A woman suffering from 'nervous depression' is confined to a room with yellow wallpaper by her physician husband, who forbids her to write. She writes anyway, in secret, and the wallpaper begins to move. Gilman based the story on her own rest cure and the doctor who prescribed it. The tale is horror, polemic, and psychological study all at once, and its influence on feminist literature has been immense. The narrator's descent is rendered in prose that tightens like a vice. By the end, she is creeping, and so is the reader.