Green Paisley instead of Yellow Wallpaper

When I was a child I used to curl up in my dad’s big green recliner. It was a large, thickly padded chair that could have hosted three of me at once – which made it perfect for napping in. I used to lie between its arms and trace my fingers along the paisley pattern that stretched itself over and around the chair and its welcome embrace. I would draw up and around the lines and imagine the angry face of a vicious king scowling over the rest of the chair with commanding looks. And there below him was the fearful expression of a princess peering back at me, as if to beg my aid. But she could not escape his wrath. I found her there, just as she was before, every day when I laid my head peacefully against the arm of the chair. I would watch her try to run away, but she was hopelessly bound to him by the unsympathetic yarns of paisley. They looped up and through her and knotted around the king. I would invent stories of her escape and exile, but that was always after I found that she had been caught again. I never saw her free. I didn’t want her free.

And I very much doubt that Gilman wanted her “princess” free either.

I can sympathize with Gilman’s depressing longing for freedom – something like comfort taken in the feeling of loneliness. If we are alone we cannot be hurt. At least it seems that that is what Gilman’s mother believed. But as much as we stretch and pull against the yarns that bind us to others, I think that we none truly want to be truly free. We are not quite able to convince ourselves that loneliness does not hurt.

But when we are lonely we don’t want to beg for comfort. We don’t want to turn to the people who have left us alone and call them back to ourselves. No. We want to run as fast as we can, get as far as we can – so that we can look behind in hopes that we have been followed.

What we really want is to be pulled back into the great big arms of a familiar recliner – where there is room for more than one.