The short stories “Late Souls” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” have “Marriage” as their main theme in common. However, marriage is treated very differently in the two stories. In “Souls Belated,” Lydia chooses to take charge of her destiny, to deviate from convention and choose what is good for her. She is the strongest character of the couple. Whereas, in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the name of the main character who is also the narrator of the story is not known. She is identified as John's wife. This woman, unlike Lydia in “Souls Belated,” is completely locked into her marriage. This essay will first describe and compare the characters of Lydia and John's wife in the context of marriage, and then examine how marriage is described, treated, and experienced by the couples in these two short stories. the characters of Lydia in "Souls Belated" and John's wife in "The Yellow Wallpaper" in the context of marriage and their perceptions of material duties. To discover what their roles are in the relationship, it is important to understand the characters of Lydia and John's wife, how they describe their marriage and their behavior, in order to see how their choices affect the positive or negative outcomes of their marriage . In "Souls Belated," at the end of the story, the omniscient narrator confides Gannett's thoughts about Lydia, and these thoughts help describe Lydia's character as Gannett sees her. “He had never thought of her as a woman who cried and clung: there was a lucidity in her intuitions which made them appear as the result of reasoning. (Wharton, 411). Lydia is here the portrait of an independent, intelligent and rational woman. She seems to be a stronger person...... middle of paper ......s:General• Hughes Gertrude Reif. (Spring 1986). Subverting the cult of domesticity: Emily Dickinson's critique of women's work. Legacy. Flight. 3, no. 1, pp. 17-2• Professor Catherine Lavender for History 386 (Women's Pasts - Women in New York, 1890-1940), Department of History, Staten Island College of the City University of New York. York, Fall semester 1998.• Trumbull, John. Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776 • Welter, Barabara. (Summer 1966). The cult of true femininity: 1820-1860. American Quarterly. Flight. 18, no. 2, part 1, pp. 151-174 • Wolff, C. Griffin. (1990). Four Stories of American Women. New York, NY: Penguin Books.o Introduction, p. xiii-xxvi• Gilman, C. Perkins., Shulman, R. (1998). Yellow wallpaper and other stories. Oxford: Oxford University Press.o Appendix B “Why did I write “The Yellow Wallpaper”? p. 331