Yellow Wall-Paper 650
• Yellow Wall-Paper 651
• Yellow Wall-Paper 652
• Yellow Wall-Paper 653
• Yellow Wall-Paper 654
• Yellow Wall-Paper 655
• Yellow Wall-Paper 656