Yellow Wall Paper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wall-Paper" has often fallen unintended victim to a specialized form of revisionist history. Most scholarly accounts shrink the number of its pre-1973 appearances in print considerably, as Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar's in the Norton Anthology of Literature by Women (1st ed.): "[the story] was published in May 1892 in The New England Magazine and later reprinted by William Dean Howells in Great Modern American Stories (1920)" (1147). Many accounts indicate that, despite Howells's efforts, "the story was virtually ignored for over fifty years until Elaine Hedges [in her "Afterword" to the Feminist Press edition of 1973] called attention to its virtues, praising it as 'a small literary masterpiece'" (Schumaker 588). Gilbert and Gubar add, more positively, that, during the years between 1920 and 1973, the story "went unprinted and unread" (1148).[sup1] A few sources have noted that the story was issued as a thin book in 1899 by Boston publishers Small, Maynard & Company.

Students and scholars of American or women's literature, then, are often immediately exposed to three myths when introduced to "The Yellow WallPaper": that it was obscure and underappreciated during its author's lifetime; that it barely escaped a fifty-year oblivion in our own century; and that feminists "recovered" it in 1973. Many excellent critical arguments and student interpretations are directly affected by these basic misconceptions.

True to the story's mysterious nature, even its first publication date has been in some question. Critics Lisa Kasmer, Annette Kolodny, and Janice Haney-Peritz follow Gilbert and Gubar in identifying the date as May 1892, but many sources disagree and put the appearance in The New England Magazine at January 1892. Gilman's autobiography recalls the date as May 1891 (119). This source, however, has proved to be inaccurate on many specifics. Gilman was probably thinking of "The Giant Wistaria," which The...