Females and Nature in Nathaniel
Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman
Brown” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter”
51270400037 李维娜
2024.11.19
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 -1864) is one of the greatest fiction
writers of 19th-century American literature.
Keywords:
• Puritan ancestry (the Salem Witch Trials in the 1690s)
• Moral metaphors with an anti-Puritan inspiration
• Use of allegory and symbolism
• Inherent evil and sin of humanity
“His writings, to do them justice, are not altogether destitute of fancy and originality; they
might have won him greater reputation but for an inveterate love of allegory, which is apt to
invest his plots and characters with the aspect of scenery and people in the clouds, and to
steal away the human warmth out of his conceptions.”
--Nathaniel Hawthorne, prologue of “Rappaccini’s Daughter”
01 Young Goodman Brown
Allegorical Representation of Faith
Female Character Faith
• An allegorical figure representing the Christian faith
• The personification of virtue rather than a real woman
Brown sees Faith as “[m]y love and my Faith,” “a blessed angel on earth” and plans to “cling
to her skirts and follow her to Heaven (699).”
He thinks that he will be saved through Faith, much as Puritans of the era expected to be
saved through their faith in God, “For by grace are ye saved through faith”(Ephesians 2:8).
Brown has deliberately conflated his wife’s name with a belief system (Keil 40).
wife Faith
≈
faith itself
Idealization of Faith
The 19-century popular opinions about women’s superiority in morality and spirituality
女性解救者：The heroine as a benefactor to improve the hero’s moral development
Allegorical Representation of Faith
As Brown has been relying on Faith to save him, his belief in her differs from his belief in
others both in degree and in kind.
belief in Faith
>>
belief in others
Brown’s reply to the revelations of the wickedness of
his ancestors, Goody Cloyse, Deacon Gookin and the minister:
“We are a people of prayer, and good works to boot, and abide no such wickedness” (701) .
“What if a wretched old woman do choose to go to the devil when I thought she was going to
heaven: is that any reason why I should quit my dear Faith and go after her?” (703)
“With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil!” (704).
Similar Pattern：Brown first expresses shock, then he dismisses the revelations and
resolves to his belief in Faith.
Allegorical Representation of Faith
Brown’s Disillusion with Faith
But something fluttered lightly down through the air and caught on the branch of a tree. The young
man seized it, and beheld a pink ribbon.
.
“My Faith is gone!” cried he, after one stupefied moment. “There is no good on earth; and sin is
but a name. Come devil; for to thee is this world given.” (705)
Problems with the Idealization of Faith
(1) Brown’s lofty attitude toward Faith is not an end in itself but is instrumental;
Idealized Faith is supposed to provide him with an easy road to heaven (Magee 20).
(2) Faith is not completely pure. Lust and sin affect both men and women.
She cannot live up to the standards set by Brown.
(3) Even if Faith is completely pure, her goodness could not save Brown.
If he is to gain salvation at all, he must work it out himself “with fear and
trembling” (Philippians 2:12).
Allegorical Representation of Faith
Pink Ribbons
According to an early Christian theologian Q. S. F. Tertullian, Christian women
should only wear somber clothes to carry Eve’s guilt. Women are “the devil’s
gateway” and have learned how to adorn themselves by consorting with fallen
angels.
Possible Interpretations
• Faith is the “devil’s gateway” for her husband, leading him along the road to
destruction rather than to heaven as Brown initially thinks.
Faith can scarcely function as an allegorical virtue when her personal virtue is
in doubt.
• Pink is neither white nor red, but a color in between, indicating a
psychological state that is neither wholly corrupted nor entirely innocent, but
rather somewhere in the middle.
Pink ribbons symbolize the tainted innocence and spiritual imperfection of
human beings (Wagenknecht 62).
Social Implications in 1692 (the time within the narrative)
Puritanism
The Duality of Human Nature
• Dichotomy between goodness and evil
(非善即恶的二分法)
If “evil is human nature” is true, then
there is no place for goodness.
• The struggle between good and
evil within human nature
• The dark, troubled Puritan mind could not
tell the innocent from the demonic, the
sinner from the saint.
• Whether Faith obeyed, he knew not (708).
• Even the most pious individuals
may harbor sinful desires.
• The good shrank not from the
wicked, nor were the sinners
abashed by the saints (706).
Brown cannot decide which is real:
the sanctity he sees in the village by day? the depravity he sees in the forest at night?
Brown’s gloomy lifetime after that night in the forest:
A critique of the Puritans’ suspicious, spectral, and judgmental outlook
Social Implications in 1835 (the time Hawthorne published the story)
炉边天使：Changing gender roles in the nineteenth-century America
Brown’s “blessed angel”
Women as “Angel in the House”
With the Industrial Revolution pulling men out of the home, the new construction of gender
assigned men the task of providing, women that of nurturing.
At the beginning, Brown kissed goodbye Faith, with him outside and Faith inside the house.
Despite her pleading, Brown refuses to stay home with Faith. Brown only sees her goodness
and is unable to see her fears, needs, and sins.
At the end, Brown apparently considers her in terms of sin. Both of his perspectives (angelic
Faith / demonic Faith), deny the couple the possibility of an authentic adult relationship
(Magee 21).
The story certainly critiques the puritan mind on trial, but it also critiques the sweet view of
women in Hawthorne’s era.
02 Rappaccini's Daughter
Female Individuality & the Dominant Male Perspective
Beatrice “Constructed” as a Poisonous Woman
• Transformed into a poison by her father Rappaccini
Beatrice is a science experiment from birth
She lives only to fulfill the requirements of a dutiful daughter
• Regarded as an academic rival by Doctor Pietro Baglioni
Her destruction is simply the means by which Baglioni punishes Rappaccini
for his unholy science.
• Reimagined as either an idealized lover or a poisonous woman by her lover Giovanni
Side of life: beauty, angelic spirit
Side of death: Beatrice’s poisonous nature, her ability to cause death
The unacceptance of both sides of woman (Hallenbeck 14)
Female Individuality & the Dominant Male Perspective
Conflation of Sexual Maturity, Toxicity, and Virtue
Sexually imposing
Toxic
Non-toxic
→
→
→
Toxic, fearful
Cannot be virtuous, monstrous in soul
Harmless, innocent
Giovanni cannot understand that Beatrice can be at once desirable—that
is, poisonous, and virtuous. If Beatrice is a poisonous woman, then she
cannot be good.
Giovanni believes that those “dreadful peculiarities” in her physical being
cannot exist without some “corresponding monstrosity of soul” (782).
He remains that “the physical directly implies the moral”(Bensick 48).
Therefore, Beatrice’s body must match her soul—she must be given the
antidote.
Female Individuality & the Dominant Male Perspective
Man’s Lack of Understanding and Need to Control
As Hallenbeck states, “Rappaccini’s Daughter” can be interpreted as a story where
woman is victim to man’s lack of understanding and his need to control.
The patriarchal culture has given Giovanni the need to control his environment. He
cannot accept anything that he does not understand, and tries to perfect or change
those things .
Baglioni also facilitates the destruction of Beatrice. Only after Baglioni captivates
Giovanni with a sinister story, Beatrice is redefined from a beauty into a monster
who must be cured of her physical abnormality.
Physical Reality:
• A malevolent force?
• Being deadly to men?
Denied
Unproven
Female Individuality & the Dominant Male Perspective
Beatrice’s Voice and Triumph
“Giovanni, believe it, thought my body be nourished with poison, my spirit is God’s creature,
and craves love as its daily food […] But it was not I. Not for a world of bliss would I have
done it.” (785)
“Farewell, Giovanni! Thy words of hatred are like lead within my heart; but they too will
fall away as I ascend. Oh, was there not, from the first, more poison in thy nature than in
mine?” (786)
While Beatrice may be unfairly reduced to her poisonousness,
she takes solace in knowing that her nature is benevolent.
When we readers strip away the story of the “poisonous woman,”
we find, in the end, just a woman (Crouse 36).
Female Individuality & the Dominant Male Perspective
Symbolism and “Marked Woman”
• Beatrice in “Rappaccini’s Daughter” (1844)
--reduced to the relation to a male figure, her father
• Georgiana in “The Birth-Mark”(1843)
--reduced to a birthmark
• Hester in The Scarlet Letter (1850)
--reduced to the scarlet letter she wears on her chest
As these titles imply, women
protagonists of these stories do not
have control over their interpretation.
Also, they all had tragedy inflicted
upon them by outside forces.
• Hooper in “The Minister's Black Veil”
--chooses to wear the black veil
• Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter
--has control over his body
Among them, Hester becomes
empowered by her symbol and her
ability to influence its meaning, whose
definition begins with the self.
03
Nature in the
Two Stories
Nature in the Two Stories
• Nature as a boundary
For Giovanni, garden represents an unknown world. The secret entrance into the
garden is the boundary between the realm of safety and familiarity and a place with
unknown realities, rules, and possibilities (Hallenbeck 33).
For Goodman Brown, the journey into the forest can be seen as a descent from
consciousness to the subconscious, from reality to illusion, and from light to
darkness (Cook 478).
• Nature as symbols and psychological truth
The forest is a symbol of the subconscious mind where Brown confronts his inner
demons and the darker aspects of human nature. Brown's night in the forest is a
metaphorical representation of a psychological ordeal that anyone might face.
Nature in the Two Stories
Is Brown’s journey into the forest merely a dream?
Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a
witch-meeting? Be it so if you will; but, alas! It was a dream of evil omen for young
Goodman Brown (709) .
“You must look through the surface of American art and see the inner
diabolism of the symbolic meaning, otherwise it is all mere childishness.”
--D. H. Lawrence
This dream is symbolically true.
The symbolic forest of the night is, in effect, young Goodman Brown's own dark
soul, where belief turns into doubt, faith into skepticism, and where the people
encountered are the implications of his daily familiars and ancestral past.
Works Cited
Bensick, Carol Marie. La Nouvelle Beanice: Renaissance and Romance in “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” New Brunswick:
Rutgers UP, 1985.
Cook, Reginald. “The Forest of Goodman Brown’s Night: A Reading of Hawthorne’s ‘Young Goodman Brown’.” New
England Quarterly, vol.43, no.3, 1970, pp. 473-481.
Crouse, Kathleen Mary, Poison in the System: Symbols on the Body and the Body as a Symbol in Select Works of
Nathaniel Hawthorne. Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009-2024), 2011.
Hadella, Charlotte C. Women in Gardens in American Short Fiction, University of New Mexico, 1989. ProQuest.
Hallenbeck, Kathy H. Completing the Circle: A Study of the Archetypal Male and Female in Nathaniel
Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter”, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2002.
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Keil, James C. “Hawthorne’s ‘Young Goodman Brown’: Early Nineteenth-Century and Puritan Constructions of
Gender.” The New England Quarterly, vol. 69, no.1, 1996, pp. 33-55.
Works Cited
Magee, Bruce R. “Faith and Fantasy in ‘Young Goodman Brown.’” Nathaniel Hawthorne Review, vol. 29, no. 1, 2003,
pp. 1-24. JSTOR.
Moran, Kathleen. “Hawthorne & the Duality of Human Nature in ‘Young Goodman Brown’ & ‘My Kinsman, Major
Molineux’.” IUSB Graduate Research Journal, vol. 2, 2015, pp. 21-36.
Petagna, Isabelle. Why they Stay: An Ecofeminist Reading of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Rappaccini’s Daughter” and
“The Birthmark”, ProQuest Dissertations & Theses, 2022.
Talebpour Sheshvan, Narmin, and Farah Ghaderi. "An Eco-Gothic Reading of Hawthorne’s ‘Young Goodman Brown’
and ‘Roger Malvin’s Burial’.” Textual Practice, vol. 35, no. 12, 2021, pp. 1925-1939.
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Belgium: Brepols, 1954.
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Publishing Company, 1989.
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Review, vol. 26, no. 1, 2000, pp. 33-46. JSTOR.
Thank you!
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