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During World War II, a young German girl, Rose Blanche, inadvertently discovers a concentration camp not far from her town. She travels there frequently, taking food to the children on the other side of the barbed wire and meets a haunted fate the day she discovers the camp is gone.

This short story—an important piece in early American feminist literature—sheds light on 19th century attitudes toward women with physical and mental illness. In this excerpt, the speaker details her bedroom, a place where her husband and doctors come to encourage her to health. Her ailment is vague; the emphasis is on what others—all men—think and say.