Chrysanthemums and Young Goodman Brown

Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1835 short story "Young Goodman Brown" and John Steinbeck's 1938 short story "The Chrysantemums" both deal with female purity and with how it can be easily tainted by temptation. Faith, the protagonist's wife in "Young Goodman Brown" is initially shown advising the main character against performing immoralities. Similarly, Elisa, the central character in "The Chrysantemums," is presented in the first part of the story as an innocent country woman that is solely interested in her gardening. It is very probable that the two authors used women and their frailty as a main concept in their stories with the purpose of emphasizing more general ideas related to society and to how it can be influenced by matters that are seemingly unthreatening. Both women are somewhat stereotypical characters resembling women in the 1830s, and, respectively, in the 1930s.

Even though Hawthorne's story is meant to...
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