endency-" ("The Yellow Wallpaper" 3) after the birth of her child is ordered to remain in bed to convalesce. The condition of the narrator is such that she is "absolutely forbidden to 'work'" and unable to "relieve the press of ideas" (3) through creative endeavors (she expresses recurrently her will to lighten the press of ideas via writing). Not only does her confinement deteriorate her health from a "slight hysterical tendency" to a complete madness but more importantly, it diminishes her motherhood. Her child, whom she mentions briefly the existence (in relation to the wallpaper), is kept apart in another room with a nanny. From her detainment will result uncanny hallucinations. As Hoffman, in "The Sandman", the reader encounters difficulties to locate the limit between reality and fantasy. Is the automate real or is it merely the consequence of the narrator's imagination? The story's stealthy uncanniness, its sidelong approach both to the condition of women and to the unspeakably antagonistic female body, emerges most clearly in the oscillation of the word "creepy" from figurative to literal: "John was asleep and I hated to waken him, so I kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wallpaper till I felt creepy"(11). The link between female oppression, hysteria, and the uncanny occurs in the letter of the text; in a word, whose meaning sketches the repressed connection between women's social situation, their sickness, and their bodies. Reading the "slight hysterical tendency" displayed by "The Yellow Wallpaper" involves tracing the repression whereby the female body itself becomes a figure for the uncanny and the subjection of women can surface in the form of a linguistic repetition. In fact, she starts seeing the patterns of her bedroom's wallpaper move: "The front pattern does move-and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! (15)...