The story entitled Young Goodman Brown is about Goodman Brown himself. The protagonist in the story is Goodman Brown, who was three months married to Faith. He is a religious person who went on an errand, leaving his wife alone. His errand became a journey in a forest where he met an old man holding a staff, which was the devil. It is a journey of choosing between good and evil; a journey that cannot be identified if it is a dream or reality. The genre of the story is mystery and horror, as it is about witchcraft and the devil. The setting is in the Salem village and in the forest where strange events happened.
In the story, the male and the female are defined with the use of nouns and pronouns that would easily make the reader determine the gender of the characters. Meanwhile, there is no crisis about gender identity in the story. No characters in the story portray traits of a gay or a lesbian having difficulty whether to embrace it or not, and there is no desire between same sex in the story. It is just that the society's religion of the characters attributes to their masculine and feminine qualities. Their sexual identities are shaped and formed by the clothes they wear, how they dress, their accessories, and their voices. It is in the story that Goodman Brown just by hearing the voices can already guess that it is Faith and the ministers; females are known to have this soft and high pitch of voice, while males are 'mabangag'. Moreover, the critical assumption of essentialism and constructivism are established in the story because the gender of the characters is easily determined, that if Goodman Brown is biologically male, he will have the male gender and act masculine, and the same happens with the other characters. There is also constructivism due to the reason that the story portrayed a scene that never showed practices that are against the norms or standards of the society. This story follows the belief that a man is for women only and that a woman is for men only. In short, the relationship between men and women is what is natural, and the other relationship is unusual. It is in the story that more of the characters are religious and from the churches, which is why the story follows the rules that might be from the Bible. The Bible entails the dos and don'ts, and one of them is the statement that man is only for women. You can't read the words gays and lesbians in the bible, so if you're one of them, society might call you sinful, or against Christianity. Their society and religion construct the way they believe.
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Additionally, gender is performative in the story, and an example is the wearing of faith a pink ribbon on her hair. She has it throughout the story, and when Goodman Brown sees it in the forest, the first person he thinks of is his wife, Faith. Moreover, Faith is dressed like how a female should be, and acts femininely; the other characters too act how they should be according to their sex. In addition, the pink color of the ribbon might emphasize the femininity of Faith because the color pink is more likely to be linked with females.
In conclusion, what's queer in the story is not the idea of homosexuality. The story is about the idea of heteronormativity. It is the idea that two opposite sexes are the usual lovers. The reason behind it is because it is the way we are thought to think and feel. The story is bound with religious people, making the behavior of the characters according to what is believed to be.
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