540 Hawthorne, Nathaniel
Brown loses the innocence of his youthful con-
victions at this altar. Later, after he returns to the
village, he suspects everyone he meets of secret vice,
coldly rejecting even the tender touch of his young
wife. His mood darkens over the course of his life
and he dies a gloomy old man.
In the span of a night, Brown learns that youth is
not necessarily innocent, nor age venerable and wise.
He goes to his grave convinced that human nature is
evil and human beings are easy prey to temptation,
even those whose hearts are as pure as his wife’s.
Hawthorne’s tale thus seems to accord with the Puri-
tan view of human nature as corrupt and innately
depraved, stained by the original sin of Adam and
Eve. With Brown the reader may suspect that “sin is
but a name” and innocence merely an illusion.
However, this interpretation is twisted by hints
in the last paragraphs that Goodman Brown has
dreamed the whole episode. Beside Faith at the fate-
ful altar, Brown had exhorted her to look to heaven.
At that moment, the entire sinister congregation
had vanished and Brown was left alone in the forest.
In suggesting that Brown dreamed it all, the narrator
implies that the young man made up his own mind
to distrust others, possibly projecting his own sense
of guilt onto those around him.
The ambiguous ending thus allows a variety of
interpretations of the tale. Perhaps we are meant to
understand that the world is not an innocent place,
a somber lesson taught through hard experience of
evil. Or the tale may teach that the experience of life
is what one makes of it, with innocence and guilt
only matters of perspective shaped by temperament
and circumstance. Another possibility is that the
loss of faith leads to a loss of innocence. Hawthorne
seems to entertain all of these possibilities in this
and other important works.
Mary Goodwin
reliGion in “Young Goodman Brown”
A major theme in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story
“Young Goodman Brown” is the place of religion in
American life. Although it was written in the 19th
century, the story is set 200 years earlier, in a Puritan
community in colonial Massachusetts. The Puritans’
Massachusetts Bay Colony was a theocracy, mean-
ing a community in which the state is dominated by
a church, and civil law has its basis in religious law
(in the Puritans’ case, biblical law). In such a place,
religion naturally plays a dominant role in many
aspects of life.
“Young Goodman Brown” reflects the impor-
tance of matters of faith in daily life in that period,
with key plot events stressing in particular the social
aspects of religion. Goodman Brown, a young mem-
ber of a Puritan community, leaves his wife Faith
one night to embark on a mysterious mission into
the forest near his village. On his way out of town
he passes the meetinghouse, which is the Puritan
place of worship and the center of social life for
the community. This landmark serves to remind
the reader of the deeply communal nature of the
Puritan religion. The matter of social interaction in
church activities takes on deeper meaning as Brown
travels into the woods: He starts out alone but
soon encounters other townspeople, all of whom he
identifies as members of his church. There is Goody
Cloyse, an old woman who had taught Brown his
catechism. The young man also spies the town’s
minister and deacon in the woods. Brown has always
thought of his neighbors as pious, upstanding mem-
bers of the community. Now he is shocked to find
them all in the woods on the same dark mission,
apparently bound for a witches’ mass.
The social aspects of religion in the story encom-
pass history, including that of Brown’s family. On his
way into the forest, Brown is met by a sinister old
man, a devil-like figure holding a staff that resem-
bles a snake. The man tells Brown that he knew
his ancestors to be cruel persecutors, not the good
Christians Brown had thought them to be. He also
tells Brown that many pious-seeming townspeople
are stained with secret sin. Brown’s conversation
with the old man points to the hypocrisy at the heart
of Puritan religious practice.
Hawthorne’s story explores the deeply personal as
well as social aspects of religion. Although shocked to
discover that his townspeople are hypocritical sinners,
Brown is himself in the forest bent on some dark
purpose, which raises questions about his own moral
credibility. Brown’s mission is a kind of religious
parody: In order to pursue his “quest,” he must leave
behind Faith—his wife—and, apparently, his beliefs
and moral convictions. His destination is a sinister