"Dorothy Azner, one of the few (only?) women directors to work consistently during the Hollywood studio years, treats melodrama as if it were horror film. While Brahm reveals the claustrophobia of domesticity, Arzner exposes its pathology. Harriet Craig, a pragmatic, middle-class woman, trades idealized notions of romantic love for economic security and marries the house of her dreams. Obsessed with the perfection of her domestic sphere, she cuts herself off first from human relationships, then from human contact in a delirious Liebestod with her house. A nightmare world where a rumpled bedspread is a portent of evil." Kathryn Kalinak