Relationships in The Storm, The Yellow Wallpaper and Young Goodman Brow

  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 ... ...horne suggests in his writing that Brown fell victim to the latter. "Often, awakening suddenly at midnight,", Hawthorne says of Goodman Brown, "he shrank from the bosom of Faith; and at morning or eventide, when the family knelt down at prayer, he scowled and muttered to himself, and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned a Many, I am sure, could interpret or acquisition other sources of conflict for each of the three given stories, as could I. However, I have shown that the ultimate inception of discord must be attributed to the husbands in these stories. Though with varying degrees of distinctness, John's inability to truly understand his wife's needs in "The Yellow Wallpaper", Bobinot's apathy towards Calixta in "The Storm", and Brown's want of faith in "Young Goodman Brown", each act as the kindling used to incite the flame of conflict within these writings.