Huck Finn Huck in the

Huck Finn Huck in the Colonial Mansion of the Yellow Wallpaper always said that having to be civilized was all a man done needed to be driven plumb crazy, and I guess that's true of women too. I remember way back when, when I was being trapped in a room with all of these drawings of a girl who had died, this girl who spent so much time thinkin' of heaven when she was alive it seemed she done thought herself dead.

I thought religion and civilization had made her dead crazy. And she died even before she could make her final creepy drawing so there that picture was, staring at me, with this ghoulish girl reaching up to the sky, with all of these arms 'cause the girl couldn't decide what pair of arms looked better. Let me tell you, the wallpaper in this here colonial palace or mansion or whatever ain't much better than those drawings, even though they redone it since the last occupant tore it up.

The woman who lived in this room before me, I reckon, was driven plumb crazy by civilization too -- trapped in this nice room, all she could think about was clawing her way out. I know it ain't nice, but I been reading the diary she left. All the books they have here is the Bible and her diary, though, and I read enough Bible at the widow's, when she was trying to civilize me.

So anyway, this lady who was going crazy, she's saying why she is going crazy because of the wallpaper -- I mean, she said it was the wallpaper. Or that there was this woman trapped behind the wallpaper that was driving her battier than seven bed bugs, and she had to let the woman out.

A said she was crazy, see? But I think it was more just being away from the fresh air and the sun, and having to have doctors and nurses peck at her all day than all that yeller paper and the imaginary lady scratching at it. Her being here and getting this rest cure -- why it sounds just as bad as me being civilized by the widow, I think -- only this woman wanted book learnin' and wasn't given book learnin' or any kind of learnin' at all.

But I guess having to sit doing nothing all day would be the one thing worse than learnin'. Heck, she didn't even get to draw like that other girl. Learning is a funny thing. On one hand, it hurts a body to set for all hours of the day, doing what feels like nothing. But I know my friend Jim woulda just about sold his soul as a boy for the freedom to read, write, and know his letters.

Guess some might say Jim woulda wanted the right just to set all day like the lady that done lived in the yellow room too -- but in a way, she was in her own kinda prison, because no one would let her do just what she pleased, walking around like a body should in the free air. Sure, they said they wanted the best for her, but they also said they wanted the best for Jim, sayin' that keepin' him a slave was for his own good.

Jim was in a pretty place, but he'd rather be on a raft, with me, in the smells and the dirt of the Mississippi than in some clean place and have to do somebody else's bidding all day. Can't say I disagree with him -- so I guess this yellow wallpaper crazy lady didn't have it so good, for all her money. Sure, that lady went crazy, even though she was rich and livin' a high life.

But heck, I might have gone crazy myself staring at the same wallpaper all day, with nothin' to do and I don't have half a mind to get crazy, people would say -- I think I might have gone crazy just on my own steam of thinkin' about what I could be doin'. I can't just get my head around this whole other woman thing.

First I thought she was like another person, then I realized that she was just a pretend woman in the imagination, behind the wallpaper -- and then, I kinda realized that the woman behind the paper was like Jim. Let me explain, I'm not sayin' that Jim was imaginary. Just sayin' that havin' Jim as company made everything easier when things was hard to bear.

And that lady behind the wallpaper I guess made it easier for the real woman to be such a lonesome body all day long, settin' and doin' nothing except feel miserable and sorry for herself -- just as I mighta felt bein' on the river if I hadn't had Jim. And she wanted to set that lady free, even though she kinda felt it was wrong. Just like I wanted to set Jim free, even though I felt it was wrong at the time.

Don't now, though -- Jim has a right to be free just as much as me. But the powerful sorrowful thing about all this is that the lady behind the paper wasn't real, and wasn't a real body needing to be free, like Jim -- or me in the widow's house. The woman that needed freein' was the lady peeling the wallpaper, not the.