Never Let Me Go

I've re-read The People's Act of Love twice, but it feels like both more and less. This is the book that shook my already quivering soul (for more perfectly justified hyperbole just click here), but I can never quite remember the plot. Each time I read it, I feel more immersed in it, like that's my real life and this life, the one where I'm typing away at a keyboard, is the fantasy. But I cannot tell you the names of the main characters without a quick Google search to jog my memory. 

Does it matter, a part of me pipes up? I'm not writing an essay on it! Well, not exactly...

My point is that I could read The People's Act of Love over and over and make new discoveries every time (like the plot and the characters' names, you quip), like an entomologist in the depths of the Amazon rainforest (you know, assuming we haven't cut or burnt the entire thing down by the time I finally publish this post).

That kind of constant epiphany was what I was expecting when I started re-reading Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. After all, any first reading of an Ishiguro is the slow (dare I say glacial) unveiling of a mystery that usually kicks off dominoes of existential questions that leave you reeling. In Never Let Me Go, those dominoes begin with the ethics of human cloning and tick on over in neat rows to what makes one human and deserving of human rights. 

So, on my second reading, I was looking forward to the literary equivalent of knowing winks from the author to me, the kind that make me want to be a better writer. But what I got was a novel where I already knew the ending -- which is, yes, stating the obvious -- and where very very little happens, because that's kind of the point, but that made getting to said ending very tedious. 

Perhaps the real issue is Ishiguro Fatigue. I had just finished reading Klara and the Sun, which covers some of the same ground as Never Let Me Go at a similar pace. The narrator of Klara and the Sun is a kind of android known as an AF (Artificial Friend), which as the name suggests is usually purchased as a companion for children. Her otherness allows for plenty of opportunities for reflection on a world both familiar and unfamiliar, but I confess that at points I was bored.

Given that, why return to the scene of, well, not the same crime, but a similar one? I rarely re-read books, there being so many books that I want to read that the list may as well be infinite. But I was looking for the equivalent of a warm duvet on cold rainy night; I was looking for comfort and I was sure I'd find it in Never Let Me Go.

I'm being hard on good ol' Ishiguro. Both Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day are great novels -- the best adjective I can think of is 'haunting'. But I made the mistake of going back to the haunted house in the daylight, when things generally look less fantastical and more ... previously lived in. If you haven't read them, do so. Now. If you already have, Klara and the Sun should be your next read -- but be forewarned: this is a slow stroll rather than a fast-paced adventure.

The Baby with the Bathtub

I have Another Theory. This one is called the Baby with the Bathtub. Have you ever had a favourite author whose writing style suddenly, and frustratingly, changes? My theory is that the author has received so much negative feedback (fools!) that it has eclipsed the positive reviews. The author is shaken; they rethink their entire writing process and, whoops, out goes the baby with the bathtub.

I have evidence to support my claim. Of course. Who do you think you're dealing with here? Do you think I just start writing without any idea of where I am going? (Don't answer that.)

First, there is David Mitchell, who penned number9dream, Ghostwritten and of course Cloud Atlas, one of my favourite novels, and then switched tempo by writing The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. Every time I read a 'Mitchell', I'm consumed by jealousy; he plays with genre and convention, and he does it in a way that doesn't make me roll my eyes because I know what he's doing and he knows I know what he's doing and it's all so meta. (David Eggers, I'm deliberately not looking at you.)

Jacob de Zoet is also, according to the experts, a masterpiece of genre -- but it's just one genre and it's possibly the most boring one: historical fiction. To add insult to injury, the entire story is told in chronological order, with no literary sleight of hand. Like, at all. It may be a 'masterpiece', but it's no CloudAtlas.

Second, there is Jonathan Safran Foer. I could hear the sigh as I typed his name, but give me a chance. Is his writing a bit sanctimonious? Yes. Is it meta and eyeroll-inducing? Yes and yes. But does he also have a way with words that is like real magic? The answer is obviously yes. Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close are both beautifully written masterpieces woven from words and they stick with me still. 

And then he wrote Here I Am. It's longer than his other books -- perhaps three times longer -- and rather than focusing on one character, tells the story of a Jewish family living in contemporary Washington, DC. It's mundane, rather than magic, although there are moments that sparkle; unrelentingly so. Some reviews suggest that the book is semi-autobiographical and perhaps that's why the magic's missing. It's not terrible, but the bathtub's empty.

So I only have two authors in my arsenal of evidence, but I think I've proven my point. While terribly named, my Baby with the Bathtub theory holds water (har har). Case closed.

The Buried Giant

What follows here is a blogpost I wrote but never finished and so never published. It's a pity because I'm interested to see where I was going with this, especially since I recently re-read Never Let Me Go and I have thoughts.

Kazuo Ishiguro is a one-trick pony. The trick happens to be the equivalent of a naturally born unicorn-pegasus hybrid (apparently known as an alicorn (or even hornipeg, thank you Wikipedia but that cannot possibly be correct, can it?) but which I will call a princess twilight sparkle and await a copyright infringement suit from Hasbro). Now that I have set the tone of my return to the blogosphere, I ask you: Who doesn’t like ponies?

A little while ago, I read an article about intelligent animals that appear to count or answer questions, but are really responding to subtle cues in the examiner's behaviour. Like Clever Hans, a pony that could do simple addition with single-digit numbers, but was really responding to an unconscious tic his owner tacked when stating the correct answer.

Clever Hans and his owner

This article reminded me of the week that I briefly, but with the best of intentions, adopted two puppies. My flatmate’s girlfriend had found a litter of strays playing in the street, but could only catch two of them. Since it was December, and my flatmate and co were visiting family for two weeks, the pups were mine to house-train. So, a few times a day, the pups and I would walk outside and I would pretend not to watch them do their business, but because I was watching them, once they had done their business, I would praise them to make sure it stuck that peeing outside was almost as good as being a princess twilight sparkle.

But then, once inside again, the female would immediately pee on the carpet. E-v-e-r-y t-i-m-e. I started to suspect she was messing with me. I watched her like a hawk to see whether I could find some clue in her behaviour as to her behaviour. Each time she peed inside I would discipline her by lowering my voice and repeating her name, and each time she peed outside I would praise her by raising my voice and repeating her name. But, still, she peed inside. E-v-e-r-y t-i-m-e.

Then I realised that she was just squatting outside and not actually doing her business, but because I was praising her thinking she was doing her business, she thought she was supposed to just squat outside and, since she still needed to pee, would do her business inside even though it led to her being called by name in an ominous tone of voice. She also hollowed out the couch from underneath, so that she could nap inside the couch, and hid the stuffing.

Ishiguro's novel The Buried Giant is about an elderly couple named Axl and Beatrice who are on a journey to visit their son. Their journey takes place in sixth-century Britain, a period I confess I know very little about. The highlights according to Wikipedia are: plague, famine and drought.  The highlights according to the novel are that the Romans are gone, and the Saxons and Britons have been at war, but the Saxons have won, and there is a kind of tense truce between them. Ogres are real, but not a problem "provided one did not provoke them". After all "in those days there was so much else to worry about. How to get food out of the hard ground; how not to run out of firewood..."

The one-trick pony that is Ishiguro's writing style physically takes form in the novel as a "mist" that is erasing the corners of people's memories and a dragon named Querig (which is dragon for princess twilight sparkle thank you very much). The main characters share a Alzheimer's-like amnesia of their own lives that affects even their memories of their son and where he lives, so that their entire journey is tinged with anxiety. Along their tense journey, the elderly couple meet villagers, children, soldiers and miscellaneous ferrymen, all affected by the mist.

This pony has been called many names by many readers, including "level banality" and "rhetoric in search of a form", an insult so snide it hisses. But let's call it Clever Hans princess twilight sparkle here. All of Ishiguro's stories slowly, so slowly that it's almost painful, unveil their secrets in layers as they speak, as they act, as they reason, as they dream. In Ishiguro's other novels, this amnesia that slowly builds a model of itself protects and hides secrets, both historical and intimate. In Never Let Me Go, the dilemma is the ethics of cloning. In Artist of a Floating World, it is Japanese actions during World War II. (I am not even going to pretend I understood The Unconsoled, however,)

On another level, the novel is a good analogy for its author’s style - here the metaphor becomes a bit strained...

And? And ...? I guess I'll never know now. To avoid cross-contamination, I'll blog my thoughts about Never Let Me Go in a different post.  

The City We Became

Some cities are just more real than others. That's the premise of The City We Became, where some cities are born and become sentient, represented by chosen citizens known as 'avatars'; they include Hong Kong and Sao Paulo -- and now New York. I haven't been 'home' in 15 years, but Jo'burg could be one of those cities. As I read, I couldn't help but wonder what the avatar of Jo'burg be like. He (why a 'he'?) would be a hustler, a survivor; he wouldn't be from there but he'd be of there; he'd place value in watches, cars, houses but also in fortitude, in smiling through the pain, in never saying never.

In The City We Became, the neonatal New York and its six avatars (five boroughs plus one to rule them all) have to fight for survival against an ancient enemy known as the Woman in White (snappy name). To do this, they have to find each other and fight as one. The premise is original, but the plot is well-worn -- for a reason: it makes for great storytelling. And the author, NK Jemisin, tells a great story. There's just one catch.

I have a theory -- let's call it my 'He was in the vicinity' theory. Authors and writers create bad guys (and sometimes good guys) who are larger than life and apparently impossible to defeat -- until ... until some flaw or accident or characteristic unique to the hero (that the hero usually doesn't know how to exert or control) cuts them down. But the flaw or accident or characteristic is just so insignificant next the legend of the bad guy that the author has created. The defeat is tainted because the victory seems coincidental, rather than earned, but we give it to the hero because, well, he was in the vicinity.

The City We Became suffers from Vicinity syndrome. The Woman in White is not only ancient, she's angry (as it turns out, not unjustifiably so) and she's everywhere. The author describes in excruciating detail the feathery white tendrils that adorn buildings, roads and even people, in some places forming portals to another dimension that are like wide cables that extend from the ground into the sky. 

By contrast, the city's avatars are newborns. Only two of them have any conscious understanding of who they are and what they can do, one more so than the other. They bounce from encounter with the Woman in White and her lackeys to encounter, surviving mostly by dumb luck and occasionally instinct. In the process, they glean some information about who or what they are, because the antagonist can't resist the opportunity to monologue.

Ultimately, they survive, because this book has sequels and why would someone read a sequel with no surviving characters? But they do it by obliterating two of the initial premises, which I call cheating. So not only do the characters win against an enemy who outranked them but they do it by changing the rules. This is a corollary to my initial theory: sometimes the only way for an author to defeat their own villain is to prove that one of their own statements about said villain or about the universe they have created is untrue. Sometimes they get away with it; sometimes it triggers my existing trust issues. In this book, it was the latter.

When I think about this book, the adjective that comes to mind is 'slick'. The author is quick to distract us from the destruction of the laws of her own universe and on to happier things. Much like she does in other sections of the book, for example, when the avatars find out the tragic truth behind how their city comes to be sentient and the reason for the Woman in White's anger. One of the avatars briefly has an existential crisis, but she gets over it remarkably quickly and doesn't mention it again.

Rarely does a review criticise a book for being well written and edited, but this book could stand to be rougher around the edges. It is too neat, distracting the reader from the shapes the plot is contorted into to convince you that good is good and coincidently it's also the side that's telling the story. I want a story where the Woman in White is not only manipulative, she's also right; she's just telling a different story. 

I also want a story that doesn't violate its own premises so that those in the vicinity can claim victory.

The Last Policeman series

I'm not generally one for detective novels or police procedurals, unless what we're hunting down is some metaphysical truth or something half in and half out of this world, because (and this shouldn't come as a shock to you, oh regular reader) I don't have much time for the real world. It's dull and disappointing and not what I was promised, but that's a whole other post.

I was going to introduce The Last Policeman series as an exception, but on (brief) reflection, it fits the mold. At the beginning of the first book, an asteroid has just been discovered heading towards Earth (it was 'hiding' behind the Sun) and humanity has 150 days to get its affairs in order before an extinction level event. North America will be spared the brunt of the impact (of course), but not the fallout.

So, now, the question is: What do you do when you have 150 days to live? The books both ask and answer that question. Most people 'go Bucket List' -- they abandon their loved ones to do the things that up to now they've only ever dreamt of doing: dangerous sports, travelling the world, taking copious amounts of drugs, having sex in public and so on. Everyone else begins hoarding resources and, as time goes on, they strip everything they can find of even middling value.

One man, however, carries on carrying on. As law and order takes on a different shape, a police detective continues taking on cases, even though they seem impossible to solve -- you know, given that everyone has scattered to the four winds and the only certainty is the end of the world in a hundred days and counting.

I read the first book a couple of years ago and I enjoyed it enough to download the other two books in the series, although I only really remember the beginning of the book and a handful of other details. (PS: I wrote a post about it where I misspelt the author's name, which doesn't bode well.) I then started the second book but only got a third of the way in before abandoning it.

But then, at the beginning of 2025, I decided that I have to read all the books I own before buying any new ones. See, I recently moved house and found I had way more stuff than I'd anticipated (I had to hire a second truck), but two thirds of that 'stuff' is books and two thirds of those books are unread... And for anyone suggesting that I *whispering* sell any of my books, you're reading the wrong blog, heathen.

So I read Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro again (I never said I couldn't reread books) and then I read The City We Became by NK Jemisin and then I picked up Countdown City again. I started at the beginning ... and finished it in three days flat.

Unlike my post about the first book, the prose is clear and thin on metaphor, except when needed and even then it's bare bones. Like the main character and the genre itself, the author focuses on fact and function. When he compares one scent to another, for example, it's to tie two events together. 

The main character is more mature than in the first book (although in another sense, he's regressed to a lovestruck pre-teen). Hank Palace (yes, that is genuinely his name) is your classic detective, devoted to revealing the order inherent in the chaos, but he's no longer obsessed with the rule of law but with what is 'right' -- which at the end of days seems a bit of a moving target. For me, that made him easier to empathise with. I love nothing more than an unreliable narrator in an extreme situation whose actions you, the reader, are prepared to justify, no matter what.

And I have a feeling that statement is going to be tested in the third book.

As if the world ending is not enough, the tension really picks up in the second half of the book, although it's slightly undercut when you realise the main character survives at least long enough to feature in one more instalment. That is perhaps my favourite part of the book -- pages and pages of Hank surviving when survival seems pointless. And Houdini the dog, especially the scene where he stands in the doorway like a werewolf, framed by fire. 

In the end the mystery felt a bit constructed, but -- and this should be obvious -- I'm not here for the plot (a bit like in life).

Unfortunately, a rogue blogger already spoilt part of the plot of the third book for me, which I am peeved about, because this one's a doozy. But I'll keep it to myself, at least for now.

My Kindle broke

It's just showing the empty battery screen and won't charge. The funeral will be private. Hopefully I will be back up and running soon.

The Yellow Wallpaper

After finishing the story "The Yellow Wallpaper", I was left with a taste in my mouth -- yes, I know the saying is "a bad taste in my mouth", but that's not what I mean. I was left with a lingering aftertaste, like mouthwash, except that it doesn't make your eyes water -- or maybe it does but not in an unpleasant way. The story sat with me.

Like most of my blog posts from the last five years, the idea for this post came to me months ago and then sat in my drafts folder. When I returned to the draft, it was only one and a half cryptic paragraphs and I couldn't quite remember what My Point had been. (If you are a regular reader or you read far enough back in my blog, you'll know that having A Point - or not having one - is an important part of my writing process.)

So, I decided to read the short story again and blog my thoughts, and see if I could conjure up the sequence of ideas that comprised the planned draft. Someone once told me that my instant messages were like stream of consciousness -- I hit enter at the end of every thought rather than at the end of every sentence or paragraph. I suppose this is a bit like that.

The very first line, which is also the first paragraph of the short story, suggests that the writer is some kind of impostor or that she is out of place. She describes her and her husband as "mere ordinary people", and because this is the late 1800s, she means economically = class = lineage. 

She describes their rental home as "secure ancestral halls", which seems rather pompous now, but I suppose was accurate then. Perhaps I am simply misreading her pride and pleasure in living in a beautiful place. I tend to be a spendthrift and "A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate" sounds like unnecessary expense for two people.

The other thing the first line does is introduce their home "for the summer" as a presence in "The Yellow Wallpaper". I was tempted to describe the building as a 'character', but that suggests some kind of permanence (not the fixed concrete kind, but more the flowing cement kind), because identity, especially when you're writing a character, requires a common thread, something holding the conflicting parts of a character together. (There are so many holes in that statement, but I am going to leave it be for now.) 

As you'll see (or as I'll argue), the building is more a reflection of the narrator's character than a character on its own.

The best thing about the short story is the sense of unease that stalks every line and makes the reader wince. It's like hunting a mythological creature from the sea -- a giant squid, maybe -- that, you'll discover at the last moment, is really hunting you. This unease first appears like a darting dark shadow and accompanying ripples in an otherwise calm sea that rears its head like that of a sea-beast eyeing its prey at the end of the first page.

The narrator notes there is "something queer" about the house because it is being rented out "so cheaply" and because it was empty for so long. (She also describes her assertion as "proud", which is the very last thing I would call the woman in the pages that follow.) The scales of the sea-beast's spine breach the surface as she notes that her husband "laughs" at her justified concerns, "but one expects that in marriage".

I'm not married, but "laughing at your partner" is not part of the marriage vows.

Like women have done throughout history, the narrator justifies her husband's 'micro-aggression' (I believe that's the 'it' term) saying that he "is practical in the extreme" and believes only in things that can be "put down in numbers". You see, Johnnie boy is a doctor and one of "good standing". I struggle to reconcile the two as medical data is qualitative as well as quantitative, but okay.

The narrator then makes a crack about voicing her concerns on "dead paper".

Further proving that she is rational, the narrator writes that her doctor-husband might be the reason she is not recovering (note: this is the first time we time she confides in us about her sickness): "You see," she says, "he does not believe I am sick!" Instead, Dr Husband minimises her illness by diagnosing it as "temporary nervous depression, -- a slight hysterical tendency".

Ah right. Here we have The History of Women's Mental Health in the Western World aka There's Nothing to See Here and Women Be Tripping.

Instead of getting angry, Mrs Doctor shrugs and says "what can one do?" Twice. At first, I was angry at her compliance, but then she writes that her brother is a doctor, too, and he agrees with her husband. Well, obviously, she's the problem then. Darn these women and their emotions.

So she complies with their treatments (for a disease that they say does not exist). And here we come upon my favourite line in the short story: part of her treatment is that she is "absolutely forbidden to 'work' until [she] is well again". I did some research and as the narrator suggests, many doctors believed that "women's problems" were the result of them thinking. (That's it -- the full stop's in the right place.) Women were just not psychologically strong enough to have thoughts. So the treatment was often to "not think". It was called "the rest cure".

I wish I were making this up but I'm not that creative.

Once again, the narrator disagrees with her husband and her brother. She thinks that the best treatment would be work and change (I would argue for purpose and a routine), but "what is one to do?" Indeed.

She does rebel by writing (what she is writing is not clear) and concedes that it is exhausting -- not the act of writing but of rebellion.

She tires of the topic so she changes the topic to -- can you guess? The house. The first thing she says is that it is "beautiful" and the second is that it is "quite alone", surrounded by "hedges and walls and gates that lock". Well, if that isn't a metaphor for something, I'll burn my English literature degree. She goes on about the gardens for a paragraph and mentions how the house stood empty for years ...

And then she says, "there is something strange about the house -- I can feel it". Isn't this kind of intuition part of what got you into this situation, Mrs Doc? Best keep that close to your chest. Oh no, too late. Mrs Doc tells her husband about her feeling and he tells her it's a "draught". I, too, struggle to differentiate between strangeness and a breeze -- it's an easy mistake to make.

Finally! She gets angry with her husband for thinking she's an imbecile and I am with her for all of two seconds before I notice the adverb "unreasonably". Now she attributes her entirely justified emotion of anger to a disease of the emotions that she doesn't really think she has. If she has a condition, it's in that tangled mess.

He won't even let her have the room she wants! She wants one on the ground floor because it opens onto the patio and the windows are bordered by flowers, but no. The fun police insist that they use a bedroom upstairs and again she justifies his iron rule, saying he's so "careful and loving". Those are not two adjectives I would usually put together and, to be honest, I'm willing Mrs Doc to run as if this were a horror movie and they had just discovered that the phone no longer worked.

Her husband is treating her like a child, which is perfect, because she reveals that the room they end up taking (the one he chooses) is -- wait for it -- the nursery. Next level of the metaphor locked and loaded.

Mrs Doc describes how "big" and "airy" the room is, with "air and sunshine galore", but I have watched enough horror movies and read enough ghost stories to know that bad things happen in broad daylight too. And the fact that the "windows are barred" is definitely not alarming, even though she immediately notes that they are barred as a safety precaution for "little children". Is that a thing? Do children often hurl themselves out of windows?

She then notes that the wallpaper is ripped -- but it's ripped above her bed to as far as she can reach, contradicting her little children theory. So she says it looks "as if a boys' school had used it". Again, is this a thing? Do boys at school rip the wallpaper from the walls?

The narrator rambles on for a minute about the artistic quality of the wallpaper and then chucks the 'S' word at you like a practical joke that isn't funny. Still describing the wallpaper, she writes that it's made up of "lame, uncertain curves" that "suddenly commit suicide -- plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard-off contradictions". Obviously the narrator has death on the brain if that's the first metaphor she thinks of for wallpaper patterns.

There's some more description of the "repellant" yellow-orange wallpaper, before Mrs Doc hurriedly notes that she must stop writing because Mr Doc is coming and "he hates to have me write a word". Luckily for her, for the next page or so she doesn't feel like writing, even though her husband is away day and even night -- say what? Apparently he's tending to "serious" cases. Oh, I'm sure he is.

The contradictions now pick up the pace: the narrator says, in one breath, that her case is not serious, and in the next, that "John does not know how much I really suffer".

Then comes a line that I highlighted on first reading: "He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him". I beg to differ, but that's another post.

Here we have the first mention of the baby -- her baby. But she doesn't talk about the child himself. She describes how "Mary is so good with him" and how she can't be with him because of her nervousness. At this point, my bet is on post-partum depression, which sounds like a darn good reason "to suffer" to me.

She quickly changes the subject back to the wallpaper. Hubby won't replace the paper because apparently the worst thing you can do for a depressive is "give way to such fancies". He convinces her that this is her idea, that the room a moment ago she was calling "atrocious" is now "airy and comfortable", by hugging her and calling her his "blessed little goose". I genuinely want to throw up.

She likes the room, she now says, but not the "horrid wallpaper". 

Mrs Doc describes how this room gives her a view of the garden and the bay and a "shaded lane" that runs from a dock to the house. She thinks she can see people walking along the lane, which doesn't sound unreasonable, but of course hubby gaslights her by advising her not to "give way to fancy" (again) because a "nervous weakness" like hers will lead to all sorts of ... well, more fancies. Fancies, being bad, I gather.

"So I try," she writes.

She thinks that writing might relieve some of the "press of ideas" she feels, but she's too exhausted -- that's definitely not a symptom of depression. I mean, it's not a symptom, it's one of the primary symptoms of depression, but I'm not a doctor.

I don't know much about abusive relationships, but to recap, we have a lot of gaslighting and some isolation. I have a feeling there's some love-bombing ("blessed little goose") and now she tells us that she can only see her family when she gets well, because "he would as soon put fireworks in my pillowcase as to let have those stimulating people about now".

And we're only 30% of the way through to this ode to wallpaper.

At this point, it occurs to me that I should separate this post into several shorter posts, but for now, I'm going to keep going. I may insert headings as signposts for the lazy (I mean, you're reading this 'summary', rather than the real thing, so ...).

Of course, it's the wallpaper's fault that she can't see her family -- its "vicious influence", "impertinence" and "everlastingness", represented in an area where the pieces of wallpaper don't align and one part of the pattern is higher than the other. As an editor, I can appreciate how frustrating it is when things are not done perfectly, so I'm with her, but I don't usually blame misused semicolons for my emotional (in)stability. 

But then she gets caught up childhood memories, describing how mini her would lie awake at night, afraid of "blank walls and plain furniture". OK, she doesn't say 'afraid'. She says she would get both "entertainment and terror", which tracks with what we already know about her and, quite honestly, describes her relationship with her husband.

She talks about the furniture for a bit and then we're back at the 'torn' wallpaper. It has a companion in the "scratched and gouged and splintered" floor. What were these boys up to?! "But," she says, "I don't mind a bit -- only the paper."

I'm not buying the excuse that this used to be a children's nursery or a boys' school dormitory. Unless they were feral children who had been captured and imprisoned in the house and had somehow gotten hold of weapons. I can't think of a more logical excuse for the state of the bedroom, but whatever it is, it's not unarmed children.

Luckily, a perfect example of femininity appears to compare our heroine against: the doctor's sister. "She is a perfect, an enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession." I love her already.

Mrs Doc has spied the approach of her sister-in-law through the window, so there's time to wax on about the wallpaper for only another two paragraphs: there's a second pattern that you can only see in certain light, one that's "strange, provoking, formless" and "seems to sulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design". That definitely does not describe our heroine -- the sense that there is something else happening beneath the front she presents to her husband and others. I'm reading too much into it, right?

There's a break, during which the Fourth of July takes place, and Mrs Doc sees her family, and she says she's exhausted even though Jennie (the sister-in-law) saw to everything. That'll happen when you're depressed. Hubby seems to be getting frustrated because he threatens to send his wife away for treatment and while Hubby is bad, another doctor is bound to be even worse.

"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."

But there is a silver lining: Doc is away most of the time now, so Mrs Doc gets to spend time walking in the garden and sitting on the porch alone, rather than sitting in the house staring at wallpaper. But of course it's never far from her mind!

I'm getting tired of describing wallpaper -- I don't know how the author kept it up -- so I'm considering  a placeholder: [WALLPAPER]. I feel like I'm betraying your trust in me but this is also my blog and I can do what I want so [WALLPAPER].

Nah, I can't handle the sense of betrayal, so I came back just to fill this in. Mrs Doc tries to follow the pattern to "some sort of a conclusion" but finds it's not repeated by "any laws of radiation, or alteration, or repetition, or symmetry", but that it is repeated "by the breadths", you know, as wallpaper is. As a result the "sprawling outlines" create "slanting waves of optic horror, like a lot of wallowing seaweeds in full chase". Rarely do I meet a metaphor that fully obscures meaning, but this one is a contender. I have absolutely no idea what seaweed chasing more seaweed looks like.

Then Mrs Doc takes a nap (in a bed that is bolted down to the floor) because she is exhausted from describing the pattern of the wallpaper so indescribably. 

Our heroine's fatigue is getting worse. She feels a pressure to express herself and a relief when she does, but she says, "the effort is getting to be greater than the relief". Doc's response is "tonics and things", along with "ale and wine and rare meat". That is why doctors get a bad rap: bad doctors.

Perkins published this short story in 1892. Western psychology was only a few decades old and Freud was still obsessed with, well, his nethers, but she knew that the notion of hysteria was ridiculous and that the conventional treatments of the time were counterintuitive. However, it would be many more decades before doctors would come around to her way of thinking -- and how many lives were contaminated in the meantime?

According to one source, "hysterical neurosis" was only removed from the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1980. But most doctors were no longer diagnosing "hysteria", in favour of more refined and appropriate descriptions of mental illness by then, right? Wrong. As late as the 1970s, two doctors misdiagnosed an outbreak of myalgic encephalomyelitis as hysteria. That's 80 years later.

Anyway, Mrs Doc tries to have a reasonable conversation with her husband about her options (granted she ends up crying) but he treats her like a child, picking her up, putting her to bed and reading to her until she falls asleep.

Then comes a gem: that she is simply not trying hard enough. "He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and self-control and not let my silly fancies run away with me."

At least the baby is safe from the wallpaper! That's not my thought, but hers: At least "the baby is well and happy, and does not have to occupy this nursery with the horrid wallpaper". "What a fortunate escape!" She seems to suggest that she is accepting a kind of punishment so that her child doesn't have to -- and this is the saddest part of the short story so far.

But she's only distracted from the wallpaper for a few moments, because only Mrs Doc can see the meaning in the wallpaper, which is becoming clearer every day. "It is only the same shape" despite have no pattern except breadth; "it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern". She forgets her mission here, which is to protect her son from being exposed to this ugliness, and thinks "I wish John would take me away from here".

I am getting whiplash.

Our heroine tries to discuss leaving with her husband, because "he is so wise, and ... loves me so." So she waits for him to fall asleep and then broaches the subject. Well, first, she waits for the moonlight (which she hates sometimes) to make the wallpaper creepier than normal, until "The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern" in its desire to get out, so much so that she had to get up and touch it to see if it was moving, and then she asks him if they can leave.

When she wakes him up, he asks her "What is it, little girl?"

I'm leaving a bit of a gap here for my blood pressure to go back to normal. Because if someone asked me that ... middle of the night or no ... even if I was touching the wallpaper to check if there was a woman trying to get out ... well, there would be problems.

Anyway, she asks and he says no, because she is really better, whether she realises it or not. Trust him, because he's a doctor, yadda yadda. She must be getting better because she argues with him.

To which he responds: "Bless her little heart ... she shall be as sick as she pleases!"

She leaves that without touching it and merely asks that he not leave her alone again before the lease on the house ends, which is only another three weeks. He assures her, and once more tries to convince her "Really, dear, you are better!" I'm proud of her as she starts to disagree with him, but then he gives her a "stern, reproachful look" like a father chiding a teenager. He gaslights her for a bit because he's "a physician" and she has "a temperament like yours" and then they sleep. 

Well, no, he sleeps and she tries to figure out where the pattern in the wallpaper (which doesn't exist) begins and ends.

And we're at 60%.

When morning comes, Mrs Doc is still trying to figure out the pattern. Except that, "by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law" that is "torturing". Essentially, you try to follow it and it evades you, slapping you in the face and trampling all over you. The outside pattern, in particular, is like "a fungus" -- "a toadstool in joints", whatever that means.

She confides in us that the pattern changes with the light -- but she is the only one who seems to notice, which is "why I watch it always". That's definitely why. It has nothing to do with the fact that you are struggling with mental illness and the only therapeutic advice you are getting is to eat well and spend all your time alone, away from family, doing nothing and this external factor gives you something to fixate on and obsess over.

Luckily, Mrs Doc is being a good girl. She is sleeping a lot -- no, wait, she pretends to sleep. Why would you do that?

She writes, "I am getting a little afraid of John" and his sister, too, because they ... seem to be colluding with the wallpaper. Paranoia? Not our "little girl"!

On the bright side, ensuring that no one knows the secret of the wallpaper (i.e. the woman trapped inside trying to get out) gives our heroine something to focus on. It gives her a purpose. So she eats well and says little and sleeps a lot (or at least, seems to) and laughs at her husband's unfunny jokes, and her doctor-husband is thrilled. 

But in reality, she is watching the wallpaper: "There are always new shoots on the fungus and new shades of yellow all over it. I cannot keep count ..."

After a week of fog and rain, the wallpaper unleashes another weapon: its smell, which "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." Luckily, she doesn't consider any drastic action as part of her final battle against the wallpaper. "I thought seriously of burning the house," she says. 

But then she gets used to the smell, so her focus shifts back to the colour of the wallpaper. Because she's noticed a new mark behind the furniture that goes around the room: "round and round and round -- it makes me dizzy!"

Then our heroine makes a horrifying discovery: there are many women trying to escape the wallpaper, but "the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white!" The discovery wouldn't be so bad, she says, "If those heads were covered or taken off". That's practical, I guess.

But no wait, that's not all. It gets worse: "that woman gets out in the daytime!" Our heroine knows this because she has seen her. She knows it's the same woman because she creeps and "most woman do not creep by daylight". She hasn't seen her in the house, but in the lane she can see from the bedroom window -- the one which her husband said no one used. She understands exactly why the woman creeps and hides, she tells us. "It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight."

And in an instant, we know the creeping woman is her, our heroine. "I always lock the door when I creep by daylight," she tells us. And "I don't want anybody to get that woman out at night but myself."

After that revelation, our heroine goes back to feigning ignorance. Now her obsession is removing the wallpaper. But she doesn't mean to simply pull it from the wall: she means to dissect it, pulling the patterns apart. And there's more to her plan, but her paranoia has now obliterated all sense and she doesn't dare "trust people too much".

She was being a good girl, but her hubby is onto her now and (I hate to be on his side but) she sees him as the enemy now. When he asks questions about her behaviour, where once she have seen that as evidence he loved her, now she states, "As if I couldn't see through him!" 

Because obviously the wallpaper has corrupted him.

I almost feel guilty that I've maligned the doctor's character so much to this point. Almost.

The husband and his wife are due to move back home the next day, with the room empty of everything except the bed (bolted to the floor, remember?) so Mrs Doc begins to pull the wallpaper down with the help of the woman inside: "I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled".

Her sister-in-law is a bit disconcerted, but ultimately doesn't protest when Mrs Doc says she wants to spend the night in the empty room.

That night, she strikes, locking the door to the bedroom and throwing the key out of the window. She has a rope, which she justifies saying that she will use it to tie up the creeping woman. If you think she has any rational thought left, that leaves when she bites a piece of the bed frame off in frustration because she cannot move it. Then she peels off the remaining wallpaper she can reach ... "and the pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just shriek with derision!"

She is, however, rational enough to know she shouldn't jump out the window because "a step like that is improper and might be misconstrued". At least she still has her priorities straight.

The last few pages are hard to read.

Now she merges with the woman/women in the wallpaper. She sees the women from the window and she wonders, "I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper, as I did?" She fastens the rope around her (though it's not clear if it's by her waist or neck) and circles the room, her shoulder pressed up against the wall, so that no one can take her outside. "I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes at night, and that is hard!" she says.

Her husband finally finds the key and opens the door, but, ironically, faints as soon as he sees her -- so she has to step over him as she continues to pace the circumference of the room, over and over again. The last thing she says to him is, "I've got out at last, in spite of you and Jane! And I've pulled off most of the wallpaper, so you can't put me back!"

So our heroine wins, in a sense, by defying her husband, but at what expense? What other outcome was there in a society that denied her agency? She could either take that agency and be mad, or she could be "well" and live under her husband's thumb. But we know that, beyond the story, she's most likely going to institutionalised because of her behaviour, so even this choice is none at all.

Here we have the literal "madwoman in the attic" (coined in 1979 with Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gunbar's book, which you can access here for free) -- an unnamed woman suffering post-partum depression, treated with isolation and a lack of stimulation. That's where the taste in my mouth was coming from.

As I said at the beginning, the title might as well be The History of Women's Mental Health in the Western World aka There's Nothing to See Here and Women Be Tripping, but it's a lot less snappy than "The Yellow Wallpaper".

Disclaimer: I know that I have been glib about a very unglib topic, but that's my blog and it signifies my extreme frustration with the lack of sensitivity with which people still view depression  today. If you experience depression, please tell me how many times people have told you that you just need to exercise more?! I call it the Virgin Active Cure. If I had to blog my serious reactions, this post would be about two lines long and say pretty much this.