Settings: A Comparison of Young Goodman Brown and The Yellow Wallpaper Anonymous College

The stories, “Young Goodman Brown” and “The Yellow Wallpaper”, are written with very similar plot lines despite them taking place more than two centuries apart. The forest in “Young Goodman Brown” and the wallpaper in “The Yellow Wallpaper” can be compared along with the Salem Village and the windows. The stories display women being looked down upon because they were only housewives. Faith and Jane act as main characters, but ride along the path of sin and mental health. Goodman and John want to help their wives escape the “dark side”. There are many similarities between the stories, but the settings provide the most important comparisons. “Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman display evil and serene settings that impact the characters significantly.

The forest is the most intriguing location in “Young Goodman Brown”. The main characters, Goodman and his wife Faith, spend the majority of their time in the forest. Hawthorne confirms, “Narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind” (Hawthorne, 201). The setting seems damaging to any character who enters it. The author tells the reader how dangerous the forest is when he says it “closed immediately behind”. The quote...