Imagine a scenario in which circumstances outside your control confine you to a single room for an indefinite period of time — and you have basically nothing to do but stare at the walls. Available activities are strictly limited; you aren’t allowed company; you can’t really go outside; time collapses in on itself; and your sense of reality starts fraying at the edges. Does this sound like the plot of 2020 to you? Or does it sound like the plot of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story about a woman pushed slowly into madness by the isolation of a “rest cure” mandated by her husband?

Hm, well, why not both?! That seems to have been Pantone’s reasoning in selecting the newest “Color of the Year.” —The Cut