The Storm, the Yellow Wallpaper, Young Goodman Brown

Conflicts of Similar Nature in Selected Short Stories


The Storm, The Yellow Wallpaper, Young Goodman Brown




Because writing is inherently romantic in nature, throughout the history of literature, we see many authors’ insights into the enigmatic and often ambiguous subject of love and relationships.   Three short stories penned by three separate American writers deal with such matter: Charlotte Perkins Gillman in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Kate Chopin in “The Storm”, and Nathaniel Hawthorne in “Young Goodman Brown.”   Though the relationships presented in each of these stories are unique in their own persuasion, the same underlying theme runs true in all.   At first glance all of these relationships may appear healthy in their existence; however, further introspection uncovers specific maladies which I believe elicit much of the discord which arises within each of these writings.   All of the husbands in the aforementioned short stories evoke, though some more subtly than others, varying degrees of conflict.


    Gillman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a story pertaining to, and narrated by, a women suffering from depression after the recent birth of a child.   Although the name of the women in the story is never revealed, many believe this is short story is an excerpt from the author’s life.   Much of the setting of the story takes place in an aging mansion recently inhabited by the narrator and John, the narrator’s husband.   Due to her affliction and under strict instruction of her husband John, who is also a physician, the narrator is sentenced to bed rest in one of the upper rooms of the house.   The walls of the room in which the narrator is forced to occupy, are enveloped with decrepit yellow wallpaper displaying an irksome pattern which, coupled with the ennui of doing nothing, works in a maleficent manner on the mental sanctity of the narrator. The narrator’s ailment...