Cover of the 1899 edition of "The Yellow Wall-Paper"

From its first publication in the January 1892 issue of New England Magazine until the early 1970s, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" was viewed variously as a story in the genre of Poe, a ghost story, and as an attack on gender relations. "The Yellow Wall-Paper" now finds its place in the nineteenth-century American literature canon, hailed in the feminist canon, and reprinted in major anthologies.  Gilman tells the story of a woman who very much wants to write; denied opportunities for self expression, she is tempted to read the patterns on the ubiquitous yellow wallpaper on the room of her nursery/prison where she is forced to undergo a rest cure. Critics variously call her psychic journey in the story a victory, a defeat, and a qualified victory.