Nathaniel Hawthorne
Young Goodman Brown
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Considered one of the greatest American writers, Nathaniel Hawthorne
(1804 – 1864), is a direct product of his New England background. His father
was a sea captain, who died when the boy was only four. Reared in a reclusive
setting, Hawthorne became an avid reader, as recorded by the huge number of
books he borrowed from the local lending library in Salem, Massachusetts. His
uncle sent him to Bowdoin College. Hawthorne wrote, but destroyed most of
his early writings; however, by the time he was 33, his writing style and content
had matured. Critics credit Hawthorne with making the short story acceptable
literature in America, especially after his Twice Told Tales was published in
1837.
Haunted by his Puritan past, including a grandfather who was a judge at the
Salem Witch Trials, Hawthorne wrote many of his novels and short stories,
including The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, and “Young
Goodman Brown” with deeply Puritan backgrounds. His contributions to
American literature include his meticulous style, intriguing themes, complex
symbolism, and psychological insights into human nature.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (cont.)
Hawthorne's works belong to romanticism or, more specifically, dark
romanticism, cautionary tales that suggest that guilt, sin, and evil are the most
inherent natural qualities of humanity. Many of his works are inspired by
Puritan New England, combining historical romance loaded with symbolism
and deep psychological themes, bordering on surrealism. His depictions of the
past are a version of historical fiction used only as a vehicle to express common
themes of ancestral sin, guilt and retribution. His later writings also reflect his
negative view of the Transcendentalism movement.
The romantic period: 1820-1860
Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Edgar Allan Poe,
Emily Dickinson, and the Transcendentalists represent the first great literary
generation produced in the United States. In the case of the novelists, the
Romantic vision tended to express itself in the form Hawthorne called the
"Romance," a heightened, emotional, and symbolic form of the novel.
Romances were not love stories, but serious novels that used special techniques
to communicate complex and subtle meanings.
Instead of carefully defining realistic characters through a wealth of detail, as
most English or continental novelists did, Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe shaped
heroic figures larger than life, burning with mythic significance. The typical
protagonists of the American Romance are haunted, alienated individuals.
Hawthorne's Arthur Dimmesdale or Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter,
Melville's Ahab in Moby-Dick, and the many isolated and obsessed characters
of Poe's tales are lonely protagonists pitted against unknowable, dark fates that,
in some mysterious way, grow out of their deepest unconscious selves. The
symbolic plots reveal hidden actions of the anguished spirit.
The romantic period (cont.)
One reason for this fictional exploration into the hidden recesses of the soul is the absence of
settled, traditional community life in America. English novelists – Jane Austen, Charles Dickens (the
great favorite), Anthony Trollope, George Eliot, William Thackeray – lived in a complex, wellarticulated, traditional society and shared with their readers attitudes that informed their realistic
fiction. American novelists were faced with a history of strife and revolution, a geography of vast
wilderness, and a fluid and relatively classless democratic society. American novels frequently reveal a
revolutionary absence of tradition. Many English novels show a poor main character rising on the
economic and social ladder, perhaps because of a good marriage or the discovery of a hidden
aristocratic past. But this buried plot does not challenge the aristocratic social structure of England.
On the contrary, it confirms it. The rise of the main character satisfies the wish fulfillment of the
mainly middle-class readers.
In contrast, the American novelist had to depend on his or her own devices. America was, in part,
an undefined, constantly moving frontier populated by immigrants speaking foreign languages and
following strange and crude ways of life. Thus the main character in American literature might find
himself alone among cannibal tribes, as in Melville's Typee, or exploring a wilderness like James
Fennimore Cooper's Leatherstocking, or witnessing lonely visions from the grave, like Poe's solitary
individuals, or meeting the devil walking in the forest, like Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown.
Virtually all the great American protagonists have been "loners." The democratic American individual
had, as it were, to invent himself.
http://www.america.gov/st/arts-english/2008/May/20080516124158eaifas0.4010736.html
Historical context
Lingering Puritan Influences in Nineteenth-Century New England
Although the Salem Witch Trials had unfolded more than one hundred years prior,
nineteenth-century New England was still reeling from inherited guilt, even as it
rebelled against the constrictive morals of its forebears, the Puritans. It was into this
Salem, Massachusetts, society that Hawthorne was born in 1804. Despite the fact he
listed Unitarian as his official religion, his roots and sensibilities were unmistakably
Puritan.
Hawthorne's great, great grandfather William Hathorne (Nathaniel added the "W"
to the family name when he began signing his published works) was the first family
member to emigrate from England. He once ordered the public whipping of a
Quaker woman who refused to renounce her religious beliefs. Following in the
footsteps of his father, William's son John presided over the Salem Witch Trials.
Hawthorne claims he was frequently haunted by these unholy ghosts from his past.
Hawthorne's heritage was not the sole influence on his development, however; the
social tenets of his contemporary society also played a key role.
Historical context (cont.)
Nineteenth-century English traveler Thomas Hamilton once described the
descendants of New England's first colonists as ''cold, shrewd, calculating and
ingenious," and asserted that "a New Englander is far more a being of reason
than of impulse." Hawthorne applied these traits and values—which he
struggled to accept within himself—to his characters, including the title
character in "Young Goodman Brown." According to Hyatt H. Waggoner in his
book, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hawthorne "continued to note in himself, and to
disapprove, feelings and attitudes he projected in . .. Young Goodman Brown.
He noted his tendency not only to study others with cool objectivity, but to
study himself with almost obsessive interest." The same Puritan values that
inspired Hawthorne's objective observation of people and events contributed to
his growth and genius as a writer.
Historical context (cont.)
The Industrial Revolution and the Publishing Business
Printed communication increased by leaps and bounds in the first half of the
nineteenth century as a result of new technology. Publishers enlarged their size
and scope under the pressure of competition, and new agencies of delivery –
including the ocean steamship and the railroad – increased the speed and
efficiency of publishing. Improved presses sped up the rate of printing twentyfold between 1830 and 1850. This trend contributed to Hawthorne's public
reputation and income as many of his earlier short stories and essays found
their way into print via a newsman's press.
Young Goodman Brown: Setting
• Time:
• Place:
• Weather conditions:
• Social conditions:
• Mood:
Character: Faith Brown
1. Characteristics:
2. Developing or static character:
Character: Young Goodman Brown
1. Characteristics:
2. Developing or static character:
Character: The Devil
1. Characteristics:
2. Developing or static character:
Character: Goody Cloyse
1. Characteristics:
2. Developing or static character:
Character: The minister
1. Characteristics:
2. Developing or static character:
Character: Deacon Gookin
1. Characteristics:
2. Developing or static character:
Young Goodman Brown: Plot
Young Goodman Brown: Point of view
Young Goodman Brown: Conflict
Foreshadowing
Young Goodman Brown: Theme
1. Theme:
2. Theme:
3. Theme:
Young Goodman Brown: Symbolism
1. Forest:
2. Faith Brown:
3. Young Goodman Brown:
4. Pink ribbon: