Compare And Contrast The Yellow Wallpaper And The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter vs. “The Yellow Wallpaper”

The Scarlet Letter and “The Yellow Wallpaper” are similar in certain aspects, however they differ as well in many others.

The two stories have many characteristics that are shared. The main characteristic that the stories have in common is the way the story expresses how the culture was during the time period the story is based in. In The Scarlet Letter, a seventeenth century puritan colony in New England is the setting for the book. During the time of where the story takes place, moral conduct and religious obedience was the number one priority. Hester Prynne, the main character of the story, commits adultery and is forced to wear a symbol of punishment as well as be shunned from the rest of

the town. The story shows how the puritans settle conflicts that deal with moral towards relationships between a man and woman. In the “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the story takes place during the 1800s in a small house where a man and his wife live together with servants. The wife is suffering from a mental illness, so the husband decides to keep her in a room all to herself, isolated from the world around her. She would then spend all of her days alone and only some nights would the husband check in on her state. Back during when the story occurs, American society would treat mental illness patients as if there was nothing wrong with them, and just push them off to the side where they couldn’t affect anything or anyone. This policy was shown during the story through the narrator, as she was isolated and by herself throughout most of the story. The way the stories express the cultural ways of each setting illustrates how life would’ve been like back during that era.
Many differences are displayed between the stories. One difference is the point of view that the story is told through. In The Scarlet Letter, the book is told through the eyes of an omniscient being, while “The Yellow Wallpaper” is told through the narrator’s point of view. Another difference is the time periods where each story takes place. One is thrown into an old seventeenth century, puritan colony while the other story takes place during the mid nineteenth century in an old, small house. Although the stories have different time periods, the society of that time period is still shown in great illustration