Nathaniel Hawthorne , [608108]

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Young Godman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Puritans History in the context of The Salem Witchcraft Hysteria

”Young Goodman Brown” written in 1835 by Nathaniel H awthorne is said to be one of
literature’s most reliable portaits of seventeenth -century Puritan society. The tale appeared for
the fir st time in the April issue of ”New England Magazin ” and was later included in the short
story collection ”Mosses from an Old Manse” in 1846.
Hawthorne was an American fiction writer, born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804, in a
family of Puritans colonists. In that time religion and innocence were questioned. The story ”
Young Goodman Brown” was the outcome of his experience through his young adulthood,
which was heavily impacted by the historical background of his family. His grandfather from
his father’s side, John Hathorne, was a judge in the Salem Witch Trials, bothered Nathaniel so
much, that he decided to change his last name by adding a W just to separate himself from the
family.
The story op ens with the central character, Young Goodman Bro wn, about to adventure on
an evening walk. His wife presented by the name of Faith, begged him to delay his journey.
Goodman Brown however tells her that he has some bussines to take care of before sunrise.
As he walks down the street blam ing himself for l eaving his young wife alone at home and
promised that after this journey he will stay by her side when times are good or bad. He
arrives deep in the forest and meets with an old man, who is actually a disguised Devil,
waiting for him. The Devil carries a s tuff which resembles a black snake, when he urg es
Goodman Brown to take the stu ff as he follows him, Goodman Brown expresses doubts and
intentions of going back home, but the Devil succeded in convincing him to walk with him
and to listen to the resons why he should continue.
Goodman Brown murmurs that hi s forefathers, good and honest Christians, would never go
on such a walk. To his sur prise, he founds o ut that this is not true. His companion tells him
that he is well familiarize d with the Brown family and that he helped his father and
grandfather to commit acts such as punishment of religious dessenters and the massacre of
Indians, Goodman is in shock while the Devil bursted in laughter.
The two men then see the old woman who serves as moral adviser, Coody Cloyse. They
continue walking throught the forest. When he arrieves and lifts his hands to pray he hears
Faith’s voice, his beloved wife , as he calles out for her, she answers with a scream. He
realizes that Faith is going to the meeting, and he decides to attend the meeting too. Soon he
reaches a clearing with a crude altar surrounded by the “saints” and “sinners” of Salem. While

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the Devi l’s congregation sings an evil hymn rejoicing in sin, Brown waits, hoping that he can
find Faith. At a call for the new members he steps forward, and Faith is led forward by two
women. A dark figure speaks o f sin. He commands the new ones to look at each o ther and
then declares that they now know virtue is but a dream and evil is the nature of mankind.
Goodman Brown cries out to Faith to resist this evil .
He never finds out, however, if Faith does resist. As soon as the words are out of his
mouth, Goodman B rown finds himself alone in the forest. The next morning he returns to
Salem. Everywhere he goes he sees people who attended the meeting, but he turns away from
them. He even turns from Faith.
Though Goodman Brown never finds out whether or not he dreamed the meeting in the
forest, the experience still has a profound effect on him. After that night, he becomes a stern,
sad, and distrustful man. He rejects the faith he once had in his religion and even rejects his
own wife. At his death, no hopeful words ar e carved upon his tombstone. He has lived a life
of gloom, seeing sinners everywhere he looked.
Now that we know the plot, I will continue with the main ideea that I want to focus on this
paper which is puritanism. According to the Cambridg e Dictionary, p uritanism is the belief
that it is important to work hard and control yourself, and that pleasure is wrong or
unnecessary and a puritan is someone who believes that it is important to work hard and
control yourself, and that p leasure is wrong or unnecessar y. The roots of Puritanism are to be
found in the beginnings of the English Refo rmation. The name “Puritans” ( sometimes called
“precisionists”) was a term of contempt assigned to the movement by its enemies.
They belived that the Church of England was too similar to the Roman Catholic one and that
there should be eliminated the ceremonies and practices that are not rooted in the Bible.
Puritans felt that they had a direct agreement with God to enact these refo rms. Under siege
from Church and crown, certain groups of Puritans migrated to Northern English colonies in
the New World in the 1620s and 1630s, laying the foundation for the religious, intellectual,
and social order of New England.
Through the reigns of the Protestant King Edward VI (1547 -1553), who introduced the first
vernacular prayer book, and the Catholic (1553 -1558), who sent some dissenting priest to
their deaths and others into exile, the Puritan movement –whether tolerated or suppressed –
continued to grow. Some Puritans favored a presbyterian form of church organization; others,
more radical, began to claim autonomy for individual congregations. Still others were content
to remain within the structure of the national church, but set themselves agai nst Catholic and
episcopal authority.
As they gained strength, Puritans were seen by the ir enemies as hairsplitters who in a servile
or submissive manner followed their Bibles as gui des to daily life or hypocrites, if I can say it
like this, who cheated the very neighbors they judged inadequate Christians.
Yet the Puritan attack on the established church gained popular strength, especially in East
Anglia and among the lawyers and merchants of London. The movement found wide support
among these new prof essional classes, who saw in it a mirror for their growing disc ontent
with economic restraints.

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Not to confuse the Pilgrims with the Puritans, the main difference between these two is that
the Puritans did no t consider themselves separatists. They calle d themselves “nonseparating
congregationalists,” by which they meant that they had not repudiated the Church of England
as a false church.
The Puritan migration was overwhelmingly a migration of families (unlike other migrations
to early America, which we re composed largely of young unattached men). The literacy rate
was high, and the intensity of devotional life, as recorded in the many surviving diaries,
sermon notes, poems, and letters, was seldom to be matched in American life. Puritanism
gave American s a sense of history as a progressive drama under the direction of God, in
which they played a role akin to, if not prophetically aligned with, that of the Old Testament
Jews as a new chosen people. Perhaps most important, as Max Weber profoundly understoo d,
was the strength of Puritanism as a way of coping with the contradictory requirements of
Christian ethics in a w orld on the verge of modernity. It reccommended moderation within a
psychology that saw worldly prosperity as a sign of divine favor. Such et hics were
particularly urgent in a New World where opportunity was rich, but the source of moral
authority obscure. By the beginning of the 18th century, Puritanism had both declined and
shown its tenacity.
In "Young Goodman Brown," one of Hawthorne's mo st admired and critically discussed
stories, he probes the psychology of Puritan Salem's witchcraft frenzy to offer insights into
the moral complexity of human nature. A dark, penetrating tale, as "deep as Dante," according
to Herman Melville, "Young Goodm an Brown" reveals Hawthorne at his best –skillful writer
of symbolic allegory and astute interpreter of Puritan history.
Nancy Bunge comments on Hawthorne's knowledge and use of Salem history in Nathaniel
Hawthorne : A Study of the Short Fiction: ” [Hawtho rne] did not write out of ignorant fantasies
about the Puritans. "Young Goodman Brown" not only presents the issue of the Salem witch
trials, but a number of its characters have the names of Salem residents charged with
witchcraft, and its major action tak es place in the noisy pasture of the period designated as a
witches' gathering place. (historical documents of the witchcraft trials) . Hawthorne does not
simply provide a record of the time, he uses history to examine issues of community and
individualism explaining both the madness in Salem an d much subsequent madness (11).”
(courtesy of Twayne Publishers, New York, 1993.)
It's not surprising that Hawthorne was drawn to the witchcraft episode. His family history
gave him a personal connection to the trag ic events of 1692. In The Salem World of Nathaniel
Hawthorn e Margaret B. Moore points out: ” As for Hawthorne's ties with the persecution of
the witches, they too [like his ties with the persecution of Quakers] are based partly on his
paternal ancestors, in particular on John Hathorne (1641 -1717), the third son of Major
William and Anna Hathorne and an important merchant in Salem. . . . John Hathorne was also
the famous "witch judge" blamed by many, such as Charles Upham, for playing a major role
in the witc hcraft trials in Salem and Salem Village in 1692. According to his descendant
[Nathaniel], John Hathorne "inherited the persecuting spirit, and made himself so conspicuous
in the martyrdom of the witches, that their blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon
him. So deep a stain, indeed, that his old dry bones, in the Charter Street bu rial-ground must
still retain it, if they have not crumbled utterly to dust" (37 -38). (courtesy of University of
Missouri Press, 1998) .

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In seventeenth -century New En gland, most people shared a strong belief in witchcraft, and
in the "Wonders of the Invisible World," Cotton Mather recorded the hellish workings of
witches and the Devil against the Puritan experiment.
The origins of the belief in witchcraft and "specte rs" went back to Europe, where, by some
estimates, five hundred thousand people were executed for witchcraft between the fifteenth
and seventeenth centuries. Prior to the Salem outbreak of 1692, almost three hundred people
had been accused of witchcraft in New England; more than thirty had been hanged ("witches"
were not burned in Eng land or the American colonies). The flair up of accusations in 1692,
beginning at Salem Village (now Danvers) , spread to many other communities in Essex
County, Massachusetts an d was the worst and most dramatic episode of witch hunting in
colonial America. When it was over, twenty people had been executed, nineteen hanged and
one, Giles Corey, pressed to death. More than a hundred people had been jailed, and several
died during t heir imprisonment.
Both men and women were accused, imprisoned, and executed for witchcraft prior to and
during the Salem hysteria. In colonial New England, however, almost all accused "witches"
were older women, who tended to be independent and nonconfo rmist. An interesting study
from this perspective is Carol F. Karlsen's ”The Devil in the Shape of a Woman ” (W.W.
Norton, 1987).
Generally, historians have seen the Salem witchcraft hysteria as significant because it was
the last time in American history that accusations of witchcraft would lead to execution. The
episode and its aftermath also marked the end of Puritan authority in New England and, with
dawning rationalism, the belief in devils striking out from some "invisible world."

Works Cited

(Defi nition of puritanism from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus ©
Cambridge University Press) https://dictionary.cambridge.org/
"Young Goodman Brown ." Short Stories for Students . . Encyclopedia.com. 10 Jan. 2020
"Religion & Historical Background of Young Goodman Brown." StudyMoose, 13 May 2016,
Contributor: The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Contributor: The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica , Article Title: Nathaniel Hawthorne ,
Website Name: Encyclopædia Britannica , Publisher: Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. , Date
Published: noiembrie 06, 2019, Access Date: ianuarie 17, 2020
http://www.hawthorneinsalem.org/page/11398/
Article Title: The Puritans , Author: History.com Editors , Website Name: HISTORY , Access
Date : 17 ianuarie 2020 , Publish er: A&E Television Networks , Last Updated : July 30, 2019,
Original Published Date: October 29, 2009

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