Content Warning: The source material for this study guide refences sexual abuse, misogynistic attitudes, and references to “insanity,” which typically corresponds to misleading and stigmatizing depictions of mental health concerns.

An old writer hires a carpenter to modify his bed so he can see the trees through his window each morning when he wakes up. The carpenter gets distracted talking about his brother, who died during the American Civil War. Weeping, he forgets the writer’s specifications. The writer ends up having to use a chair to climb into the bed.

The effort it takes to climb into bed reminds the writer of his age and mortality, though something inside him still feels young. He envisions this part of himself as a young woman dressed in a knight’s chainmail. The unnamed narrator stresses that while this image is absurd, it’s important to get into the writer’s thoughts. In his youth, the writer had known a great number of people in intimate ways. He dreams of the armored woman leading a parade of those people, though all of them have taken on strange shapes, turning them into grotesques. They bother the writer so much that he gets out of bed to write.

The writer produces a work entitled “The Book of the Grotesque.