Young Goodman Brown and Its Characters, Essay Example

Goodwife Brown’s role in “Young Goodman Brown” seems arbitrary at first. Clearly the movement centers upon the self-righteous delusions of her husband which reveal just such a common theme in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s literature. Every time that the tricks began, Goodman Brown remembered his wife- drawn again to his need to protect and help her. She represents the true righteousness which he has been given, and his vanity fools him into placing his own understanding above all others. Under the guise of Christian self-righteousness, the devil helped community leaders lash Quakers, burn down Indian villages, and conduct themselves in other proud determinations of God’s will. Not through any personal merit but for the love for his wife does Goodman Brown resist the devil and his logic. Faith is the new morality of openness, kindness, and acceptance which is absorbed by loyalty to tradition, ergo the devil walks with Goodman Brown in the form of his grandfather.

Hawthorne’s works often also use names to convey points about plot and character. It is no coincidence that Goodwife Brown was “aptly named.” (213) Goodwife Brown’s name, Faith, serves a dual purpose, as it portrays the skepticism with which Hawthorne views human determinations of morality and organized religion and as her innocence effects the constancy of her husband’s beliefs. Hawthorne emphasizes this point that she is innocent and optimistic, immediately mentioning how new their marriage is and the pink ribbons in her hair. On the first page, her husband’s critical flaw is subtly revealed within the dialogue. He condescends to treat her as a child, telling her not to worry or go out after dark, and he ignores the many signs which warn him against the arrival of the devil and the temptation to follow. “Poor little Faith” watches him leave—constant, vigilant, and unconvinced of his safety.

The devil and Faith are two sides of patience and morality, and a story of morality requires a hero and a villain, cleverly mingled inside trickery. Even the reader might begin to question Faith Brown if it were not for her pink ribbons and her good-natured fears and warnings. When even the ministers pass and speak of pagan rituals and devil worship, Faith’s husband cries out to God and to her, as the earthly representative of purity, to save him from the devil’s wiles. The crowd which appears to drag Faith down finally pull her husband into a madness which overtakes reality. He cries out: “There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name.” (217) Later, also in the forest, her lamentations are twisted to form the most evil and dark-sounding refrain to the devil’s service.

Faith does not change; she remains innocent, constant, and pure. She skips up to meet him after his walk with the devil- pink ribbons and all. His view of her is what changes, altering according to the illusions of the devil. Faith is both heroine and thematic mascot, modeling true religious belief as independent of the circumstances involved and the pressures of earthly consensus. There are certain things which must remain sacred to allow beliefs to persevere. The very innocence which Goodman Brown prizes in her is turned into a statement of her inexperience and susceptibility to trickery. She, claims the devil, is rewarded higher than the others for her piety and her youth. Again, this idea of idealization of faith features in the loyalty which Goodman Brown shows toward Christianity. There is loyalty to the accepted standards of goodness and sometimes a separate loyalty to the beliefs upon which these standards are originally founded. In others, it is easier to see evil, to spout maxims of righteousness and virtue to advise against listening to the devil. Yet the devil’s greatest trick is turning the greatest strengths into the most compelling weaknesses.

Our subtle heroine reveals the question which “Young Goodman Brown” silently begs an answer for: In what do we place our faith? In trying to reach for that something, the actions taken may bring us further from the happiness of the realization of good, further from the simple truths which a satisfied life fulfills. Goodman Brown’s truth lay in the fact that he would choose to accept an illusion over what he knows to be true. Perhaps this is why faith is always paired with difficulty, i.e. a leap of faith or test of faith, but this time Faith was the test and silent judge. She never speaks of herself, only sedately warns her husband of her bad feelings. Goodman Brown believed in her as a statue, a hollow reflection cast in innocence but capable of knowing nothing of importance. This belief in her shallow impermeability allows him to think so little of her ability to resist the devil. The story is as much- or more- about her as it is about her husband’s little woodland stroll with temptation, which had no hold over him until his faith in her collapsed into doubt. Thus, Goodwife Faith Brown combines Hawthorne’s typical skepticism with a reminder that, as the old adage goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

“They carved no hopeful verse upon his tombstone, for his dying hour was gloom.” (222)

Works Cited

Charters, Ann. Literature and Its Writers: A Compact Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. 5^th ed. Print.