Young Goodman Brown: Characters
Young Goodman Brown: Characters
Introduction
“Young Goodman Brown” is a short story by the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. The story made its first appearance in the New England Magazine for April 1835 and was collected in Mosses from an Old Manse in 1846. The story is set in the Puritan New England, a common setting for Hawthorne's works, and like most of the stories in Mosses, “Young Goodman Brown” examines Hawthorne’s favorite themes: the loss of religious faith, presence of temptation, and social ills of Puritan communities. These themes, along with the story’s dark, surreal ending, make “Young Goodman Brown” one of the Hawthorne’s most popular short stories.
In order to understand “Young Goodman Brown” we must, like the author himself go back some four hundred years into to the past, to the 17th century, in the time of the Puritans. In this story Hawthorne references three dark events from the Puritans’ history: the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, the Puritan intolerance of the Quakers, and King Philip’s War. It is necessary to point out the main characteristics and beliefs of the Puritan teachings for the better understanding of the society to which the protagonist belongs to.
Puritan culture emphasized the need for introspection and the strict accounting for one’s feelings as well as one’s deeds. They believed in the conversion experience, an epiphany, which signified that a person was chosen to be among God's elect, and this belief was the center of evangelical experience.
The Puritan theology rested primarily upon the doctrine of predestination and the inefficaciousness of good works; it separated men sharply and certainly into two groups, the saved and the damned, and, technically, at least, was not concerned with any subtler shadings.
The words of the Bible, as they interpreted them, were the origin of many Puritan cultural ideals, especially regarding the roles of men and women in the community. According to this teaching both sexes
Introduction
“Young Goodman Brown” is a short story by the American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. The story made its first appearance in the New England Magazine for April 1835 and was collected in Mosses from an Old Manse in 1846. The story is set in the Puritan New England, a common setting for Hawthorne's works, and like most of the stories in Mosses, “Young Goodman Brown” examines Hawthorne’s favorite themes: the loss of religious faith, presence of temptation, and social ills of Puritan communities. These themes, along with the story’s dark, surreal ending, make “Young Goodman Brown” one of the Hawthorne’s most popular short stories.
In order to understand “Young Goodman Brown” we must, like the author himself go back some four hundred years into to the past, to the 17th century, in the time of the Puritans. In this story Hawthorne references three dark events from the Puritans’ history: the Salem Witch Trials of 1692, the Puritan intolerance of the Quakers, and King Philip’s War. It is necessary to point out the main characteristics and beliefs of the Puritan teachings for the better understanding of the society to which the protagonist belongs to.
Puritan culture emphasized the need for introspection and the strict accounting for one’s feelings as well as one’s deeds. They believed in the conversion experience, an epiphany, which signified that a person was chosen to be among God's elect, and this belief was the center of evangelical experience.
The Puritan theology rested primarily upon the doctrine of predestination and the inefficaciousness of good works; it separated men sharply and certainly into two groups, the saved and the damned, and, technically, at least, was not concerned with any subtler shadings.
The words of the Bible, as they interpreted them, were the origin of many Puritan cultural ideals, especially regarding the roles of men and women in the community. According to this teaching both sexes
References: Kaul, A. N. “The American Vision”, Yale University Press: Book New Haven, 1963. Darrel, Abel, The Moral Picturesque: Studies in Hawthorne’s Fiction, Purdue UP: Indiana, 1988 Wagenknecht, E. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Man, His Tales and Romances, Frederick Ungar Book: New York, 1989. Hart D. James, The Oxford Companion to American Literature, 3rd edition, Oxford UP: New York, 1956 Levy, Leo B.“The Problem of Faith in ‘Young Goodman Brown.’” Modern Critcial Views: Nathaniel Hawthorne Vukičević Radojka, ed. Reading American Literature: A Critical Antology, Univerzitet Crne Gore: Podgorica, 2002. Millington, H. Richard, ed. A Cambridge Companion to Nathaniel Hawthorne, CUP: Cambridge, 2004.