ENGL 4310:
The American
Renaissance
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
(1804-1864)
Dr. David Lavery
Spring 2016
the short story: a work
of fiction that can be read
in one sitting and usually
deals with a single,
significant event and its
aftermath
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
Epiphany
James Joyce (pictured), the great
Irish writer, believed that
epiphanies are the essence of
the short story.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
American Fiction Before
Hawthorne
the novel: a work of fiction of
substantial length with numerous
characters, who ordinarily undergo
substantial change(s) over a long
period of time (often weeks and
months if not years). Originating in the
18th Century.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
Watt on the origin of the
novel:
 The printing press
 The need for a middle
class and leisure time
 Early suspicions about
reading fiction
 The novel as a big book
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
American Fiction Before
Hawthorne
Charles Brockden Brown
(1771-1810)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
American Fiction Before
Hawthorne
James Fenimore
Cooper (1789-1851)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
American Fiction Before
Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American Renaissance
American Fiction
Before Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American Renaissance
American Fiction
Before Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American Renaissance
American Fiction
Before Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American Renaissance
Puritanism
• Predestination/Election
• Sin
• Witchcraft Trials
• Sins of the Father
• Its lasting influence on
the American character
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The David Levine Version
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
Seen by Tony Soprano during his daughter Meadow’s college visit to
Bowdoin (Hawthorne’s alma mater) in “College” (The Sopranos,” 1.5).
The quotation is from The Scarlet Letter.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
By some witchcraft or other for I really cannot assign any reasonable why
and wherefore I have been carried apart from the main current of life, and
find it impossible to get back again. . . .
I have secluded myself from society; and yet I never meant any such
thing, nor dreamed what sort of life I was going to lead. I have made a
captive of myself and put me into a dungeon, and now I cannot find the
key to let myself out, and if the door were open, I should be almost afraid
to come out. . . . For the last ten years I have not lived, but only dreamed
of living.—Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Head-Heart Imbalance
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
1837
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
1846
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Renaissance
1846
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
1850
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
1851
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
1854
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
1860
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
Everyman
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
Everyman
Everyman
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
Everyman
Everyman
Main character: Everyman
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
Everyman
Everyman
Main character: Everyman
Everyman’s Journey: Life
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
Everyman
Everyman
Main character: Everyman
Everyman’s Journey: Life
Everyman’s Destination: Death
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
Everyman
Everyman
Main character: Everyman
Everyman’s Journey: Life
Everyman’s Destination: Death
Everyman’s Companions: Worldly Possessions . . .
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
Everyman
Everyman
Main character: Everyman
Everyman’s Journey: Life
Everyman’s Destination: Death
Everyman’s Companions: Worldly Possessions, Good Deeds
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
Everyman
Everyman
Main character: Everyman
Everyman’s Journey: Life
Everyman’s Destination: Death
Everyman’s Companions: Worldly Possessions, Good Deeds
Who can complete the journey of Everyman?
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
AFTER THE KINGS of Great Britain had assumed the right of appointing the colonial governors,
the measures of the latter seldom met with the ready and general approbation which had
been paid to those of their predecessors, under the original charters. The people looked with
most jealous scrutiny to the exercise of power, which did not emanate from themselves, and
they usually rewarded the rulers with slender gratitude for the compliances, by which, in
softening their instructions from beyond the sea, they had incurred the reprehension of those
who gave them. The annals of Massachusetts Bay will inform us, that of six governors, in the
space of about forty years from the surrender of the old charter, under James II, two were
imprisoned by a popular insurrection; a third, as Hutchinson inclines to believe, was driven
from the province by the whizzing of a musketball; a fourth, in the opinion of the same
historian, was hastened to his grave by continual bickerings with the House of
Representatives; and the remaining two, as well as their successors, till the Revolution, were
favored with few and brief intervals of peaceful sway. The inferior members of the court
party, in times of high political excitement, led scarcely a more desirable life. These remarks
may serve as a preface to the following adventures, which chanced upon a summer night,
not far from a hundred years ago. The reader, in order to avoid a long and dry detail of
colonial affairs, is requested to dispense with an account of the train of circumstances, that
had caused much temporary inflammation of the popular mind.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
It was near nine o'clock of a moonlight evening, when a boat crossed the ferry with a single
passenger, who had obtained his conveyance, at that unusual hour, by the promise of an
extra fare. While he stood on the landing-place, searching in either pocket for the means of
fulfilling his agreement, the ferryman lifted a lantern, by the aid of which, and the newly risen
moon, he took a very accurate survey of the stranger's figure. He was a youth of barely
eighteen years, evidently country-bred, and now, as it should seem, upon his first visit to town.
He was clad in a coarse gray coat, well worn, but in excellent repair; his under garments
were durably constructed of leather, and sat tight to a pair of serviceable and well-shaped
limbs; his stockings of blue yarn, were the incontrovertible handiwork of a mother or a sister;
and on his head was a three-cornered hat, which in its better days had perhaps sheltered
the graver brow of the lad's father. Under his left arm was a heavy cudgel, formed of an oak
sapling, and retaining a part of the hardened root; and his equipment was completed by a
wallet, not so abundantly stocked as to incommode the vigorous shoulders on which it hung.
Brown, curly hair, well-shaped features, and bright, cheerful eyes, were nature's gifts, and
worth all that art could have done for his adornment.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
The youth, one of whose names was Robin, finally drew from his pocket the half of a little
province-bill of five shillings, which, in the depreciation of that sort of currency, did but satisfy
the ferryman's demand, with the surplus of a sexangular piece of parchment, valued at three
pence. He then walked forward into the town, with as light a step, as if his day's journey had
not already exceeded thirty miles, and with as eager an eye as if he were entering London
city, instead of the little metropolis of a New England colony. Before Robin had proceeded
far, however, it occurred to him, that he knew not whither to direct his steps; so he paused,
and looked up and down the narrow street, scrutinizing the small and mean wooden
buildings, that were scattered on either side.
"This low hovel cannot be my kinsman's dwelling," thought he, "nor yonder old house, where
the moonlight enters at the broken casement; and truly I see none hereabouts that might be
worthy of him. It would have been wise to inquire my way of the ferryman, and doubtless he
would have gone with me, and earned a shilling from the major for his pains. But the next
man I meet will do as well."
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
He resumed his walk, and was glad to perceive that the street now became wider, and the
houses more respectable in their appearance. He soon discerned a figure moving on
moderately in advance, and hastened his steps to overtake it. As Robin drew nigh, he saw
that the passenger was a man in years, with a full periwig of gray hair, a wide-skirted coat of
dark cloth, and silk stockings rolled above his knees. He carried a long and polished cane,
which he struck down perpendicularly before him, at every step; and at regular intervals he
uttered two successive hems, of a peculiarly solemn and sepulchral intonation. Having made
these observations, Robin laid hold of the skirt of the old man's coat, just when the light from
the open door and windows of a barber's shop fell upon both their figures. "Good evening to
you, honored sir," said he, making a low bow, and still retaining his hold of the skirt. "I pray you
tell me whereabouts is the dwelling of my kinsman, Major Molineux?"
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
The youth's question was uttered very loudly; and one of the barbers, whose razor was
descending on a well-soaped chin, and another who was dressing a Ramillies wig, left their
occupations, and came to the door. The citizen, in the meantime, turned a long-favored
countenance upon Robin, and answered him in a tone of excessive anger and annoyance.
His two sepulchral hems, however, broke into the very centre of his rebuke, with most singular
effect, like a thought of the cold grave obtruding among wrathful passions.
"Let go my garment, fellow! I tell you, I know not the man you speak of. What! I have
authority, I have--hem, hem--authority; and if this be the respect you show for your betters,
your feet shall be brought acquainted with the stocks by daylight, tomorrow morning!"
Robin released the old man's skirt, and hastened away, pursued by an ill-mannered roar of
laughter from the barber's shop. He was at first considerably surprised by the result of his
question, but, being a shrewd youth, soon thought himself able to account for the mystery.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
"This is some country representative," was his conclusion, "who has never seen the inside of my
kinsman's door, and lacks the breeding to answer a stranger civilly. The man is old, or verily--I
might be tempted to turn back and smite him on the nose. Ah, Robin, Robin! even the
barber's boys laugh at you choosing such a guide! You will be wiser in time, friend Robin."
He now became entangled in a succession of crooked and narrow streets, which crossed
each other, and meandered at no great distance from the water-side. The smell of tar was
obvious to his nostrils, the masts of vessels pierced the moonlight above the tops of the
buildings, and the numerous signs, which Robin paused to read, informed him that he was
near the centre of business. But the streets were empty, the shops were closed, and lights
were visible only in the second stories of a few dwelling-houses. At length, on the corner of a
narrow lane, through which he was passing, he beheld the broad countenance of a British
hero swinging before the door of an inn, whence proceeded the voices of many guests. The
casement of one of the lower windows was thrown back, and a very thin curtain permitted
Robin to distinguish a party at supper, round a well-furnished table. The fragrance of the
good cheer steamed forth into the outer air, and the youth could not fail to recollect, that
the last remnant of his travelling stock of provision had yielded to his morning appetite, and
that noon had found, and left him, dinnerless.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
Oh, that a parchment three-penny might give me a right to sit down at yonder table!" said
Robin, with a sigh. "But the major will make me welcome to the best of his victuals; so I will
even step boldly in, and inquire my way to his dwelling."
He entered the tavern, and was guided by the murmur of voices, and the fumes of tobacco,
to the public room. It was a long and low apartment, with oaken walls, grown dark in the
continual smoke, and a floor, which was thickly sanded, but of no immaculate purity. A
number of persons, the larger part of whom appeared to be mariners, or in some way
connected with the sea, occupied the wooden benches, or leather-bottomed chairs,
conversing on various matters, and occasionally lending their attention to some topic of
general interest. Three or four little groups were draining as many bowls of punch, which the
West India trade had long since made a familiar drink in the colony. Others, who had the
appearance of men who lived by regular and laborious handicraft, preferred the insulated
bliss of an unshared potation, and became more taciturn under its influence. Nearly all, in
short, evinced a predilection for the Good Creature in some of its various shapes, for this is a
vice to which, as Fast-day sermons of a hundred years ago will testify, we have a long
hereditary claim. The only guests to whom Robin's sympathies inclined him, were two or
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
sheepish countrymen, who were using the inn somewhat after the fashion of a Turkish
caravansary; they had gotten themselves into the darkest corner of the room, and, heedless
of the Nicotian atmosphere, were supping on the bread of their own ovens, and the bacon
cured in their own chimney-smoke. But though Robin felt a sort of brotherhood with these
strangers, his eyes were attracted from them to a person who stood near the door, holding
whispered conversation with a group of ill-dressed associates. His features were separately
striking almost to grotesqueness, and the whole face left a deep impression on the memory.
The forehead bulged out into a double prominence, with a vale between; the nose came
boldly forth in an irregular curve, and its bridge was of more than a finger's breadth; the
eyebrows were deep and shaggy, and the eyes glowed beneath them like fire in a cave.
While Robin deliberated of whom to inquire respecting his kinsman's dwelling, he was
accosted by the innkeeper, a little man in a stained white apron, who had come to pay his
professional welcome to the stranger. Being in the second generation from a French
Protestant, he seemed to have inherited the courtesy of his parent nation; but no variety of
circumstances was ever known to change his voice from the one shrill note in which he now
addressed Robin.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
"From the country, I presume, Sir?" said he, with a profound bow. "Beg to congratulate you on
your arrival, and trust you intend a long stay with us. Fine town here, Sir, beautiful buildings,
and much that may interest a stranger. May I hope for the honor of your commands in
respect to supper?"
"The man sees a family likeness! the rogue has guessed that I am related to the Major!"
thought Robin, who had hitherto experienced little superfluous civility.
All eyes were now turned on the country lad, standing at the door, in his worn three-cornered
hat, gray coat, leather breeches, and blue yarn stockings, leaning on an oaken cudgel, and
bearing a wallet on his back.
Robin replied to the courteous innkeeper, with such an assumption of confidence as befitted
the major's relative.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
"My honest friend," he said, "I shall make it a point to patronize your house on some occasion
when--" here he could not help lowering his voice--"I may have more than a parchment
three-pence in my pocket. My present business," continued he, speaking with lofty
confidence, "is merely to inquire my way to the dwelling of my kinsman, Major Molineux."
There was a sudden and general movement in the room, which Robin interpreted as
expressing the eagerness of each individual to become his guide. But the innkeeper turned
his eyes to a written paper on the wall, which he read, or seemed to read, with occasional
recurrences to the young man's figure.
"What have we here?" said he, breaking his speech into little dry fragments. "'Left the house
of the subscriber, bounden servant, Hezekiah Mudge--had on, when he went away, gray
coat, leather breeches, master's third best hat. One pound currency reward to whosoever
shall lodge him in any jail of the province.' Better trudge, boy, better trudge!"
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
Robin had begun to draw his hand towards the lighter end of the oak cudgel, but a strange
hostility in every countenance, induced him to relinquish his purpose of breaking the
courteous innkeeper's head. As he turned to leave the room, he encountered a sneering
glance from the bold-featured personage whom he had before noticed; and no sooner was
he beyond the door, than he heard a general laugh, in which the innkeeper's voice might be
distinguished, like the dropping of small stones into a kettle.
"Now, is it not strange," thought Robin, with his usual shrewdness, "is it not strange, that the
confession of an empty pocket should outweigh the name of my kinsman, Major Molineux?
Oh, if I had one of those grinning rascals in the woods, where I and my oak sapling grew up
together, I would teach him that my arm is heavy, though my purse be light!"
On turning the corner of the narrow lane, Robin found himself in a spacious street, with an
unbroken line of lofty houses on each side, and a steepled building at the upper end,
whence the ringing of a bell announced the hour of nine. The light of the moon, and the
lamps from the numerous shop windows, discovered people promenading on the pavement,
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
with stronger hopes than the philosopher seeking an honest man, but with no better fortune.
He had arrived about midway towards the lower end, from which his course began, when he
overheard the approach of someone, who struck down a cane on the flag-stones at every
step, uttering, at regular intervals, two sepulchral hems.
"Mercy on us!" quoth Robin, recognizing the sound.
Turning a corner, which chanced to be close at his right hand, he hastened to pursue his
researches, in some other part of the town. His patience was now wearing low, and he
seemed to feel more fatigue from his rambles since he crossed the ferry, than from his journey
of several days on the other side. Hunger also pleaded loudly within him, and Robin began to
balance the propriety of demanding, violently, and with lifted cudgel, the necessary
guidance from the first solitary passenger, whom he should meet. While a resolution to this
effect was gaining strength, he entered a street of mean appearance, on either side of
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
which a row of ill-built houses was straggling towards the harbor. The moonlight fell upon no
passenger along the whole extent, but in the third domicile which Robin passed there was a
half-opened door, and his keen glance detected a woman's garment within.
"My luck may be better here," said he to himself.
Accordingly, he approached the door, and beheld it shut closer as he did so; yet an open
space remained, sufficing for the fair occupant to observe the stranger, without a
corresponding display on her part. All that Robin could discern was a strip of scarlet
petticoat, and the occasional sparkle of an eye, as if the moonbeams were trembling on
some bright thing.
"Pretty mistress,"for I may call her so with a good conscience, thought the shrewd youth, since
I know nothing to the contrary--"my sweet pretty mistress, will you be kind enough to tell me
whereabouts I must seek the dwelling of my kinsman, Major Molineux?"
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
Robin's voice was plaintive and winning, and the female, seeing nothing to be shunned in
the handsome country youth, thrust open the door, and came forth into the moonlight. She
was a dainty little figure, with a white neck, round arms, and a slender waist, at the extremity
of which her scarlet petticoat jutted out over a hoop, as if she were standing in a balloon.
Moreover, her face was oval and pretty, her hair dark beneath the little cap, and her bright
eyes possessed a sly freedom, which triumphed over those of Robin.
"Major Molineux dwells here," said this fair woman.
Now her voice was the sweetest Robin had heard that night, the airy counterpart of a stream
of melted silver; yet he could not help doubting whether that sweet voice spoke Gospel
truth. He looked up and down the mean street, and then surveyed the house before which
they stood. It was a small, dark edifice of two stories, the second of which projected over the
lower floor; and the front apartment had the aspect of a shop for petty commodities.
"Now truly I am in luck," replied Robin, cunningly, "and so indeed is my kinsman, the major, in
having so pretty a housekeeper. But I prithee trouble him to step to the door; I will deliver him
a message from his friends in the country, and then go back to my lodgings at the inn."
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
"Nay, the Major has been a-bed this hour or more," said the lady of the scarlet petticoat;
"and it would be to little purpose to disturb him tonight, seeing his evening draught was of the
strongest. But he is a kind-hearted man, and it would be as much as my life's worth, to let a
kinsman of his turn away from the door. You are the good old gentleman's very picture, and I
could swear that was his rainy-weather hat. Also he has garments very much resembling
those leather small-clothes. But come in, I pray, for I bid you hearty welcome in his name."
So saying, the fair and hospitable dame took our hero by the hand; and though the touch
was light, and the force was gentleness, and though Robin read in her eyes what he did not
hear in her words, yet the slender-waisted woman, in the scarlet petticoat, proved stronger
than the athletic country youth. She had drawn his half-willing footsteps nearly to the
threshold, when the opening of a door in the neighborhood, startled the Major's
housekeeper, and, leaving the Major's kinsman, she vanished speedily into her own domicile.
A heavy yawn preceded the appearance of a man, who, like the Moonshine of Pyramus
and Thisbe, carried a lantern, needlessly aiding his sister luminary in the heavens. As he
walked sleepily up the street, he turned his broad, dull face on Robin, and displayed a long
staff, spiked at the end.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
"Home, vagabond, home!" said the watchman, in accents that seemed to fall asleep as
soon as they were uttered. "Home, or we'll set you in the stocks by peep of day!"
"This is the second hint of the kind," thought Robin. "I wish they would end my difficulties, by
setting me there tonight."
Nevertheless, the youth felt an instinctive antipathy towards the guardian of midnight order,
which at first prevented him from asking his usual question. But just when the man was about
to vanish behind the corner, Robin resolved not to lose the opportunity, and shouted lustily
after him-"I say, friend! will you guide me to the house of my kinsman, Major Molineux?"
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
The watchman made no reply, but turned the corner and was gone; yet Robin seemed to
hear the sound of drowsy laughter stealing along the solitary street. At that moment, also, a
pleasant titter saluted him from the open window above his head; he looked up, and caught
the sparkle of a saucy eye; a round arm beckoned to him, and next he heard light footsteps
descending the staircase within. But Robin, being of the household of a New England
clergyman, was a good youth, as well as a shrewd one; so he resisted temptation, and fled
away.
He now roamed desperately, and at random, through the town, almost ready to believe that
a spell was on him, like that by which a wizard of his country had once kept three pursuers
wandering, a whole winter night, within twenty paces of the cottage which they sought. The
streets lay before him, strange and desolate, and the lights were extinguished in almost every
house. Twice, however, little parties of men, among whom Robin distinguished individuals in
outlandish attire, came hurrying along; but though on both occasions they paused to
address him, such intercourse did not at all enlighten his perplexity. They did but utter a few
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
words in some language of which Robin knew nothing, and perceiving his inability to answer,
bestowed a curse upon him in plain English, and hastened away. Finally, the lad determined
to knock at the door of every mansion that might appear worthy to be occupied by his
kinsman, trusting that perseverance would overcome the fatality that had hitherto thwarted
him. Firm in this resolve, he was passing beneath the walls of a church, which formed the
corner of two streets, when, as he turned into the shade of its steeple, he encountered a
bulky stranger, muffled in a cloak. The man was proceeding with the speed of earnest
business, but Robin planted himself full before him, holding the oak cudgel with both hands
across his body, as a bar to further passage.
"Halt, honest man, and answer me a question," said he, very resolutely. "Tell me, this instant,
whereabouts is the dwelling of my kinsman, Major Molineux?"
"Keep your tongue between your teeth, fool, and let me pass!" said a deep, gruff voice,
which Robin partly remembered. "Let me pass, I say, or I'll strike you to the earth!"
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
No, no, neighbor!" cried Robin, flourishing his cudgel, and then thrusting its larger end close to
the man's muffled face. "No, no, I'm not the fool you take me for, nor do you pass, till I have
an answer to my question. Whereabouts is the dwelling of my kinsman, Major Molineux?"
The stranger, instead of attempting to force his passage, stepped back into the moonlight,
unmuffled his face, and stared full into that of Robin.
"Watch here an hour, and Major Molineux will pass by," said he.
Robin gazed with dismay, and astonishment, on the unprecedented physiognomy of the
speaker. The forehead with its double prominence, the broad-hooked nose, the shaggy
eyebrows, and fiery eyes, were those which he had noticed at the inn, but the man's
complexion had undergone a singular, or, more properly, a two-fold change. One side of the
face blazed an intense red, while the other was black as midnight, the division line being in
the broad bridge of the nose; and a mouth which seemed to extend from ear to ear was
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
black or red, in contrast to the color of the cheek. The effect was as if two individual devils, a
fiend of fire and a fiend of darkness, had united themselves to form this infernal visage. The
stranger grinned in Robin's face, muffled his parti-colored features, and was out of sight in a
moment.
"Strange things we travellers see!" ejaculated Robin.
He seated himself, however, upon the steps of the church-door, resolving to wait the
appointed time for his kinsman. A few moments were consumed in philosophical
speculations upon the species of the genus homo, who had just left him; but having settled
this point shrewdly, rationally, and satisfactorily, he was compelled to look elsewhere for his
amusement. And first he threw his eyes along the street; it was of more respectable
appearance than most of those into which he had wandered, and the moon, "creating, like
the imaginative power, a beautiful strangeness in familiar objects," gave something of
romance to a scene, that might not have possessed it in the light of day. The irregular and
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
often quaint architecture of the houses, some of whose roofs were broken into numerous little
peaks, while others ascended, steep and narrow, into a single point, and others again were
square; the pure milk-white of some of their complexions, the aged darkness of others, and
the thousand sparklings, reflected from bright substances in the walls of many; these matters
engaged Robin's attention for a while, and then began to grow wearisome. Next he
endeavored to define the forms of distant objects, starting away, with almost ghostly
indistinctness, just as his eye appeared to grasp them; and finally he took a minute survey of
an edifice which stood on the opposite side of the street, directly in front of the church-door,
where he was stationed. It was a large, square mansion, distinguished from its neighbors by a
balcony, which rested on tall pillars, and by an elaborate Gothic window, communicating
therewith.
"Perhaps this is the very house I have been seeking," thought Robin.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
Then he strove to speed away the time, by listening to a murmur which swept continually
along the street, yet was scarcely audible, except to an unaccustomed ear like his; it was a
low, dull, dreamy sound, compounded of many noises, each of which was at too great a
distance to be separately heard. Robin marvelled at this snore of a sleeping town, and
marvelled more whenever its continuity was broken by now and then a distant shout,
apparently loud where it originated. But altogether it was a sleep-inspiring sound, and, to
shake off its drowsy influence, Robin arose, and climbed a window-frame, that he might view
the interior of the church. There the moonbeams came trembling in, and fell down upon the
deserted pews, and extended along the quiet aisles. A fainter, yet more awful radiance, was
hovering around the pulpit, and one solitary ray had dared to rest upon the opened page of
the great Bible. Had nature, in that deep hour, become a worshipper in the house, which
man had builded? Or was that heavenly light the visible sanctity of the place, visible
because no earthly and impure feet were within the walls? The scene made Robin's heart
shiver with a sensation of loneliness, stronger than he had ever felt in the remotest depths of
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
his native woods; so he turned away, and sat down again before the door. There were
graves around the church, and now an uneasy thought obtruded into Robin's breast. What if
the object of his search, which had been so often and so strangely thwarted, were all the
time mouldering in his shroud? What if his kinsman should glide through yonder gate, and
nod and smile to him in dimly passing by?
"Oh, that any breathing thing were here with me!" said Robin.
Recalling his thoughts from this uncomfortable track, he sent them over forest, hill, and
stream, and attempted to imagine how that evening of ambiguity and weariness, had been
spent by his father's household. He pictured them assembled at the door, beneath the tree,
the great old tree, which had been spared for its huge twisted trunk, and venerable shade,
when a thousand leafy brethren fell. There, at the going down of the summer sun, it was his
father's custom to perform domestic worship, that the neighbors might come and join with
him like brothers of the family, and that the wayfaring man might pause to drink at that
fountain, and keep his heart pure by freshening the memory of home. Robin distinguished
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
the seat of every individual of the little audience; he saw the good man in the midst, holding
the Scriptures in the golden light that shone from the western clouds; he beheld him close the
book, and all rise up to pray. He heard the old thanksgivings for daily mercies, the old
supplications for their continuance, to which he had so often listened in weariness, but which
were now among his dear remembrances. He perceived the slight inequality of his father's
voice when he came to speak of the Absent One; he noted how his mother turned her face
to the broad and knotted trunk; how his elder brother scorned, because the beard was
rough upon his upper lip, to permit his features to be moved; how the younger sister drew
down a low hanging branch before her eyes; and how the little one of all, whose sports had
hitherto broken the decorum of the scene, understood the prayer for her playmate, and
burst into clamorous grief. Then he saw them go in at the door; and when Robin would have
entered also, the latch tinkled into its place, and he was excluded from his home.
"Am I here, or there?" cried Robin, starting; for all at once, when his thoughts had become
visible and audible in a dream, the long, wide, solitary street shone out before him.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
He aroused himself, and endeavored to fix his attention steadily upon the large edifice which
he had surveyed before. But still his mind kept vibrating between fancy and reality; by turns,
the pillars of the balcony lengthened into the tall, bare stems of pines, dwindled down to
human figures, settled again into their true shape and size, and then commenced a new
succession of changes. For a single moment, when he deemed himself awake, he could
have sworn that a visage, one which he seemed to remember, yet could not absolutely
name as his kinsman's, was looking towards him from the Gothic window. A deeper sleep
wrestled with and nearly overcame him, but fled at the sound of footsteps along the
opposite pavement. Robin rubbed his eyes, discerned a man passing at the foot of the
balcony, and addressed him in a loud, peevish, and lamentable cry.
"Hallo, friend! must I wait here all night for my kinsman, Major Molineux?"
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
The sleeping echoes awoke, and answered the voice; and the passenger, barely able to
discern a figure sitting in the oblique shade of the steeple, traversed the street to obtain a
nearer view. He was himself a gentleman in his prime, of open, intelligent, cheerful, and
altogether prepossessing countenance. Perceiving a country youth, apparently homeless
and without friends, he accosted him in a tone of real kindness, which had become strange
to Robin's ears.
"Well, my good lad, why are you sitting here?" inquired he. "Can I be of service to you in any
way?"
"I am afraid not, Sir," replied Robin, despondingly; "yet I shall take it kindly, if you'll answer me
a single question. I've been searching, half the night, for one Major Molineux; now, Sir, is there
really such a person in these parts, or am I dreaming?"
"Major Molineux! The name is not altogether strange to me," said the gentleman, smiling.
"Have you any objection to telling me the nature of your business with him?"
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
Then Robin briefly related that his father was a clergyman, settled on a small salary, at a long
distance back in the country, and that he and Major Molineux were brothers' children. The
Major, having inherited riches, and acquired civil and military rank, had visited his cousin, in
great pomp, a year or two before; had manifested much interest in Robin and an elder
brother, and, being childless himself, had thrown out hints respecting the future establishment
of one of them in life. The elder brother was destined to succeed to the farm, which his father
cultivated, in the interval of sacred duties; it was therefore determined that Robin should
profit by his kinsman's generous intentions, especially as he seemed to be rather the favorite,
and was thought to possess other necessary endowments.
"For I have the name of being a shrewd youth," observed Robin, in this part of his story.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
"Not intimately," answered the stranger, "but I chanced to meet him a little time previous to
your stopping me. I believe you may trust his word, and that the Major will very shortly pass
through this street. In the meantime, as I have a singular curiosity to witness your meeting, I
will sit down here upon the steps, and bear you company."
He seated himself accordingly, and soon engaged his companion in animated discourse. It
was but of brief continuance, however, for a noise of shouting, which had long been
remotely audible, drew so much nearer, that Robin inquired its cause.
"What may be the meaning of this uproar?" asked he. "Truly, if your town be always as noisy, I
shall find little sleep, while I am an inhabitant."
"Why, indeed, friend Robin, there do appear to be three or four riotous fellows abroad tonight," replied the gentleman. "You must not expect all the stillness of your native woods, here
in our streets. But the watch will shortly be at the heels of these lads, and--"
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
"Ay, and set them in the stocks by peep of day," interrupted Robin, recollecting his own
encounter with the drowsy lantern-bearer. "But, dear Sir, if I may trust my ears, an army of
watchmen would never make head against such a multitude of rioters. There were at least a
thousand voices went to make up that one shout."
"May not a man have several voices, Robin, as well as two complexions?" said his friend.
"Perhaps a man may; but Heaven forbid that a woman should!" responded the shrewd
youth, thinking of the seductive tones of the Major's housekeeper.
The sounds of a trumpet in some neighboring street now became so evident and continual,
that Robin's curiosity was strongly excited. In addition to the shouts, he heard frequent bursts
from many instruments of discord, and a wild and confused laughter filled up the intervals.
Robin rose from the steps, and looked wistfully towards a point, whither several people
seemed to be hastening.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
"Surely some prodigious merrymaking is going on," exclaimed he. "I have laughed very little
since I left home, Sir, and should be sorry to lose an opportunity. Shall we just step round the
corner by that darkish house, and take our share of the fun?"
"Sit down again, sit down, good Robin," replied the gentleman, laying his hand on the skirt of
the gray coat. "You forget that we must wait here for your kinsman; and there is reason to
believe that he will pass by, in the course of a very few moments."
The near approach of the uproar had now disturbed the neighborhood; windows flew open
on all sides; and many heads, in the attire of the pillow, and confused by sleep suddenly
broken, were protruded to the gaze of whoever had leisure to observe them. Eager voices
hailed each other from house to house, all demanding the explanation, which not a soul
could give. Half-dressed men hurried towards the unknown commotion, stumbling as they
went over the stone steps, that thrust themselves into the narrow foot-walk. The shouts, the
laughter, and the tuneless bray, the antipodes of music, came onward with increasing din, till
scattered individuals, and then denser bodies, began to appear round a corner, at the
distance of a hundred yards.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
"Will you recognize your kinsman, Robin, if he passes in this crowd?" inquired the gentleman.
"Indeed, I can't warrant it, Sir; but I'll take my stand here, and keep a bright look out,"
answered Robin, descending to the outer edge of the pavement.
A mighty stream of people now emptied into the street, and came rolling slowly towards the
church. A single horseman wheeled the corner in the midst of them, and close behind him
came a band of fearful wind-instruments, sending forth a fresher discord, now that no
intervening buildings kept it from the ear. Then a redder light disturbed the moonbeams, and
a dense multitude of torches shone along the street, concealing, by their glare, whatever
object they illuminated. The single horseman, clad in a military dress, and bearing a drawn
sword, rode onward as the leader, and, by his fierce and variegated countenance,
appeared like war personified: the red of one cheek was an emblem of fire and sword; the
blackness of the other betokened the mourning that attends them. In his train were wild
figures in the Indian dress, and many fantastic shapes without a model, giving the whole
march a visionary air, as if a dream had broken forth from some feverish brain, and were
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
sweeping visibly through the midnight streets. A mass of people, inactive, except as
applauding spectators, hemmed the procession in, and several women ran along the sidewalk, piercing the confusion of heavier sounds, with their shrill voices of mirth or terror.
"The double-faced fellow has his eye upon me," muttered Robin, with an indefinite but an
uncomfortable idea that he was himself to bear a part in the pageantry.
The leader turned himself in the saddle, and fixed his glance full upon the country youth, as
the steed went slowly by. When Robin had freed his eyes from those fiery ones, the musicians
were passing before him, and the torches were close at hand; but the unsteady brightness of
the latter formed a veil which he could not penetrate. The rattling of wheels over the stones
sometimes found its way to his ear, and confused traces of a human form appeared at
intervals, and then melted into the vivid light. A moment more, and the leader thundered a
command to halt: the trumpets vomited a horrid breath, and held their peace; the shouts
and laughter of the people died away, and there remained only a universal hum, allied to
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
silence. Right before Robin's eyes was an uncovered cart. There the torches blazed the
brightest, there the moon shone out like day, and there, in tar-and-feathery dignity, sat his
kinsman Major Molineux!
He was an elderly man, of large and majestic person, and strong, square features,
betokening a steady soul; but steady as it was, his enemies had found means to shake it. His
face was pale as death, and far more ghastly; the broad forehead was contracted in his
agony, so that his eyebrows formed one grizzled line; his eyes were red and wild, and the
foam hung white upon his quivering lip. His whole frame was agitated by a quick and
continual tremor, which his pride strove to quell, even in those circumstances of
overwhelming humiliation. But perhaps the bitterest pang of all was when his eyes met those
of Robin; for he evidently knew him on the instant, as the youth stood witnessing the foul
disgrace of a head grown gray in honor. They stared at each other in silence, and Robin's
knees shook, and his hair bristled, with a mixture of pity and terror. Soon, however, a
bewildering excitement began to seize upon his mind; the preceding adventures of the
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
night, the unexpected appearance of the crowd, the torches, the confused din and the
hush that followed, the spectre of his kinsman reviled by that great multitude, all this, and,
more than all, a perception of tremendous ridicule in the whole scene, affected him with a
sort of mental inebriety. At that moment a voice of sluggish merriment saluted Robin's ears;
he turned instinctively, and just behind the corner of the church stood the lantern-bearer,
rubbing his eyes, and drowsily enjoying the lad's amazement. Then he heard a peal of
laughter like the ringing of silvery bells; a woman twitched his arm, a saucy eye met his, and
he saw the lady of the scarlet petticoat. A sharp, dry cachinnation appealed to his memory,
and, standing on tiptoe in the crowd, with his white apron over his head, he beheld the
courteous little innkeeper. And lastly, there sailed over the heads of the multitude a great,
broad laugh, broken in the midst by two sepulchral hems; thus-"Haw, haw, haw--hem, hem--haw, haw, haw, haw!"
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
The sound proceeded from the balcony of the opposite edifice, and thither Robin turned his
eyes. In front of the Gothic window stood the old citizen, wrapped in a wide gown, his gray
periwig exchanged for a night-cap, which was thrust back from his forehead, and his silk
stockings hanging down about his legs. He supported himself on his polished cane in a fit of
convulsive merriment, which manifested itself on his solemn old features like a funny
inscription on a tomb-stone. Then Robin seemed to hear the voices of the barbers, of the
guests of the inn, and of all who had made sport of him that night. The contagion was
spreading among the multitude, when, all at once, it seized upon Robin, and he sent forth a
shout of laughter that echoed through the street; every man shook his sides, every man
emptied his lungs, but Robin's shout was the loudest there. The cloud-spirits peeped from their
silvery islands, as the congregated mirth went roaring up the sky! The Man in the Moon heard
the far bellow; "Oho," quoth he, "the old earth is frolicsome tonight!"
When there was a momentary calm in that tempestuous sea of sound, the leader gave the
sign, the procession resumed its march. On they went, like fiends that throng in mockery
around some dead potentate, mighty no more, but majestic still in his agony. On they went,
in counterfeited pomp, in senseless uproar, in frenzied merriment, trampling all on an old
man's heart. On swept the tumult, and left a silent street behind.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
*
"Well, Robin, are you dreaming?" inquired the gentleman, laying his hand on the youth's
shoulder.
Robin started, and withdrew his arm from the stone post to which he had instinctively clung,
while the living stream rolled by him. His cheek was somewhat pale, and his eye not quite as
lively as in the earlier part of the evening.
"Will you be kind enough to show me the way to the ferry?" said he, after a moment's pause.
"You have, then, adopted a new subject of inquiry?" observed his companion, with a smile.
"Why, yes, Sir," replied Robin, rather dryly. "Thanks to you, and to my other friends, I have at
last met my kinsman, and he will scarce desire to see my face again. I begin to grow weary
of a town life, Sir. Will you show me the way to the ferry?"
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“My Kinsman, Major Molineaux”
"No, my good friend Robin, not to-night, at least," said the gentleman. "Some few days
hence, if you continue to wish it, I will speed you on your journey. Or, if you prefer to remain
with us, perhaps, as you are a shrewd youth, you may rise in the world, without the help of
your kinsman, Major Molineux."
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
YOUNG GOODMAN BROWN came forth at sunset, into the street of Salem village, but put his
head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And
Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind
play with the pink ribbons of her cap, while she called to Goodman Brown.
"Dearest heart," whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips were close to his ear,
"pr'y thee, put off your journey until sunrise, and sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone
woman is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts, that she's afeard of herself,
sometimes. Pray, tarry with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in the year!“
"My love and my Faith," replied young Goodman Brown, "of all nights in the year, this one
night must I tarry away from thee. My journey, as thou callest it, forth and back again, must
needs be done 'twixt now and sunrise. What, my sweet, pretty wife, dost thou doubt me
already, and we but three months married!“
"Then God bless you!" said Faith, with the pink ribbons, "and may you find all well, when you
come back.“
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
"Amen!" cried Goodman Brown. "Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no
harm will come to thee.“
So they parted; and the young man pursued his way, until, being about to turn the corner by
the meeting-house, he looked back and saw the head of Faith still peeping after him, with a
melancholy air, in spite of her pink ribbons.
"Poor little Faith!" thought he, for his heart smote him. "What a wretch am I, to leave her on
such an errand! She talks of dreams, too. Methought, as she spoke, there was trouble in her
face, as if a dream had warned her what work is to be done to-night. But, no, no! 'twould kill
her to think it. Well; she's a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night, I'll cling to her
skirts and follow her to Heaven.“
With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more
haste on his present evil purpose. He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest
trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and
closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
h a solitude, that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks
and the thick boughs overhead; so that, with lonely footsteps, he may yet be passing
through an unseen multitude.
"There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree," said Goodman Brown to himself; and he
glanced fearfully behind him, as he added, "What if the devil himself should be at my very
elbow!“
His head being turned back, he passed a crook of the road, and looking forward again,
beheld the figure of a man, in grave and decent attire, seated at the foot of an old tree. He
arose, at Goodman Brown's approach, and walked onward, side by side with him.
"You are late, Goodman Brown," said he. "The clock of the Old South was striking, as I came
through Boston; and that is full fifteen minutes agone.“
"Faith kept me back awhile," replied the young man, with a tremor in his voice, caused by
the sudden appearance of his companion, though not wholly unexpected.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
It was now deep dusk in the forest, and deepest in that part of it where these two were
journeying. As nearly as could be discerned, the second traveller was about fifty years old,
apparently in the same rank of life as Goodman Brown, and bearing a considerable
resemblance to him, though perhaps more in expression than features. Still, they might have
been taken for father and son. And yet, though the elder person was as simply clad as the
younger, and as simple in manner too, he had an indescribable air of one who knew the
world, and would not have felt abashed at the governor's dinner-table, or in King William's
court, were it possible that his affairs should call him thither. But the only thing about him, that
could be fixed upon as remarkable, was his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black
snake, so curiously wrought, that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living
serpent. This, of course, must have been an ocular deception, assisted by the uncertain light.
"Come, Goodman Brown!" cried his fellow-traveller, "this is a dull pace for the beginning of a
journey. Take my staff, if you are so soon weary.“
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
"Friend," said the other, exchanging his slow pace for a full stop, "having kept covenant by
meeting thee here, it is my purpose now to return whence I came. I have scruples, touching
the matter thou wot'st of.“
"Sayest thou so?" replied he of the serpent, smiling apart. "Let us walk on, nevertheless,
reasoning as we go, and if I convince thee not, thou shalt turn back. We are but a little way
in the forest, yet.“
"Too far, too far!" exclaimed the goodman, unconsciously resuming his walk. "My father never
went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been a race of
honest men and good Christians, since the days of the martyrs. And shall I be the first of the
name of Brown, that ever took this path and kept--“
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
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Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
"Such company, thou wouldst say," observed the elder person, interrupting his pause. "Well
said, Goodman Brown! I have been as well acquainted with your family as with ever a one
among the Puritans; and that's no trifle to say. I helped your grandfather, the constable,
when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem. And it was I that
brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian
village, in King Philip's War. They were my good friends, both; and many a pleasant walk have
we had along this path, and returned merrily after midnight. I would fain be friends with you,
for their sake.“
"If it be as thou sayest," replied Goodman Brown, "I marvel they never spoke of these matters.
Or, verily, I marvel not, seeing that the least rumor of the sort would have driven them from
New England. We are a people of prayer, and good works to boot, and abide no such
wickedness.“
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
"Wickedness or not," said the traveller with the twisted staff, "I have a very general
acquaintance here in New England. The deacons of many a church have drunk the
communion wine with me; the selectmen, of divers towns, make me their chairman; and a
majority of the Great and General Court are firm supporters of my interest. The governor and
I, too--but these are state-secrets.“
"Can this be so!" cried Goodman Brown, with a stare of amazement at his undisturbed
companion. "Howbeit, I have nothing to do with the governor and council; they have their
own ways, and are no rule for a simple husbandman like me. But, were I to go on with thee,
how should I meet the eye of that good old man, our minister, at Salem village? Oh, his voice
would make me tremble, both Sabbath-day and lecture-day!“
Thus far, the elder traveller had listened with due gravity, but now burst into a fit of
irrepressible mirth, shaking himself so violently that his snake-like staff actually seemed to
wriggle in sympathy.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
"Ha! ha! ha!" shouted he, again and again; then composing himself, "Well, go on, Goodman
Brown, go on; but, pr'y thee, don't kill me with laughing!“
"Well, then, to end the matter at once," said Goodman Brown, considerably nettled, "there is
my wife, Faith. It would break her dear little heart; and I'd rather break my own!“
"Nay, if that be the case," answered the other, "e'en go thy ways, Goodman Brown. I would
not, for twenty old women like the one hobbling before us, that Faith should come to any
harm.“
As he spoke, he pointed his staff at a female figure on the path, in whom Goodman Brown
recognized a very pious and exemplary dame, who had taught him his catechism in youth,
and was still his moral and spiritual adviser, jointly with the minister and Deacon Gookin.
"A marvel, truly, that Goody Cloyse should be so far in the wilderness, at night-fall!" said he.
"But, with your leave, friend, I shall take a cut through the woods, until we have left this
Christian woman behind. Being a stranger to you, she might ask whom I was consorting with,
and whither I was going.“
ENGL 4310: The American
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
"Be it so," said his fellow-traveller. "Betake you to the woods, and let me keep the path."
Accordingly, the young man turned aside, but took care to watch his companion, who
advanced softly along the road, until he had come within a staff's length of the old dame.
She, meanwhile, was making the best of her way, with singular speed for so aged a woman,
and mumbling some indistinct words, a prayer, doubtless, as she went. The traveller put forth
his staff, and touched her withered neck with what seemed the serpent's tail.
"The devil!" screamed the pious old lady.
"Then Goody Cloyse knows her old friend?" observed the traveller, confronting her, and
leaning on his writhing stick.
"Ah, forsooth, and is it your worship, indeed?" cried the good dame. "Yea, truly is it, and in the
very image of my old gossip, Goodman Brown, the grandfather of the silly fellow that now is.
But--would your worship believe it?--my broomstick hath strangely disappeared, stolen, as I
suspect, by that unhanged witch, Goody Cory, and that, too, when I was all anointed with
the juice of smallage and cinque-foil and wolf's-bane—”
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
"Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a new-born babe," said the shape of old Goodman
Brown.
"Ah, your worship knows the recipe," cried the old lady, cackling aloud. "So, as I was saying,
being all ready for the meeting, and no horse to ride on, I made up my mind to foot it; for
they tell me, there is a nice young man to be taken into communion to-night. But now your
good worship will lend me your arm, and we shall be there in a twinkling.“
"That can hardly be," answered her friend. "I may not spare you my arm, Goody Cloyse, but
here is my staff, if you will.“
So saying, he threw it down at her feet, where, perhaps, it assumed life, being one of the rods
which its owner had formerly lent to Egyptian Magi. Of this fact, however, Goodman Brown
could not take cognizance. He had cast up his eyes in astonishment, and looking down
again, beheld neither Goody Cloyse nor the serpentine staff, but his fellow-traveller alone,
who waited for him as calmly as if nothing had happened.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
"That old woman taught me my catechism!" said the young man; and there was a world of
meaning in this simple comment.
They continued to walk onward, while the elder traveller exhorted his companion to make
good speed and persevere in the path, discoursing so aptly, that his arguments seemed
rather to spring up in the bosom of his auditor, than to be suggested by himself. As they went,
he plucked a branch of maple, to serve for a walking-stick, and began to strip it of the twigs
and little boughs, which were wet with evening dew. The moment his fingers touched them,
they became strangely withered and dried up, as with a week's sunshine. Thus the pair
proceeded, at a good free pace, until suddenly, in a gloomy hollow of the road, Goodman
Brown sat himself down on the stump of a tree, and refused to go any farther.
"Friend," said he, stubbornly, "my mind is made up. Not another step will I budge on this
errand. 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?“
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
"You will think better of this by-and-by," said his acquaintance, composedly. "Sit here and rest
yourself awhile; and when you feel like moving again, there is my staff to help you along.”
Without more words, he threw his companion the maple stick, and was as speedily out of
sight, as if he had vanished into the deepening gloom. The young man sat a few moments
by the road-side, applauding himself greatly, and thinking with how clear a conscience he
should meet the minister, in his morning-walk, nor shrink from the eye of good old Deacon
Gookin. And what calm sleep would be his, that very night, which was to have been spent so
wickedly, but purely and sweetly now, in the arms of Faith! Amidst these pleasant and
praiseworthy meditations, Goodman Brown heard the tramp of horses along the road, and
deemed it advisable to conceal himself within the verge of the forest, conscious of the guilty
purpose that had brought him thither, though now so happily turned from it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
On came the hoof-tramps and the voices of the riders, two grave old voices, conversing
soberly as they drew near. These mingled sounds appeared to pass along the road, within a
few yards of the young man's hiding-place; but owing, doubtless, to the depth of the gloom,
at that particular spot, neither the travellers nor their steeds were visible. Though their figures
brushed the small boughs by the way-side, it could not be seen that they intercepted, even
for a moment, the faint gleam from the strip of bright sky, athwart which they must have
passed. Goodman Brown alternately crouched and stood on tip-toe, pulling aside the
branches, and thrusting forth his head as far as he durst, without discerning so much as a
shadow. It vexed him the more, because he could have sworn, were such a thing possible,
that he recognized the voices of the minister and Deacon Gookin, jogging along quietly, as
they were wont to do, when bound to some ordination or ecclesiastical council. While yet
within hearing, one of the riders stopped to pluck a switch.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
"Of the two, reverend Sir," said the voice like the deacon's, I had rather miss an ordinationdinner than tonight's meeting. They tell me that some of our community are to be here from
Falmouth and beyond, and others from Connecticut and Rhode-Island; besides several of
the Indian powows, who, after their fashion, know almost as much deviltry as the best of us.
Moreover, there is a goodly young woman to be taken into communion.”
"Mighty well, Deacon Gookin!" replied the solemn old tones of the minister. "Spur up, or we
shall be late. Nothing can be done, you know, until I get on the ground.”
The hoofs clattered again, and the voices, talking so strangely in the empty air, passed on
through the forest, where no church had ever been gathered, nor solitary Christian prayed.
Whither, then, could these holy men be journeying, so deep into the heathen wilderness?
Young Goodman Brown caught hold of a tree, for support, being ready to sink down on the
ground, faint and overburthened with the heavy sickness of his heart. He looked up to the
sky, doubting whether there really was a Heaven above him. Yet, there was the blue arch,
and the stars brightening in it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
"With Heaven above, and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil!" cried Goodman
Brown.
While he still gazed upward, into the deep arch of the firmament, and had lifted his hands to
pray, a cloud, though no wind was stirring, hurried across the zenith, and hid the brightening
stars. The blue sky was still visible, except directly overhead, where this black mass of cloud
was sweeping swiftly northward. Aloft in the air, as if from the depths of the cloud, came a
confused and doubtful sound of voices. Once, the listener fancied that he could distinguish
the accent of town's-people of his own, men and women, both pious and ungodly, many of
whom he had met at the communion-table, and had seen others rioting at the tavern. The
next moment, so indistinct were the sounds, he doubted whether he had heard aught but
the murmur of the old forest, whispering without a wind. Then came a stronger swell of those
familiar tones, heard daily in the sunshine, at Salem village, but never, until now, from a cloud
of night. There was one voice, of a young woman, uttering lamentations, yet with an
uncertain sorrow, and entreating for some favor, which, perhaps, it would grieve her to
obtain. And all the unseen multitude, both saints and sinners, seemed to encourage her
onward.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
"Faith!" shouted Goodman Brown, in a voice of agony and desperation; and the echoes of
the forest mocked him, crying --"Faith! Faith!" as if bewildered wretches were seeking her, all
through the wilderness.
The cry of grief, rage, and terror, was yet piercing the night, when the unhappy husband
held his breath for a response. There was a scream, drowned immediately in a louder murmur
of voices, fading into far-off laughter, as the dark cloud swept away, leaving the clear and
silent sky above Goodman Brown. 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.“
And maddened with despair, so that he laughed loud and long, did Goodman Brown grasp
his staff and set forth again, at such a rate, that he seemed to fly along the forest-path,
rather than to walk or run. The road grew wilder and drearier, and more faintly traced, and
vanished at length, leaving him in the heart of the dark wilderness, still rushing onward, with
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
the instinct that guides mortal man to evil. The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds;
the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while, sometimes
the wind tolled like a distant church-bell, and sometimes gave a broad roar around the
traveller, as if all Nature were laughing him to scorn. But he was himself the chief horror of the
scene, and shrank not from its other horrors.
"Ha! ha! ha!" roared Goodman Brown, when the wind laughed at him. "Let us hear which will
laugh loudest! Think not to frighten me with your deviltry! Come witch, come wizard, come
Indian powow, come devil himself! and here comes Goodman Brown. You may as well fear
him as he fear you!“
In truth, all through the haunted forest, there could be nothing more frightful than the figure
of Goodman Brown. On he flew, among the black pines, brandishing his staff with frenzied
gestures, now giving vent to an inspiration of horrid blasphemy, and now shouting forth such
laughter, as set all the echoes of the forest laughing like demons around him. The fiend in his
own shape is less hideous, than when he rages in the breast of man. Thus sped the demoniac
on his course, until, quivering among the trees, he saw a red light before him, as when the
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
felled trunks and branches of a clearing have been set on fire, and throw up their lurid blaze
against the sky, at the hour of midnight. He paused, in a lull of the tempest that had driven
him onward, and heard the swell of what seemed a hymn, rolling solemnly from a distance,
with the weight of many voices. He knew the tune; it was a familiar one in the choir of the
village meeting-house. The verse died heavily away, and was lengthened by a chorus, not of
human voices, but of all the sounds of the benighted wilderness, pealing in awful harmony
together. Goodman Brown cried out; and his cry was lost to his own ear, by its unison with the
cry of the desert.
In the interval of silence, he stole forward, until the light glared full upon his eyes. At one
extremity of an open space, hemmed in by the dark wall of the forest, arose a rock, bearing
some rude, natural resemblance either to an altar or a pulpit, and surrounded by four blazing
pines, their tops aflame, their stems untouched, like candles at an evening meeting. The
mass of foliage, that had overgrown the summit of the rock, was all on fire, blazing high into
the night, and fitfully illuminating the whole field. Each pendent twig and leafy festoon was in
a blaze. As the red light arose and fell, a numerous congregation alternately shone forth,
then disappeared in shadow, and again grew, as it were, out of the darkness, peopling the
heart of the solitary woods at once.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
"A grave and dark-clad company!" quoth Goodman Brown.
In truth, they were such. Among them, quivering to-and-fro, between gloom and splendor,
appeared faces that would be seen, next day, at the council-board of the province, and
others which, Sabbath after Sabbath, looked devoutly heavenward, and benignantly over
the crowded pews, from the holiest pulpits in the land. Some affirm, that the lady of the
governor was there. At least, there were high dames well known to her, and wives of
honored husbands, and widows, a great multitude, and ancient maidens, all of excellent
repute, and fair young girls, who trembled lest their mothers should espy them. Either the
sudden gleams of light, flashing over the obscure field, bedazzled Goodman Brown, or he
recognized a score of the church-members of Salem village, famous for their especial
sanctity. Good old Deacon Gookin had arrived, and waited at the skirts of that venerable
saint, his reverend pastor. But, irreverently consorting with these grave, reputable, and pious
people, these elders of the church, these chaste dames and dewy virgins, there were men of
dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given over to all mean and filthy vice,
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
In truth, they were such. Among them, quivering to-and-fro, between gloom and splendor,
appeared faces that would be seen, next day, at the council-board of the province, and
others which, Sabbath after Sabbath, looked devoutly heavenward, and benignantly over
the crowded pews, from the holiest pulpits in the land. Some affirm, that the lady of the
governor was there. At least, there were high dames well known to her, and wives of
honored husbands, and widows, a great multitude, and ancient maidens, all of excellent
repute, and fair young girls, who trembled lest their mothers should espy them. Either the
sudden gleams of light, flashing over the obscure field, bedazzled Goodman Brown, or he
recognized a score of the church-members of Salem village, famous for their especial
sanctity. Good old Deacon Gookin had arrived, and waited at the skirts of that venerable
saint, his reverend pastor. But, irreverently consorting with these grave, reputable, and pious
people, these elders of the church, these chaste dames and dewy virgins, there were men of
dissolute lives and women of spotted fame, wretches given over to all mean and filthy vice,
and suspected even of horrid crimes. It was strange to see, that the good shrank not from the
wicked, nor were the sinners abashed by the saints. Scattered, also, among their palefaced
enemies, were the Indian priests, or powows, who had often scared their native forest with
more hideous incantations than any known to English witchcraft.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
"But, where is Faith?" thought Goodman Brown; and, as hope came into his heart, he
trembled.
Another verse of the hymn arose, a slow and mournful strain, such as the pious love, but
joined to words which expressed all that our nature can conceive of sin, and darkly hinted at
far more. Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends. Verse after verse was sung, and
still the chorus of the desert swelled between, like the deepest tone of a mighty organ. And,
with the final peal of that dreadful anthem, there came a sound, as if the roaring wind, the
rushing streams, the howling beasts, and every other voice of the unconverted wilderness,
were mingling and according with the voice of guilty man, in homage to the prince of all.
The four blazing pines threw up a loftier flame, and obscurely discovered shapes and visages
of horror on the smoke-wreaths, above the impious assembly. At the same moment, the fire
on the rock shot redly forth, and formed a glowing arch above its base, where now
appeared a figure. With reverence be it spoken, the figure bore no slight similitude, both in
garb and manner, to some grave divine of the New-England churches.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
"Bring forth the converts!" cried a voice, that echoed through the field and rolled into the
forest.
At the word, Goodman Brown stepped forth from the shadow of the trees, and approached
the congregation, with whom he felt a loathful brotherhood, by the sympathy of all that was
wicked in his heart. He could have well nigh sworn, that the shape of his own dead father
beckoned him to advance, looking downward from a smoke-wreath, while a woman, with
dim features of despair, threw out her hand to warn him back. Was it his mother? But he had
no power to retreat one step, nor to resist, even in thought, when the minister and good old
Deacon Gookin seized his arms, and led him to the blazing rock. Thither came also the
slender form of a veiled female, led between Goody Cloyse, that pious teacher of the
catechism, and Martha Carrier, who had received the devil's promise to be queen of hell. A
rampant hag was she! And there stood the proselytes, beneath the canopy of fire.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
"Welcome, my children," said the dark figure, "to the communion of your race! Ye have
found, thus young, your nature and your destiny. My children, look behind you!“
They turned; and flashing forth, as it were, in a sheet of flame, the fiend-worshippers were
seen; the smile of welcome gleamed darkly on every visage.
"There," resumed the sable form, "are all whom ye have reverenced from youth. Ye deemed
them holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own sin, contrasting it with their lives of
righteousness, and prayerful aspirations heavenward. Yet, here are they all, in my
worshipping assembly! This night it shall be granted you to know their secret deeds; how
hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered wanton words to the young maids of
their households; how many a woman, eager for widow's weeds, has given her husband a
drink at bed-time, and let him sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youth have
made haste to inherit their father's wealth; and how fair damsels--blush not, sweet ones--have
dug little graves in the garden, and bidden me, the sole guest, to an infant's funeral. By the
sympathy of your human hearts for sin, ye shall scent out all the places--whether in church,
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
bed-chamber, street, field, or forest--where crime has been committed, and shall exult to
behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood-spot. Far more than this! It shall
be yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the deep mystery of sin, the fountain of all wicked
arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies more evil impulses than human power--than my power
at its utmost!--can make manifest in deeds. And now, my children, look upon each other.“
They did so; and, by the blaze of the hell-kindled torches, the wretched man beheld his Faith,
and the wife her husband, trembling before that unhallowed altar.
"Lo! there ye stand, my children," said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad, with
its despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race.
"Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream!
Now are ye undeceived! Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness.
Welcome, again, my children, to the communion of your race!“
"Welcome!" repeated the fiend-worshippers, in one cry of despair and triumph.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
And there they stood, the only pair, as it seemed, who were yet hesitating on the verge of
wickedness, in this dark world. A basin was hollowed, naturally, in the rock. Did it contain
water, reddened by the lurid light? or was it blood? or, perchance, a liquid flame? Herein did
the Shape of Evil dip his hand, and prepare to lay the mark of baptism upon their foreheads,
that they might be partakers of the mystery of sin, more conscious of the secret guilt of
others, both in deed and thought, than they could now be of their own. The husband cast
one look at his pale wife, and Faith at him. What polluted wretches would the next glance
show them to each other, shuddering alike at what they disclosed and what they saw!
"Faith! Faith!" cried the husband. "Look up to Heaven, and resist the Wicked One!“
Whether Faith obeyed, he knew not. Hardly had he spoken, when he found himself amid
calm night and solitude, listening to a roar of the wind, which died heavily away through the
forest. He staggered against the rock, and felt it chill and damp, while a hanging twig, that
had been all on fire, besprinkled his cheek with the coldest dew.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
Whether Faith obeyed, he knew not. Hardly had he spoken, when he found himself amid
calm night and solitude, listening to a roar of the wind, which died heavily away through the
forest. He staggered against the rock, and felt it chill and damp, while a hanging twig, that
had been all on fire, besprinkled his cheek with the coldest dew.
The next morning, young Goodman Brown came slowly into the street of Salem village,
staring around him like a bewildered man. The good old minister was taking a walk along the
graveyard, to get an appetite for breakfast and meditate his sermon, and bestowed a
blessing, as he passed, on Goodman Brown. He shrank from the venerable saint, as if to
avoid an anathema. Old Deacon Gookin was at domestic worship, and the holy words of his
prayer were heard through the open window. "What God doth the wizard pray to?" quoth
Goodman Brown. Goody Cloyse, that excellent old Christian, stood in the early sunshine, at
her own lattice, catechising a little girl, who had brought her a pint of morning's milk.
Goodman Brown snatched away the child, as from the grasp of the fiend himself. Turning the
corner by the meeting-house, he spied the head of Faith, with the pink ribbons, gazing
anxiously forth, and bursting into such joy at sight of him, that she skipt along the street, and
almost kissed her husband before the whole village. But Goodman Brown looked sternly and
sadly into her face, and passed on without a greeting.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Young Goodman Brown”
Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest, and only dreamed a wild dream of a witchmeeting?
Be it so, if you will. But, alas! it was a dream of evil omen for young Goodman Brown. A stern,
a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man, did he become, from the
night of that fearful dream. On the Sabbath-day, when the congregation were singing a holy
psalm, he could not listen, because an anthem of sin rushed loudly upon his ear, and
drowned all the blessed strain. When the minister spoke from the pulpit, with power and
fervid eloquence, and with his hand on the open Bible, of the sacred truths of our religion,
and of saint-like lives and triumphant deaths, and of future bliss or misery unutterable, then
did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading lest the roof should thunder down upon the gray
blasphemer and his hearers. Often, awaking suddenly at midnight, he shrank from the bosom
of Faith, and at morning or eventide, when the family knelt down at prayer, he scowled, and
muttered to himself, and gazed sternly at his wife, and turned away. And when he had lived
long, and was borne to his grave, a hoary corpse, followed by Faith, an aged woman, and
children and grand-children, a goodly procession, besides neighbors, not a few, they carved
no hopeful verse upon his tombstone; for his dying hour was gloom.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Wakefield”
In some old magazine or newspaper I recollect a story, told as truth, of a man--let us call him
Wakefield--who absented himself for a long time from his wife. The fact, thus abstractedly
stated, is not very uncommon, nor--without a proper distinction of circumstances--to be
condemned either as naughty or nonsensical. Howbeit, this, though far from the most
aggravated, is perhaps the strangest, instance on record, of marital delinquency; and,
moreover, as remarkable a freak as may be found in the whole list of human oddities. The
wedded couple lived in London. The man, under pretence of going a journey, took lodgings
in the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife or friends, and without
the shadow of a reason for such self-banishment, dwelt upwards of twenty years. During that
period, he beheld his home every day, and frequently the forlorn Mrs. Wakefield. And after so
great a gap in his matrimonial felicity--when his death was reckoned certain, his estate
settled, his name dismissed from memory, and his wife, long, long ago, resigned to her
autumnal widowhood--he entered the door one evening, quietly, as from a day's absence,
and became a loving spouse till death.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Wakefield”
This outline is all that I remember. But the incident, though of the purest originality,
unexampled, and probably never to be repeated, is one, I think, which appeals to the
generous sympathies of mankind. We know, each for himself, that none of us would
perpetrate such a folly, yet feel as if some other might. To my own contemplations, at least, it
has often recurred, always exciting wonder, but with a sense that the story must be true, and
a conception of its hero's character. Whenever any subject so forcibly affects the mind, time
is well spent in thinking of it. If the reader choose, let him do his own meditation; or if he prefer
to ramble with me through the twenty years of Wakefield's vagary, I bid him welcome;
trusting that there will be a pervading spirit and a moral, even should we fail to find them,
done up neatly, and condensed into the final sentence. Thought has always its efficacy, and
every striking incident its moral.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Wakefield”
What sort of a man was Wakefield? We are free to shape out our own idea, and call it by his
name. He was now in the meridian of life; his matrimonial affections, never violent, were
sobered into a calm, habitual sentiment; of all husbands, he was likely to be the most
constant, because a certain sluggishness would keep his heart at rest, wherever it might be
placed. He was intellectual, but not actively so; his mind occupied itself in long and lazy
musings, that ended to no purpose, or had not vigor to attain it; his thoughts were seldom so
energetic as to seize hold of words. Imagination, in the proper meaning of the term, made
no part of Wakefield's gifts. With a cold but not depraved nor wandering heart, and a mind
never feverish with riotous thoughts, nor perplexed with originality, who could have
anticipated that our friend would entitle himself to a foremost place among the doers of
eccentric deeds? Had his acquaintances been asked, who was the man in London the
surest to perform nothing today which should be remembered on the morrow, they would
have thought of Wakefield. Only the wife of his bosom might have hesitated. She, without
having analyzed his character, was partly aware of a quiet selfishness, that had rusted into
his inactive mind; of a peculiar sort of vanity, the most uneasy attribute about him; of a
disposition to craft which had seldom produced more positive effects than the keeping of
petty secrets, hardly worth revealing; and, lastly, of what she called a little strangeness,
sometimes, in the good man. This latter quality is indefinable, and perhaps non-existent.
ENGL 4310: The American
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
Renaissance
“Wakefield”
Let us now imagine Wakefield bidding adieu to his wife. It is the dusk of an October evening.
His equipment is a drab great-coat, a hat covered with an oilcloth, top-boots, an umbrella in
one hand and a small portmanteau in the other. He has informed Mrs. Wakefield that he is to
take the night coach into the country. She would fain inquire the length of his journey, its
object, and the probable time of his return; but, indulgent to his harmless love of mystery,
interrogates him only by a look. He tells her not to expect him positively by the return coach,
nor to be alarmed should he tarry three or four days; but, at all events, to look for him at
supper on Friday evening. Wakefield himself, be it considered, has no suspicion of what is
before him. He holds out his hand, she gives her own, and meets his parting kiss in the matterof-course way of a ten years' matrimony; and forth goes the middle-aged Mr. Wakefield,
almost resolved to perplex his good lady by a whole week's absence. After the door has
closed behind him, she perceives it thrust partly open, and a vision of her husband's face,
through the aperture, smiling on her, and gone in a moment. For the time, this little incident is
dismissed without a thought. But, long afterwards, when she has been more years a widow
than a wife, that smile recurs, and flickers across all her reminiscences of Wakefield's visage.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Wakefield”
In her many musings, she surrounds the original smile with a multitude of fantasies, which
make it strange and awful: as, for instance, if she imagines him in a coffin, that parting look is
frozen on his pale features; or, if she dreams of him in heaven, still his blessed spirit wears a
quiet and crafty smile. Yet, for its sake, when all others have given him up for dead, she
sometimes doubts whether she is a widow.
But our business is with the husband. We must hurry after him along the street, ere he lose his
individuality, and melt into the great mass of London life. It would be vain searching for him
there. Let us follow close at his heels, therefore, until, after several superfluous turns and
doublings, we find him comfortably established by the fireside of a small apartment,
previously bespoken. He is in the next street to his own, and at his journey's end. He can
scarcely trust his good fortune, in having got thither unperceived--recollecting that, at one
time, he was delayed by the throng, in the very focus of a lighted lantern; and, again, there
were footsteps that seemed to tread behind his own, distinct from the multitudinous tramp
around him; and, anon, he heard a voice shouting afar, and fancied that it called his name.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Wakefield”
Doubtless, a dozen busybodies had been watching him, and told his wife the whole affair.
Poor Wakefield! Little knowest thou thine own insignificance in this great world! No mortal eye
but mine has traced thee. Go quietly to thy bed, foolish man: and, on the morrow, if thou wilt
be wise, get thee home to good Mrs. Wakefield, and tell her the truth. Remove not thyself,
even for a little week, from thy place in her chaste bosom. Were she, for a single moment, to
deem thee dead, or lost, or lastingly divided from her, thou wouldst be wofully conscious of a
change in thy true wife forever after. It is perilous to make a chasm in human affections; not
that they gape so long and wide--but so quickly close again!
Almost repenting of his frolic, or whatever it may be termed, Wakefield lies down betimes,
and starting from his first nap, spreads forth his arms into the wide and solitary waste of the
unaccustomed bed. "No,"-thinks he, gathering the bedclothes about him,--"I will not sleep
alone another night.“
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Wakefield”
In the morning he rises earlier than usual, and sets himself to consider what he really means to
do. Such are his loose and rambling modes of thought that he has taken this very singular
step with the consciousness of a purpose, indeed, but without being able to define it
sufficiently for his own contemplation. The vagueness of the project, and the convulsive effort
with which he plunges into the execution of it, are equally characteristic of a feeble-minded
man. Wakefield sifts his ideas, however, as minutely as he may, and finds himself curious to
know the progress of matters at home--how his exemplary wife will endure her widowhood of
a week; and, briefly, how the little sphere of creatures and circumstances, in which he was a
central object, will be affected by his removal. A morbid vanity, therefore, lies nearest the
bottom of the affair. But, how is he to attain his ends? Not, certainly, by keeping close in this
comfortable lodging, where, though he slept and awoke in the next street to his home, he is
as effectually abroad as if the stage-coach had been whirling him away all night. Yet, should
he reappear, the whole project is knocked in the head. His poor brains being hopelessly
puzzled with this dilemma, he at length ventures out, partly resolving to cross the head of the
street, and send one hasty glance towards his forsaken domicile. Habit--for he is a man of
habits--takes him by the hand, and guides him, wholly unaware, to his own door, where, just
at the critical moment, he is aroused by the scraping of his foot upon the step. Wakefield!
whither are you going?
ENGL 4310: The American
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
Renaissance
“Wakefield”
In the morning he rises earlier than usual, and sets himself to consider what he really means to
do. Such are his loose and rambling modes of thought that he has taken this very singular
step with the consciousness of a purpose, indeed, but without being able to define it
sufficiently for his own contemplation. The vagueness of the project, and the convulsive effort
with which he plunges into the execution of it, are equally characteristic of a feeble-minded
man. Wakefield sifts his ideas, however, as minutely as he may, and finds himself curious to
know the progress of matters at home--how his exemplary wife will endure her widowhood of
a week; and, briefly, how the little sphere of creatures and circumstances, in which he was a
central object, will be affected by his removal. A morbid vanity, therefore, lies nearest the
bottom of the affair. But, how is he to attain his ends? Not, certainly, by keeping close in this
comfortable lodging, where, though he slept and awoke in the next street to his home, he is
as effectually abroad as if the stage-coach had been whirling him away all night. Yet, should
he reappear, the whole project is knocked in the head. His poor brains being hopelessly
puzzled with this dilemma, he at length ventures out, partly resolving to cross the head of the
street, and send one hasty glance towards his forsaken domicile. Habit--for he is a man of
habits--takes him by the hand, and guides him, wholly unaware, to his own door, where, just
at the critical moment, he is aroused by the scraping of his foot upon the step. Wakefield!
whither are you going?
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American Renaissance
“Wakefield”
At that instant his fate was turning on the pivot. Little dreaming of the doom to which his first
backward step devotes him, he hurries away, breathless with agitation hitherto unfelt, and
hardly dares turn his head at the distant corner. Can it be that nobody caught sight of him?
Will not the whole household--the decent Mrs. Wakefield, the smart maid servant, and the
dirty little footboy--raise a hue and cry, through London streets, in pursuit of their fugitive lord
and master? Wonderful escape! He gathers courage to pause and look homeward, but is
perplexed with a sense of change about the familiar edifice, such as affects us all, when,
after a separation of months or years, we again see some hill or lake, or work of art, with
which we were friends of old. In ordinary cases, this indescribable impression is caused by the
comparison and contrast between our imperfect reminiscences and the reality. In Wakefield,
the magic of a single night has wrought a similar transformation, because, in that brief
period, a great moral change has been effected. But this is a secret from himself. Before
leaving the spot, he catches a far and momentary glimpse of his wife, passing athwart the
front window, with her face turned towards the head of the street. The crafty nincompoop
takes to his heels, scared with the idea that, among a thousand such atoms of mortality, her
eye must have detected him. Right glad is his heart, though his brain be somewhat dizzy,
when he finds himself by the coal fire of his lodgings.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Wakefield”
So much for the commencement of this long whimwham. After the initial conception, and
the stirring up of the man's sluggish temperament to put it in practice, the whole matter
evolves itself in a natural train. We may suppose him, as the result of deep deliberation,
buying a new wig, of reddish hair, and selecting sundry garments, in a fashion unlike his
customary suit of brown, from a Jew's old-clothes bag. It is accomplished. Wakefield is
another man. The new system being now established, a retrograde movement to the old
would be almost as difficult as the step that placed him in his unparalleled position.
Furthermore, he is rendered obstinate by a sulkiness occasionally incident to his temper, and
brought on at present by the inadequate sensation which he conceives to have been
produced in the bosom of Mrs. Wakefield. He will not go back until she be frightened half to
death. Well; twice or thrice has she passed before his sight, each time with a heavier step, a
paler cheek, and more anxious brow; and in the third week of his non-appearance he
detects a portent of evil entering the house, in the guise of an apothecary. Next day the
knocker is muffled. Towards nightfall comes the chariot of a physician, and deposits its bigwigged and solemn burden at Wakefield's door, whence, after a quarter of an hour's visit, he
emerges, perchance the herald of a funeral. Dear woman! Will she die? By this time,
Wakefield is excited to something like energy of feeling, but still lingers away from his wife's
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Wakefield”
bedside, pleading with his conscience that she must not be disturbed at such a juncture. If
aught else restrains him, he does not know it. In the course of a few weeks she gradually
recovers; the crisis is over; her heart is sad, perhaps, but quiet; and, let him return soon or late,
it will never be feverish for him again. Such ideas glimmer through the midst of Wakefield's
mind, and render him indistinctly conscious that an almost impassable gulf divides his hired
apartment from his former home. "It is but in the next street!" he sometimes says. Fool! it is in
another world. Hitherto, he has put off his return from one particular day to another;
henceforward, he leaves the precise time undetermined. Not tomorrow--probably next
week--pretty soon. Poor man! The dead have nearly as much chance of revisiting their
earthly homes as the self-banished Wakefield.
Would that I had a folio to write, instead of an article of a dozen pages! Then might I
exemplify how an influence beyond our control lays its strong hand on every deed which we
do, and weaves its consequences into an iron tissue of necessity. Wakefield is spell-bound.
We must leave him for ten years or so, to haunt around his house, without once crossing the
threshold, and to be faithful to his wife, with all the affection of which his heart is capable,
while he is slowly fading out of hers. Long since, it must be remarked, he had lost the
perception of singularity in his conduct.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American Renaissance
“Wakefield”
Now for a scene! Amind the throng of a London street we distinguish a man, now waxing
elderly, with few characteristics to attract careless observers, yet bearing, in his whole
aspect, the handwriting of no common fate, for such as have the skill to read it. He is
meagre; his low and narrow forehead is deeply wrinkled; his eyes, small and lustreless,
sometimes wander apprehensively about him, but oftener seem to look inward. He bends his
head, and moves with an indescribable obliquity of gait, as if unwilling to display his full front
to the world. Watch him long enough to see what we have described, and you will allow
that circumstances--which often produce remarkable men from nature's ordinary handiwork-have produced one such here. Next, leaving him to sidle along the footwalk, cast your eyes
in the opposite direction, where a portly female, considerably in the wane of life, with a
prayer-book in her hand, is proceeding to yonder church. She has the placid mien of settled
widowhood. Her regrets have either died away, or have become so essential to her heart,
that they would be poorly exchanged for joy. Just as the lean man and well-conditioned
woman are passing, a slight obstruction occurs, and brings these two figures directly in
contact. Their hands touch; the pressure of the crowd forces her bosom against his shoulder;
they stand, face to face, staring into each other's eyes. After a ten years' separation, thus
Wakefield meets his wife!
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Wakefield”
The throng eddies away, and carries them asunder. The sober widow, resuming her former
pace, proceeds to church, but pauses in the portal, and throws a perplexed glance along
the street. She passes in, however, opening her prayer-book as she goes. And the man! with
so wild a face that busy and selfish London stands to gaze after him, he hurries to his
lodgings, bolts the door, and throws himself upon the bed. The latent feelings of years break
out; his feeble mind acquires a brief energy from their strength; all the miserable strangeness
of his life is revealed to him at a glance: and he cries out, passionately, "Wakefield!
Wakefield! You are mad!“
Perhaps he was so. The singularity of his situation must have so moulded him to himself, that,
considered in regard to his fellow-creatures and the business of life, he could not be said to
possess his right mind. He had contrived, or rather he had happened, to dissever himself from
the world--to vanish--to give up his place and privileges with living men, without being
admitted among the dead. The life of a hermit is nowise parallel to his. He was in the bustle of
the city, as of old; but the crowd swept by and saw him not; he was, we may figuratively say,
always beside his wife and at his hearth, yet must never feel the warmth of the one nor the
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Wakefield”
affection of the other. It was Wakefield's unprecedented fate to retain his original share of
human sympathies, and to be still involved in human interests, while he had lost his reciprocal
influence on them. It would be a most curious speculation to trace out the effect of such
circumstances on his heart and intellect, separately, and in unison. Yet, changed as he was,
he would seldom be conscious of it, but deem himself the same man as ever; glimpses of the
truth indeed would come, but only for the moment; and still he would keep saying, "I shall
soon go back!"--nor reflect that he had been saying so for twenty years.
I conceive, also, that these twenty years would appear, in the retrospect, scarcely longer
than the week to which Wakefield had at first limited his absence. He would look on the affair
as no more than an interlude in the main business of his life. When, after a little while more, he
should deem it time to reenter his parlor, his wife would clap her hands for joy, on beholding
the middle-aged Mr. Wakefield. Alas, what a mistake! Would Time but await the close of our
favorite follies, we should be young men, all of us, and till Doomsday.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Wakefield”
One evening, in the twentieth year since he vanished, Wakefield is taking his customary walk
towards the dwelling which he still calls his own. It is a gusty night of autumn, with frequent
showers that patter down upon the pavement, and are gone before a man can put up his
umbrella. Pausing near the house, Wakefield discerns, through the parlor windows of the
second floor, the red glow and the glimmer and fitful flash of a comfortable fire. On the
ceiling appears a grotesque shadow of good Mrs. Wakefield. The cap, the nose and chin,
and the broad waist, form an admirable caricature, which dances, moreover, with the upflickering and down-sinking blaze, almost too merrily for the shade of an elderly widow. At this
instant a shower chances to fall, and is driven, by the unmannerly gust, full into Wakefield's
face and bosom. He is quite penetrated with its autumnal chill. Shall he stand, wet and
shivering here, when his own hearth has a good fire to warm him, and his own wife will run to
fetch the gray coat and small-clothes, which, doubtless, she has kept carefully in the closet
of their bed chamber? No! Wakefield is no such fool. He ascends the steps--heavily!--for
twenty years have stiffened his legs since he came down--but he knows it not. Stay,
Wakefield! Would you go to the sole home that is left you? Then step into your grave! The
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Wakefield”
door opens. As he passes in, we have a parting glimpse of his visage, and recognize the
crafty smile, which was the precursor of the little joke that he has ever since been playing off
at his wife's expense. How unmercifully has he quizzed the poor woman! Well, a good night's
rest to Wakefield!
This happy event--supposing it to be such--could only have occurred at an unpremeditated
moment. We will not follow our friend across the threshold. He has left us much food for
thought, a portion of which shall lend its wisdom to a moral, and be shaped into a figure.
Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a
system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a
man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever. Like Wakefield, he may
become, as it were, the Outcast of the Universe.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Ethan Brand”
A Chapter from an Abortive Romance
BARTRAM the lime-burner, a rough, heavy-looking man, begrimed with charcoal, sat
watching his kiln, at nightfall, while his little son played at building houses with the scattered
fragments of marble, when, on the hill-side below them, they heard a roar of laughter, not
mirthful, but slow, and even solemn, like a wind shaking the boughs of the forest.
"Father, what is that?" asked the little boy, leaving his play, and pressing betwixt his father's
knees.
"O, some drunken man, I suppose," answered the lime-burner; "some merry fellow from the
bar-room in the village, who dared not laugh loud enough within doors, lest he should blow
the roof of the house off. So here he is, shaking his jolly sides at the foot of Gray-lock.“
"But, father," said the child, more sensitive than the obtuse, middle-aged clown, "he does not
laugh like a man that is glad. So the noise frightens me!“
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Ethan Brand”
"Don't be a fool, child!" cried his father, gruffly. "You will never make a man, I do believe;
there is too much of your mother in you. I have known the rustling of a leaf startle you. Hark!
Here comes the merry fellow, now. You shall see that there is no harm in him.“
Bartram and his little son, while they were talking thus, sat watching the same lime-kiln that
had been the scene of Ethan Brand's solitary and meditative life, before he began his search
for the Unpardonable Sin. Many years, as we have seen, had now elapsed, since that
portentous night when the IDEA was first developed. The kiln, however, on the mountain-side,
stood unimpaired, and was in nothing changed since he had thrown his dark thoughts into
the intense glow of its furnace, and melted them, as it were, into the one thought that took
possession of his life. It was a rude, round, tower-like structure, about twenty feet high, heavily
built of rough stones, and with a hillock of earth heaped about the larger part of its
circumference; so that the blocks and fragments of marble might be drawn by cart-loads,
and thrown in at the top. There was an opening at the bottom of the tower, like an ovenmouth, but large enough to admit a man in a stooping posture, and provided with a massive
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Ethan Brand”
iron door. With the smoke and jets of flame issuing from the chinks and crevices of this door,
which seemed to give admittance into the hill-side, it resembled nothing so much as the
private entrance to the infernal regions, which the shepherds of the Delectable Mountains
were accustomed to show to pilgrims.
There are many such lime-kilns in that tract of country, for the purpose of burning the white
marble which composes a large part of the substance of the hills. Some of them, built years
ago, and long deserted, with weeds growing in the vacant round of the interior, which is
open to the sky, and grass and wild-flowers rooting themselves into the chinks of the stones,
look already like relics of antiquity, and may yet be overspread with the lichens of centuries
to come. Others, where the lime-burner still feeds his daily and nightlong fire, afford points of
interest to the wanderer among the hills, who seats himself on a log of wood or a fragment of
marble, to hold a chat with the solitary man. It is a lonesome, and, when the character is
inclined to thought, may be an intensely thoughtful occupation; as it proved in the case of
Ethan Brand, who had mused to such strange purpose, in days gone by, while the fire in this
very kiln was burning.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Ethan Brand”
The man who now watched the fire was of a different order, and troubled himself with no
thoughts save the very few that were requisite to his business. At frequent intervals, he flung
back the clashing weight of the iron door, and, turning his face from the insufferable glare,
thrust in huge logs of oak, or stirred the immense brands with a long pole. Within the furnace
were seen the curling and riotous flames, and the burning marble, almost molten with the
intensity of heat; while without, the reflection of the fire quivered on the dark intricacy of the
surrounding forest, and showed in the foreground a bright and ruddy little picture of the hut,
the spring beside its door, the athletic and coal-begrimed figure of the lime-burner, and the
half-frightened child, shrinking into the protection of his father's shadow. And when again the
iron door was closed, then reappeared the tender light of the half-full moon, which vainly
strove to trace out the indistinct shapes of the neighboring mountains; and, in the upper sky,
there was a flitting congregation of clouds, still faintly tinged with the rosy sunset, though thus
far down into the valley the sunshine had vanished long and long ago.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Ethan Brand”
The little boy now crept still closer to his father, as footsteps were heard ascending the hillside, and a human form thrust aside the bushes that clustered beneath the trees.
"Halloo! who is it?" cried the lime-burner, vexed at his son's timidity, yet half infected by it.
"Come forward, and show yourself, like a man, or I'll fling this chunk of marble at your head!"
"You offer me a rough welcome," said a gloomy voice, as the unknown man drew nigh. "Yet I
neither claim nor desire a kinder one, even at my own fireside.“
To obtain a distincter view, Bartram threw open the iron door of the kiln, whence immediately
issued a gush of fierce light, that smote full upon the stranger's face and figure. To a careless
eye there appeared nothing very remarkable in his aspect, which was that of a man in a
coarse, brown, country-made suit of clothes, tall and thin, with the staff and heavy shoes of a
wayfarer. As he advanced, he fixed his eyes--which were very bright--intently upon the
brightness of the furnace, as if he beheld, or expected to behold, some object worthy of
note within it.
"Good evening, stranger," said the lime-burner; "whence come you, so late in the day?
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Ethan Brand”
"I come from my search," answered the wayfarer; "for, at last, it is finished.“
"Drunk!--or crazy!" muttered Bartram to himself. "I shall have trouble with the fellow. The sooner
I drive him away, the better.”
The little boy, all in a tremble, whispered to his father, and begged him to shut the door of the
kiln, so that there might not be so much light; for that there was something in the man's face
which he was afraid to look at, yet could not look away from. And, indeed, even the limeburner's dull and torpid sense began to be impressed by an indescribable something in that
thin, rugged, thoughtful visage, with the grizzled hair hanging wildly about it, and those
deeply-sunken eyes, which gleamed like fires within the entrance of a mysterious cavern. But,
as he closed the door, the stranger turned towards him, and spoke in a quiet, familiar way,
that made Bartram feel as if he were a sane and sensible man, after all.
"Your task draws to an end, I see," said he. "This marble has already been burning three days.
A few hours more will convert the stone to lime.“
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Ethan Brand”
"Why, who are you?" exclaimed the lime-burner. "You seem as well acquainted with my
business as I am myself.“
"And well I may be," said the stranger; "for I followed the same craft many a long year, and
here, too, on this very spot. But you are a newcomer in these parts. Did you never hear of
Ethan Brand?“
"The man that went in search of the Unpardonable Sin?" asked Bartram, with a laugh.
"The same," answered the stranger. "He has found what he sought, and therefore he comes
back again.“
"What! then you are Ethan Brand himself?" cried the lime-burner, in amazement. "I am a
newcomer here, as you say, and they call it eighteen years since you left the foot of Graylock. But, I can tell you, the good folks still talk about Ethan Brand, in the village yonder, and
what a strange errand took him away from his lime-kiln. Well, and so you have found the
Unpardonable Sin?“
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Ethan Brand”
"Even so!" said the stranger, calmly.
"If the question is a fair one," proceeded Bartram, "where might it be?“
Ethan Brand laid his finger on his own heart.
"Here!" replied he.
And then, without mirth in his countenance, but as if moved by an involuntary recognition of
the infinite absurdity of seeking throughout the world for what was the closest of all things to
himself, and looking into every heart, save his own, for what was hidden in no other breast,
he broke into a laugh of scorn. It was the same slow, heavy laugh, that had almost appalled
the lime-burner when it heralded the wayfarer's approach.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Ethan Brand”
The solitary mountain-side was made dismal by it. Laughter, when out of place, mistimed, or
bursting forth from a disordered state of feeling, may be the most terrible modulation of the
human voice. The laughter of one asleep, even if it be a little child--the madman's laugh--the
wild, screaming laugh of a born idiot--are sounds that we sometimes tremble to hear, and
would always willingly forget. Poets have imagined no utterance of fiends or hobgoblins so
fearfully appropriate as a laugh. And even the obtuse lime-burner felt his nerves shaken, as
this strange man looked inward at his own heart, and burst into laughter that rolled away into
the night, and was indistinctly reverberated among the hills.
"Joe," said he to his little son, "scamper down to the tavern in the village, and tell the jolly
fellows there that Ethan Brand has come back, and that he has found the Unpardonable
Sin!"
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Ethan Brand”
The boy darted away on his errand, to which Ethan Brand made no objection, nor seemed
hardly to notice it. He sat on a log of wood, looking steadfastly at the iron door of the kiln.
When the child was out of sight, and his swift and light footsteps ceased to be heard
treading first on the fallen leaves and then on the rocky mountain path, the lime-burner
began to regret his departure. He felt that the little fellow's presence had been a barrier
between his guest and himself, and that he must now deal, heart to heart, with a man who,
on his own confession, had committed the one only crime for which Heaven could afford no
mercy. That crime, in its indistinct blackness, seemed to overshadow him. The lime-burner's
own sins rose up within him, and made his memory riotous with a throng of evil shapes that
asserted their kindred with the Master Sin, whatever it might be, which it was within the scope
of man's corrupted nature to conceive and cherish. They were all of one family; they went to
and fro between his breast and Ethan Brand's, and carried dark greetings from one to the
other.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Ethan Brand”
Then Bartram remembered the stories which had grown traditionary in reference to this
strange man, who had come upon him like a shadow of the night, and was making himself
at home in his old place, after so long absence that the dead people, dead and buried for
years, would have had more right to be at home, in any familiar spot, than he. Ethan Brand, it
was said, had conversed with Satan himself in the lurid blaze of this very kiln. The legend had
been matter of mirth heretofore but looked grisly now. According to this tale, before Ethan
Brand departed on his search, he had been accustomed to evoke a fiend from the hot
furnace of the lime-kiln, night after night, in order to confer with him about the Unpardonable
Sin; the man and the fiend each laboring to frame the image of some mode of guilt which
could neither be atoned for nor forgiven. And, with the first gleam of light upon the
mountain-top, the fiend crept in at the iron door, there to abide the intensest element of fire,
until again summoned forth to share in the dreadful task of extending man's possible guilt
beyond the scope of Heaven's else infinite mercy.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Ethan Brand”
While the lime-burner was struggling with the horror of these thoughts, Ethan Brand rose from
the log, and flung open the door of the kiln. The action was in such accordance with the
idea in Bartram's mind, that he almost expected to see the Evil One issue forth, red-hot from
the raging furnace.
"Hold! hold!" cried he, with a tremulous attempt to laugh; for he was ashamed of his fears,
although they overmastered him. "Don't, for mercy's sake, bring out your devil now!“
"Man!" sternly replied Ethan Brand, "what need have I of the devil? I have left him behind me,
on my track. It is with such halfway sinners as you that he busies himself. Fear not because I
open the door. I do but act by old custom, and am going to trim your fire, like a lime-burner,
as I was once.“
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Ethan Brand”
He stirred the vast coals, thrust in more wood, and bent forward to gaze into the hollow
prison-house of the fire, regardless of the fierce glow that reddened upon his face. The limeburner sat watching him, and half suspected his strange guest of a purpose, if not to evoke a
fiend, at least to plunge bodily into the flames, and thus vanish from the sight of man. Ethan
Brand, however, drew quietly back, and closed the door of the kiln.
"I have looked, said he, "into many a human heart that was seven times hotter with sinful
passions than yonder furnace is with fire. But I found not there what I sought. No, not the
Unpardonable Sin!“
"What is the Unpardonable Sin?" asked the lime-burner; and then he shrank further from his
companion, trembling lest his question should be answered.
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“Ethan Brand”
"I have looked, said he, "into many a human heart that was seven times hotter with sinful
passions than yonder furnace is with fire. But I found not there what I sought. No, not the
Unpardonable Sin!“
"What is the Unpardonable Sin?" asked the lime-burner; and then he shrank further from his
companion, trembling lest his question should be answered.
"It is a sin that grew within my own breast," replied Ethan Brand, standing erect, with a pride
that distinguishes all enthusiasts of his stamp. "A sin that grew nowhere else! The sin of an
intellect that triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence for God,
and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims! The only sin that deserves a recompense
of immortal agony! Freely, were it to do again, would I incur the guilt. Unshrinkingly I accept
the retribution!“
"The man's head is turned," muttered the lime-burner to himself. "He may be a sinner, like the
rest of us--nothing more likely--but, I'll be sworn, he is a madman too.“
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“Ethan Brand”
Nevertheless he felt uncomfortable at his situation, alone with Ethan Brand on the wild
mountain-side, and was right glad to hear the rough murmur of tongues, and the footsteps of
what seemed a pretty numerous party, stumbling over the stones and rustling through the
underbrush. Soon appeared the whole lazy regiment that was wont to infest the village
tavern comprehending three or four individuals who had drunk flip beside the bar-room fire
through all the winters, and smoked their pipes beneath the stoop through all the summers,
since Ethan Brand's departure. Laughing boisterously, and mingling all their voices together in
unceremonious talk, they now burst into the moonshine and narrow streaks of fire-light that
illuminated the open space before the lime-kiln. Bartram set the door ajar again, flooding the
spot with light, that the whole company might get a fair view of Ethan Brand, and he of
them.
There, among other old acquaintances, was a once ubiquitous man, now almost extinct, but
whom we were formerly sure to encounter at the hotel of every thriving village throughout
the country. It was the stage-agent. The present specimen of the genus was a wilted and
smoke-dried man, wrinkled and red-nosed, in a smartly cut, brown, bob-tailed coat, with
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“Ethan Brand”
brass buttons, who, for a length of time unknown, had kept his desk and corner in the barroom, and was still puffing what seemed to be the same cigar that he had lighted twenty
years before. He had great fame as a dry joker, though, perhaps, less on account of any
intrinsic humor than from a certain flavor of brandy-toddy and tobacco-smoke, which
impregnated all his ideas and expressions, as well as his person. Another well-remembered
though strangely altered face was that of Lawyer Giles, as people still called him in courtesy;
an elderly ragamuffin, in his soiled shirt-sleeves and tow-cloth trousers. This poor fellow had
been an attorney, in what he called his better days, a sharp practitioner, and in great vogue
among the village litigants; but flip, and sling, and toddy, and cocktails, imbibed at all hours,
morning, noon, and night, had caused him to slide from intellectual to various kinds and
degrees of bodily labor, till, at last, to adopt his own phrase, he slid into a soap-vat. In other
words, Giles was now a soap-boiler, in a small way. He had come to be but the fragment of
a human being, a part of one foot having been chopped off by an axe, and an entire hand
torn away by the devilish grip of a steam-engine. Yet, though the corporeal hand was gone,
a spiritual member remained; for, stretching forth the stump, Giles steadfastly averred that he
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“Ethan Brand”
felt an invisible thumb and fingers with as vivid a sensation as before the real ones were
amputated. A maimed and miserable wretch he was; but one, nevertheless, whom the
world could not trample on, and had no right to scorn, either in this or any previous stage of
his misfortunes, since he had still kept up the courage and spirit of a man, asked nothing in
charity, and with his one hand--and that the left one--fought a stern battle against want and
hostile circumstances.
Among the throng, too, came another personage, who, with certain points of similarity to
Lawyer Giles, had many more of difference. It was the village doctor; a man of some fifty
years, whom, at an earlier period of his life, we introduced as paying a professional visit to
Ethan Brand during the latter's supposed insanity. He was now a purple-visaged, rude, and
brutal, yet half-gentlemanly figure, with something wild, ruined, and desperate in his talk, and
in all the details of his gesture and manners. Brandy possessed this man like an evil spirit, and
made him as surly and savage as a wild beast, and as miserable as a lost soul; but there was
supposed to be in him such wonderful skill, such native gifts of healing, beyond any which
medical science could impart, that society caught hold of him, and would not let him sink
out of its reach. So, swaying to and fro upon his horse, and grumbling thick accents at the
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“Ethan Brand”
bedside, he visited all the sick chambers for miles about among the mountain towns, and
sometimes raised a dying man, as it were, by miracle, or quite as often, no doubt, sent his
patient to a grave that was dug many a year too soon. The doctor had an everlasting pipe
in his mouth, and, as somebody said, in allusion to his habit of swearing, it was always alight
with hell-fire.
These three worthies pressed forward, and greeted Ethan Brand each after his own fashion,
earnestly inviting him to partake of the contents of a certain black bottle, in which, as they
averred, he would find something far better worth seeking for than the Unpardonable Sin. No
mind, which has wrought itself by intense and solitary meditation into a high state of
enthusiasm, can endure the kind of contact with low and vulgar modes of thought and
feeling to which Ethan Brand was now subjected. It made him doubt--and, strange to say, it
was a painful doubt--whether he had indeed found the Unpardonable Sin, and found it
within himself. The whole question on which he had exhausted life, and more than life,
looked like a delusion.
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“Ethan Brand”
"Leave me," he said, bitterly, "ye brute beasts, that have made yourselves so, shrivelling up
your souls with fiery liquors! I have done with you. Years and years ago, I groped into your
hearts, and found nothing there for my purpose. Get ye gone!“
"Why, you uncivil scoundrel," cried the fierce doctor, "is that the way you respond to the
kindness of your best friends? Then let me tell you the truth. You have no more found the
Unpardonable Sin than yonder boy Joe has. You are but a crazy fellow--I told you so twenty
years ago--neither better nor worse than a crazy fellow, and the fit companion of old
Humphrey, here!“
He pointed to an old man, shabbily dressed, with long white hair, thin visage, and unsteady
eyes. For some years past this aged person had been wandering about among the hills,
inquiring of all travellers whom he met for his daughter. The girl, it seemed, had gone off with
a company of circus-performers; and occasionally tidings of her came to the village, and
fine stories were told of her glittering appearance as she rode on horse-back in the ring, or
performed marvellous feats on the tight-rope.
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“Ethan Brand”
The white-haired father now approached Ethan Brand, and gazed unsteadily into his face.
"They tell me you have been all over the earth," said he, wringing his hands with earnestness.
"You must have seen my daughter, for she makes a grand figure in the world, and everybody
goes to see her. Did she send any word to her old father, or say when she was coming
back?“
Ethan Brand's eye quailed beneath the old man's. That daughter, from whom he so earnestly
desired a word of greeting, was the Esther of our tale, the very girl whom, with such cold and
remorseless purpose, Ethan Brand had made the subject of a psychological experiment, and
wasted, absorbed, and perhaps annihilated her soul, in the process.
"Yes," murmured he, turning away from the hoary wanderer; "it is no delusion. There is an
Unpardonable Sin!“
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“Ethan Brand”
While these things were passing, a merry scene was going forward in the area of cheerful
light, beside the spring and before the door of the hut. A number of the youth of the village,
young men and girls, had hurried up the hill-side, impelled by curiosity to see Ethan Brand,
the hero of so many a legend familiar to their childhood. Finding nothing, however, very
remarkable in his aspect--nothing but a sun-burnt wayfarer, in plain garb and dusty shoes,
who sat looking into the fire, as if he fancied pictures among the coals--these young people
speedily grew tired of observing him. As it happened, there was other amusement at hand.
An old German Jew, travelling with a diorama on his back, was passing down the mountainroad towards the village just as the party turned aside from it, and, in hopes of eking out the
profits of the day, the showman had kept them company to the lime-kiln.
"Come, old Dutchman," cried one of the young men, "let us see your pictures, if you can
swear they are worth looking at!“
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“Ethan Brand”
"O, yes, Captain," answered the Jew--whether as a matter of courtesy or craft, he styled
everybody Captain--"I shall show you, indeed, some very superb pictures!“
So, placing his box in a proper position, he invited the young men and girls to look through
the glass orifices of the machine, and proceeded to exhibit a series of the most outrageous
scratchings and daubings, as specimens of the fine arts, that ever an itinerant showman had
the face to impose upon his circle of spectators. The pictures were worn out, moreover,
tattered, full of cracks and wrinkles, dingy with tobacco-smoke, and otherwise in a most
pitiable condition. Some purported to be cities, public edifices, and ruined castles in Europe;
others represented Napoleon's battles and Nelson's sea-fights; and in the midst of these
would be seen a gigantic, brown, hairy hand--which might have been mistaken for the Hand
of Destiny, though, in truth, it was only the showman's--pointing its forefinger to various scenes
of the conflict, while its owner gave historical illustrations. When, with much merriment at its
abominable deficiency of merit, the exhibition was concluded, the German bade little Joe
put his head into the box. Viewed through the magnifying glasses, the boy's round, rosy
visage assumed the strangest imaginable aspect of an immense Titanic child, the mouth
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“Ethan Brand”
grinning broadly, and the eyes and every other feature overflowing with fun at the joke.
Suddenly, however, that merry face turned pale, and its expression changed to horror, for
this easily impressed and excitable child had become sensible that the eye of Ethan Brand
was fixed upon him through the glass.
"You make the little man to be afraid, Captain," said the German Jew, turning up the dark
and strong outline of his visage, from his stooping posture. "But look again, and, by chance, I
shall cause you to see somewhat that is very fine, upon my word!“
Ethan Brand gazed into the box for an instant, and then starting back, looked fixedly at the
German. What had he seen? Nothing, apparently; for a curious youth, who had peeped in
almost at the same moment, beheld only a vacant space of canvas.
"I remember you now," muttered Ethan Brand to the showman.
"Ah, Captain," whispered the Jew of Nuremberg, with a dark smile, "I find it to be a heavy
matter in my show-box--this Unpardonable Sin! By my faith, Captain, it has wearied my
shoulders, this long day, to carry it over the mountain.”
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“Ethan Brand”
"Peace," answered Ethan Brand, sternly, "or get thee into the furnace yonder!“
The Jew's exhibition had scarcely concluded, when a great, elderly dog--who seemed to be
his own master, as no person in the company laid claim to him--saw fit to render himself the
object of public notice. Hitherto, he had shown himself a very quiet, well disposed old dog,
going round from one to another, and, by way of being sociable, offering his rough head to
be patted by any kindly hand that would take so much trouble. But now, all of a sudden, this
grave and venerable quadruped, of his own mere motion, and without the slightest
suggestion from anybody else, began to run round after his tail, which, to heighten the
absurdity of the proceeding, was a great deal shorter than it should have been. Never was
seen such headlong eagerness in pursuit of an object that could not possibly be attained;
never was heard such a tremendous outbreak of growling, snarling, barking, and snapping-as if one end of the ridiculous brute's body were at deadly and most unforgivable enmity
with the other. Faster and faster, round about went the cur; and faster and still faster fled the
unapproachable brevity of his tail; and louder and fiercer grew his yells of rage and
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“Ethan Brand”
animosity; until, utterly exhausted, and as far from the goal as ever, the foolish old dog
ceased his performance as suddenly as he had begun it. The next moment he was as mild,
quiet, sensible, and respectable in his deportment, as when he first scraped acquaintance
with the company.
As may be supposed, the exhibition was greeted with universal laughter, clapping of hands,
and shouts of encore, to which the canine performer responded by wagging all that there
was to wag of his tail, but appeared totally unable to repeat his very successful effort to
amuse the spectators.
Meanwhile, Ethan Brand had resumed his seat upon the log, and moved, it might be, by a
perception of some remote analogy between his own case and that of this self-pursuing cur,
he broke into the awful laugh, which, more than any other token, expressed the condition of
his inward being. From that moment, the merriment of the party was at an end; they stood
aghast, dreading lest the inauspicious sound should be reverberated around the horizon,
and that mountain would thunder it to mountain, and so the horror be prolonged upon their
ears. Then, whispering one to another that it was late--that the moon was almost down--that
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“Ethan Brand”
the August night was growing chill--they hurried homewards leaving the lime-burner and little
Joe to deal as they might with their unwelcome guest. Save for these three human beings,
the open space on the hill-side was a solitude, set in a vast gloom of forest. Beyond that
darksome verge, the fire-light glimmered on the stately trunks and almost black foliage of
pines, intermixed with the lighter verdure of sapling oaks, maples, and poplars, while here
and there lay the gigantic corpses of dead trees, decaying on the leaf-strewn soil. And it
seemed to little Joe--a timorous and imaginative child--that the silent forest was holding its
breath, until some fearful thing should happen.
Ethan Brand thrust more wood into the fire, and closed the door of the kiln; then looking over
his shoulder at the lime-burner and his son, he bade, rather than advised, them to retire to
rest.
"For myself, I cannot sleep," said he. "I have matters that it concerns me to meditate upon. I
will watch the fire, as I used to do in the old time.”
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“Ethan Brand”
"And call the devil out of the furnace to keep you company, I suppose," muttered Bartram,
who had been making intimate acquaintance with the black bottle above-mentioned. "But
watch, if you like, and call as many devils as you like! For my part, I shall be all the better for a
snooze. Come, Joe!“
As the boy followed his father into the hut, he looked back at the wayfarer, and the tears
came into his eyes, for his tender spirit had an intuition of the bleak and terrible loneliness in
which this man had enveloped himself.
When they had gone, Ethan Brand sat listening to the crackling of the kindled wood, and
looking at the little spirts of fire that issued through the chinks of the door. These trifles,
however, once so familiar, had but the slightest hold of his attention, while deep within his
mind he was reviewing the gradual but marvellous change that had been wrought upon him
by the search to which he had devoted himself. He remembered how the night dew had
fallen upon him--how the dark forest had whispered to him--how the stars had gleamed
upon him--a simple and loving man, watching his fire in the years gone by, and ever musing
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“Ethan Brand”
as it burned. He remembered with what tenderness, with what love and sympathy for
mankind, and what pity for human guilt and woe, he had first begun to contemplate those
ideas which afterwards became the inspiration of his life; with what reverence he had then
looked into the heart of man, viewing it as a temple originally divine, and, however
desecrated, still to be held sacred by a brother; with what awful fear he had deprecated the
success of his pursuit, and prayed that the Unpardonable Sin might never be revealed to him.
Then ensued that vast intellectual development, which, in its progress, disturbed the
counterpoise between his mind and heart. The Idea that possessed his life had operated as a
means of education; it had gone on cultivating his powers to the highest point of which they
were susceptible; it had raised him from the level of an unlettered laborer to stand on a starlit eminence, whither the philosophers of the earth, laden with the lore of universities, might
vainly strive to clamber after him. So much for the intellect! But where was the heart? That,
indeed, had withered--had contracted--had hardened--had perished! It had ceased to
partake of the universal throb. He had lost his hold of the magnetic chain of humanity. He
was no longer a brother-man, opening the chambers or the dungeons of our common
nature by the key of holy sympathy, which gave him a right to share in all its secrets; he was
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“Ethan Brand”
now a cold observer, looking on mankind as the subject of his experiment, and, at length,
converting man and woman to be his puppets, and pulling the wires that moved them to
such degrees of crime as were demanded for his study.
Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. He began to be so from the moment that his moral nature
had ceased to keep the pace of improvement with his intellect. And now, as his highest
effort and inevitable development--as the bright and gorgeous flower, and rich, delicious
fruit of his life's labor--he had produced the Unpardonable Sin!
What more have I to seek? What more to achieve?" said Ethan Brand to himself. "My task is
done, and well done!“
Starting from the log with a certain alacrity in his gait, and ascending the hillock of earth that
was raised against the stone circumference of the lime-kiln, he thus reached the top of the
structure. It was a space of perhaps ten feet across, from edge to edge, presenting a view of
the upper surface of the immense mass of broken marble with which the kiln was heaped. All
these innumerable blocks and fragments of marble were red-hot and vividly on fire, sending
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“Ethan Brand”
up great spouts of blue flame, which quivered aloft and danced madly, as within a magic
circle, and sank and rose again, with continual and multitudinous activity. As the lonely man
bent forward over this terrible body of fire, the blasting heat smote up against his person with
a breath that, it might be scorched and shrivelled him up in a moment.
Ethan Brand stood erect, and raised his arms on high. The blue flames played upon his face,
and imparted the wild and ghastly light which alone could have suited its expression; it was
that of a fiend on the verge of plunging into his gulf of intensest torment.
"O Mother Earth," cried he, "who art no more my Mother, and into whose bosom this frame
shall never be resolved! O mankind, whose brotherhood I have cast off, and trampled thy
great heart beneath my feet! O stars of heaven, that shone on me of old, as if to light me
onward and upward!--farewell all, and forever. Come, deadly element of Fire--henceforth
my familiar friend! Embrace me, as I do thee!“
That night the sound of a fearful peal of laughter rolled heavily through the sleep of the limeburner and his little son; dim shapes of horror and anguish haunted their dreams, and
seemed still present in the rude hovel, when they opened their eyes to the daylight.
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"Up, boy, up!" cried the lime-burner, staring about him. "Thank Heaven, the night is gone, at
last; and rather than pass such another, I would watch my lime-kiln, wide awake, for a
twelvemonth. This Ethan Brand, with his humbug of an Unpardonable Sin, has done me no
such mighty favor, in taking my place!“
He issued from the hut, followed by little Joe, who kept fast hold of his father's hand. The early
sunshine was already pouring its gold upon the mountain-tops; and though the valleys were
still in shadow, they smiled cheerfully in the promise of the bright day that was hastening
onward. The village, completely shut in by hills, which swelled away gently about it, looked as
if it had rested peacefully in the hollow of the great hand of Providence. Every dwelling was
distinctly visible; the little spires of the two churches pointed upwards, and caught a foreglimmering of brightness from the sun-gilt skies upon their gilded weather-cocks. The tavern
was astir, and the figure of the old, smoke-dried stage-agent, cigar in mouth, was seen
beneath the stoop. Old Graylock was glorified with a golden cloud upon his head. Scattered
likewise over the breasts of the surrounding mountains, there were heaps of hoary mist, in
fantastic shapes, some of them far down into the valley, others high up towards the summits
and still others, of the same family of mist or cloud, hovering in the gold radiance of the
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upper atmosphere. Stepping from one to another of the clouds that rested on the hills, and
thence to the loftier brotherhood that sailed in air, it seemed almost as if a mortal man might
thus ascend into the heavenly regions. Earth was so mingled with sky that it was a day-dream
to look at it.
To supply that charm of the familiar and homely, which Nature so readily adopts into a scene
like this, the stage-coach was rattling down the mountain-road, and the driver sounded his
horn, while echo caught up the notes, and intertwined them into a rich and varied and
elaborate harmony, of which the original performer could lay claim to little share. The great
hills played a concert among themselves, each contributing a strain of airy sweetness.
Little Joe's face brightened at once.
"Dear father," cried he, skipping cheerily to and fro, "that strange man is gone, and the sky
and the mountains all seem glad of it!“
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“Ethan Brand”
"Yes," growled the lime-burner, with an oath, "but he has let the fire go down, and no thanks
to him if five hundred bushels of lime are not spoiled. If I catch the fellow hereabouts again, I
shall feel like tossing him into the furnace!“
With his long pole in his hand, he ascended to the top of the kiln. After a moment's pause, he
called to his son.
"Come up here, Joe!" said he.
So little Joe ran up the hillock, and stood by his father's side. The marble was all burnt into
perfect, snow-white lime. But on its surface, in the midst of the circle--snow-white too, and
thoroughly converted into lime--lay a human skeleton, in the attitude of a person who, after
long toil, lies down to long repose. Within the ribs--strange to say--was the shape of a human
heart.
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“Ethan Brand”
"Was the fellow's heart made of marble?" cried Bartram, in some perplexity at this
phenomenon. "At any rate, it is burnt into what looks like special good lime; and, taking all
the bones together, my kiln is half a bushel the richer for him.“
So saying, the rude lime-burner lifted his pole, and, letting it fall upon the skeleton, the relics
of Ethan Brand were crumbled into fragments.
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“The May-Pole of Merry Mount”
THE MAYPOLE OF MERRY MOUNT
There is an admirable foundation for a philosophic romance in the curious history of the early
settlement of Mount Wollaston, or Merry Mount. In the slight sketch here attempted, the facts,
recorded on the grave pages of our New England annalists, have wrought themselves,
almost spontaneously, into a sort of allegory. The masques, mummeries, and festive customs,
described in the text, are in accordance with the manners of the age. Authority on these
points may be found in Strutt's Book of English Sports and Pastimes.
Bright were the days at Merry Mount, when the Maypole was the banner staff of that gay
colony! They who reared it, should their banner be triumphant, were to pour sunshine over
New England's rugged hills, and scatter flower seeds throughout the soil. Jollity and gloom
were contending for an empire. Midsummer eve had come, bringing deep verdure to the
forest, and roses in her lap, of a more vivid hue than the tender buds of Spring. But May, or
her mirthful spirit, dwelt all the year round at Merry Mount, sporting with the Summer months,
and revelling with Autumn, and basking in the glow of Winter's fireside. Through a world of toil
and care she flitted with a dreamlike smile, and came hither to find a home among the
lightsome hearts of Merry Mount.
Never had the Maypole been so gayly decked as at sunset on midsummer eve. This
venerated emblem was a pine-tree, which had preserved the slender grace of youth, while it
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loftiest height
of the old wood monarchs. From its top streamed a silken banner,
Nathanielthe
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colored like the rainbow. Down nearly to the ground the pole was dressed with birchen
“The Minister’s Black Veil”
THE MINISTER'S BLACK VEIL A PARABLE[1]
[1] Another clergyman in New England, Mr. Joseph Moody, of York, Maine, who died
about eighty years since, made himself remarkable by the same eccentricity that is here
related of the Reverend Mr. Hooper. In his case, however, the symbol had a different
import. In early life he had accidentally killed a beloved friend, and from that day till the
hour of his own death, he hid his face from men.
The sexton stood in the porch of Milford meeting-house, pulling busily at the bell-rope. The
old people of the village came stooping along the street. Children, with bright faces,
tripped merrily beside their parents, or mimicked a graver gait, in the conscious dignity of
their Sunday clothes. Spruce bachelors looked sidelong at the pretty maidens, and
fancied that the Sabbath sunshine made them prettier than on week days. When the
throng had mostly streamed into the porch, the sexton began to toll the bell, keeping his
eye on the Reverend Mr. Hooper's door. The first glimpse of the clergyman's figure was the
signal for the bell to cease its summons.
"But what has good Parson Hooper got upon his face?" cried the sexton in astonishment.
All within hearing immediately turned about, and beheld the semblance of Mr. Hooper,
pacing slowly his meditative way towards the meetinghouse. With one accord they
started, expressing more wonder than if some strange minister were coming to dust
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cushions of Mr. Hooper's pulpit.
Renaissance
“The Birth-Mark”
THE BIRTHMARK
In the latter part of the last century there lived a man of science, an eminent proficient in
every branch of natural philosophy, who not long before our story opens had made
experience of a spiritual affinity more attractive than any chemical one. He had left his
laboratory to the care of an assistant, cleared his fine countenance from the furnace
smoke, washed the stain of acids from his fingers, and persuaded a beautiful woman to
become his wife. In those days when the comparatively recent discovery of electricity and
other kindred mysteries of Nature seemed to open paths into the region of miracle, it was
not unusual for the love of science to rival the love of woman in its depth and absorbing
energy. The higher intellect, the imagination, the spirit, and even the heart might all find
their congenial aliment in pursuits which, as some of their ardent votaries believed, would
ascend from one step of powerful intelligence to another, until the philosopher should lay
his hand on the secret of creative force and perhaps make new worlds for himself. We
know not whether Aylmer possessed this degree of faith in man's ultimate control over
Nature. He had devoted himself, however, too unreservedly to scientific studies ever to be
weaned from them by any second passion. His love for his young wife might prove the
stronger of the two; but it could only be by intertwining itself with his love of science, and
uniting the strength of the latter to his own.
ENGL 4310: The American
Nathaniel
Hawthorne
(1804-1864)
Such
a union
accordingly
took place, and was attended with truly remarkable
Renaissance
consequences and a deeply impressive moral. One day, very soon after their marriage,
“Rappacini’s Daughter”
Rappaccini's Daughter
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A young man, named Giovanni Guasconti, came, very long ago, from the more southern
region of Italy, to pursue his studies at the University of Padua. Giovanni, who had but a
scanty supply of gold ducats in his pocket, took lodgings in a high and gloomy chamber of
an old edifice, which looked not unworthy to have been the palace of a Paduan noble,
and which, in fact, exhibited over its entrance the armorial bearings of a family long since
extinct. The young stranger, who was not unstudied in the great poem of his country,
recollected that one of the ancestors of this family, and perhaps an occupant of this very
mansion, had been pictured by Dante as a partaker of the immortal agonies of his Inferno.
These reminiscences and associations, together with the tendency to heart-break natural
to a young man for the first time out of his native sphere, caused Giovanni to sigh heavily,
as he looked around the desolate and ill-furnished apartment.
"Holy Virgin, signor," cried old dame Lisabetta, who, won by the youth's remarkable beauty
of person, was kindly endeavoring to give the chamber a habitable air, "what a sigh was
that to come out of a young man's heart! Do you find this old mansion gloomy? For the
love of heaven, then, put your head out of the window, and you will see as bright sunshine
as you have left in Naples."
ENGL 4310: The American
Nathaniel mechanically
Hawthorne (1804-1864)
Guasconti
did as the old woman advised, but could not quite agree with
Renaissance
her that the Lombard sunshine was as cheerful as that of southern Italy. Such as it was,
1850
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Gestalt Shifts”
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Gestalt Shifts”
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Gestalt Shifts”
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Gestalt Shifts”
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
“Gestalt Shifts”
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
CHAPTER 7
Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Scarlet
Letter
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE writes
romance.
And what's romance? Usually, a nice
little tale where you have everything As
You Like It, where rain never wets your
jacket and gnats never bite your nose
and it's always daisy- time. As You Like It
and Forest Lovers, etc. Morte D'Arthur.
Hawthorne obviously isn't this kind of
romanticist: though nobody has muddy
boots in The Scarlet Letter, either.
But there is more to it. The Scarlet Letter
isn't a pleasant, pretty romance. It is a
sort of parable, an earthly story with a
hellish meaning.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
The Scarlet Letter
Read
Online
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
Huffington Post’s #1 “Worst Film Adaptation of All Time”
The Scarlet Letter
Though the credits warn that this movie is "freely adapted from the novel by
Nathaniel Hawthorne," nothing can prepare you for just how "freely" director
Ronald Joffe adapted this film. True fans of the classic will be disturbed by the
absence of connectivity between the book and the film, and those who have
never read the novel will probably never want to after seeing the movie.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
The Scarlet Letter
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
The Scarlet Letter
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
The Scarlet Letter
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
The Scarlet Letter
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
The Scarlet Letter: Key Characters
Hester Prynne
Arthur Dimmesdale
Roger Chillingworth
Pearl
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
The Scarlet Letter
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
The Scarlet Letter
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
The Scarlet Letter
ENGL 4310: The American
Renaissance