I’m trying to decide which preposition to use to complete a statement about Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. I am describing how a hysterical woman sees things in her wallpaper. Over time these things become the image of a woman. To introduce the situation, I have written the following:
She was hallucinating [preposition] the wallpaper.
Oxford Dictionaries gives a usage example wherein hallucinate is used transitively with no preposition:
I don’t care if they’re hallucinating purple snakes.
This to me sounds like people are seeing purple snakes that are not there. I'm looking for the best way to say that a woman is looking at real wallpaper and seeing it move.
An ngram search produces a lot of hits for hallucinate about, but those also largely represent that a person sees something that isn’t present. For example,
His last days were spent strapped down in a hospital bed hallucinating about snakes and people who wanted to hurt him. [emphasis added]
Is there a correct preposition to use with hallucinate to mean that a person sees something unreal happening inside something real? Or is this improper usage of the word?
Two prepositions I considered are:
- hallucinate over (similar to suffer anxiety over)
- hallucinate on (similar to trippin’ on)
Best Answer
You certainly can follow hallucinating with a preposition, but I don't think any well describes the relationship between the hallucinations and the wallpaper in that story.
I would all be happy with.
I would also be happy with.
I'm inclined to the first, but that's partly because I think the fact that the hallucination was of a woman is itself significant in my reading of that story. You may disagree, or it may be irrelevant to your piece.