Narrative Structure and Theme in "Young Goodman Brown"
Author(s): Norman H. Hostetler
Source: The Journal of Narrative Technique, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Fall, 1982), pp. 221-228
Published by: Journal of Narrative Theory
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Narrative Structureand Theme
in "Young Goodman Brown"
Norman H. Hostetler
One of Nathaniel Hawthorne's major themes concerns conscious awareness of the reality which the mind imposes on external objects. Hawthorne's
characters are repeatedly confronted by the need to establish the relationship
between their imaginations and the external world.' Their ability to make the
epistemological distinctions between the products of their mental processes
and their sense impressions of the external world frequently governs their
ability to develop a sound moral relationship with other people.
"Young Goodman Brown"illustrates especially well the fatal consequences
of psychological misjudgment concerning perception and reality.2The problem of establishing point of view is central to developing this interpretation.
Although Hawthorne's narrator exists outside the story line, the tension
between the conflicting interpretations of experience provided by the narrator and Goodman Brown from their different points of view creates the basic
ironic tone of the work. From this irony, Hawthorne develops his criticism of
Brown's lack of awareness of the controlling power of the mind.
Recognition of this cause for Brown's behavior is essential in order to
reconcile the divergent emphases that have been placed on the story. Interpretations have generally concerned themselves with the way in which Brown is
deluded rather than with why Brown should make such serious errors in
judgment or with why Hawthorne should so sharply and pervasively differentiate the narrator and Brown.3 Most critics have, of course, recognized that
at least a part of Brown's experience is a "dream,""vision," or "hallucination," but they are more concerned with individual choice, often moral or
theological (in which case Brown is a deluded individual), or with an introduction to knowledge, usually psychological (in which case Brown's initiation
is Everyman's).4Brown does destroy himself morally, as the end of the story
makes clear, yet as Frederick Crews notes, "the richness of Hawthorne's irony
is such that, when Brown turns to a Gulliver-likemisanthropy and spends the
rest of his days shrinking from wife and neighbors, we cannot quite dismiss his
attitude as unfounded."5 By differentiating the points of view of the narrator
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The Journal of Narrative Technique
and Brown, Hawthorne creates the multiple perspective necessary to validate
all these critical emphases.
The narrator's description of events is characterized by the ambiguity that
Richard Fogle has pointed out.6 The "uncertainlight" that plays over everything obscures and confuses all appearances so that it is impossible to
ascertain anything objective. Fogle, in fact, does not really go far enough in
discerning ambiguities, for he restricts himself mostly to the narrator'sliteral
expressions of doubt and alternative possibilities. He accepts as fact that
Brown's conductor into the forest "is, of course, the Devil," and that Brown
sees there Goody Cloyse, the minister, and Deacon Gookin, among others.7
But the narrator never once refers to them by their names. They are always
described as "figures"or "forms." Apparently, they have taken the shape of
the persons whose names they use, although the evidence for this position
comes only from the highly unreliable testimony of Goodman Brown and
from the specters themselves-whose existence has been established only in
relation to Brown's perceptions,8 and not the narrator's.
Brown, indeed, is the only person to whom ambiguity is an impossibility.
He is absolutely certain about these identifications, despite the fact that they
become progressively more ambiguous as the journey into the forest continues. The narrator first says only that Brown "beheld the figure of a man" (X,
75) which seems to resemble Brown's father or grandfather. But Brown,
whose preceding remark ("What if the devil himself should be at my very
elbow!") indicates the tenor of his thoughts, assumes at once that the figure is
the devil, although he scruples against calling him such.
In the next instance, the narrator's carefully restricted construction suggests even less validity to Brown's perception. There appears a "femalefigure
on the path, in whom Goodman Brown recognized a very pious and exemplary dame" (X, 78). The extent to which this figure can be identified with
Brown's real "moral and spiritual adviser" is uncertain at best, but Brown
immediately concludes that what he perceived is unquestionably Goody
Cloyse, although as soon as he "cast up his eyes in astonishment," he no
longer "beheld" her (X, 79).9
The minister and the deacon do not even exist as figures, but merely as
disembodied voices-the conversation is supplied only by "the voice like the
deacon's" and "the solemn old tones of the minister" (X, 81). With less
evidence than before, Brown assumes that he has overheard the real "holy
men." Finally, out of the rush and babble of clouds and wind, Brown fancies
that he discerns the "familiar tones" of his townspeople, and particularly,
"one voice, of a young woman" (X, 82). Yet Brown exhibits no doubt about
what he assumes he has perceived passing overhead, crying "Faith!"after his
wife.
At this point appears the famous "pink ribbon," which F.O. Matthiessen
condemned as too jarringly literal to be accepted into the pattern of Brown's
past hallucinations.'0 Fogle rather lamely defends the ribbon as "part and
parcel of his dream," like everything else, and, moreover, of only momentary
impact." There is a sounder argument for its use, because Matthiessen's
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Narrative Structure and Theme in "Young Goodman Brown"
223
assumption of the ribbon's literal existence is contradicted by the pattern of
the expanding gap between the narrator's ambiguity of description and
Brown's certainty of identification. From figures to voices to clouds to wind,
the objects upon which Brown projected his certainties have become more
and more vague and uncertain. This incident extends the pattern, for the
narrator says only that "something fluttered lightly down through the air, and
caught on the branch of a tree" (my italics). Only Goodman Brown "behelda
pink ribbon" (X, 83).12 Considering the quality of his past perceptions, it
would be exceedingly naive to trust his eyesight at this point. The narrator,
moreover, has the last word on the subject, his insistence that Faith still
wears the ribbon the next morning serving as a final ironic comment on
Brown's perception of the "something."'3
The effect of this divergence of viewpoint is to establish the credibility of the
narrator'sperceptions and to undermine Brown's. The reader'sconfidence in
the narrator's point of view has been reinforced by the objectivity of the
unemotional tone, reflected in the eighteenth-centuryrhetorical patterns,14by
the candor that allows him always to present Brown in terms of the latter's
current evaluation of himself, and above all by the honesty that results from
his refusal to commit himself to a single-minded view of an external reality
that he cannot truly know.
The reader, therefore, accepts the narrator as the norm for perception
against which to judge Brown, who is beset by emotional vagaries and is blind
to his own motivations. Brown's expressed ideas are constantly being undercut by his situation and actions, and yet he is absolutely certain-so certain
that it never occurs to him to doubt it-that he knows what constitutes
external reality. This fallacious certainty and the unconscious assumption
upon which it is based provide for Brown's self-destruction.
Brown's assumption is that an absolute reality actually exists, that it lies in
the external world, and that it is finally knowable by man through the
perception of his senses. Brown is thus an extreme Lockean in his psychology
-he insists on attributing all his mental impressions to external realities
which have inscribed themselves on his tabula rasa. It never occurs to him that
the source of some of his ideas may lie within himself, in his mind and
imagination. Yet through the ironic tension between Brown's ideas and the
perceptions of the narrator, Hawthorne has been making clear all along that
the source of Brown's only significant ideas-that is, those which actually
motivate and control his actions--is Brown himself.
Brown goes into the forest in search of the source of evil (or sin, or knowledge, or whatever moral or psychological term one wishes), fully confident of
finding that source in some person or place-that is, in something external to
himself. Since it will be external to himself, his relation to it will be subject to
his own definition, limitation, and control, as suggested by his reiterated
belief that he can stop his journey and turn back whenever he wishes. From
the beginning, however, Hawthorne has undercut Brown's belief through the
narrator's subtle insistence that Brown has carried all his ideas of evil, and
therefore all the evil of which he is capable, into the forest with him. Every-
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The Journal of Narrative Technique
body else who enters the forest has done so, too, but Brown's psychology will
not permit him to accept the analogy presented to him by his experiences,
whether real or imagined. Brown's exploration of the dark forest of the mind
is qualitatively indistinguishable from the one that has been experienced
implicitly by all other characters in the story (including the narrator), and
explicitly by Faith, who has "such dreams and such thoughts, that she's afeard
of herself, sometimes" (X, 74). But Brown refuses to recognize that evil and
knowledge and their sources are intrinsic parts of all human nature. In this
sense, therefore, it is finally irrelevant whether or not Brown's experiences
"really" occurred. The crucial point is that Brown asserts certainty when he
ought to be raising questions and doubts.
The narrator notes at the very beginning that all of Brown'sgood intentions
are postulated only in the form of future actions-"With this excellent resolve
for the future, Goodman Brown felt himselfjustified in making more haste on
his present evil purpose" (X, 75). Brown's "companion"appears to him only
after he expresses his idea that "the devil himself' might be present (X, 75).
Brown exclaims that he has already penetrated "too far"into the forest, but at
the same time he was "unconsciously resuming his walk" (X, 76). The devil's
arguments are so apt that they "seemed ratherto spring up in the bosom of his
auditor, than to be suggested by himself' (X, 80). While "applauding himself
greatly" for determining to resist the devil, Brown hears "amidst these pleasant and praise-worthy meditations" the sounds of the minister and the deacon
(X, 80-81).
If Brown had any sense of this source of his own perceptions, he might have
drawn the correct analogy with the examples of innate depravity and taken
his place with Faith in the brotherhood of man. His insistent assumption that
all his ideas have a reality external to himself leads him instead to the wrong
conclusion. "Thereis no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil! for
to thee is this world given" (X, 83). This idea obviously fills him with despair,
so that he continues to the witches' meeting (or unconsciously permits himself
to imagine the experience), but he still has no concept of his own nature, as
events at the meeting illustrate. For him, evil is still the province of the devilthat is, the source of it is external to Brown. To that error he adds his
Manichaean certainty of the distinctness and absoluteness of good and evil,
merely reversing his previous assumption that everybody else is good to the
assumption that everybody else is bad.
Once again, however, the narrator has the last word, concluding the first
portion of the story with remarks that leave no room for doubt about where
the source of evil really lies. Brown rushed into the
heartof the darkwilderness. .. withthe instinctthatguidesmortalman
to evil. . . . he was himselfthe chief horrorof the scene,and shranknot
from its otherhorrors.. . . In truth,all throughthe hauntedforest,there
could be nothingmorefrightfulthanthe figureof GoodmanBrown....
Thefiendin hisownshapeis lesshideous,thanwhenheragesin the breast
of man. (X, 83-84)
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Narrative Structure and Theme in "Young Goodman Brown"
225
The narrator also leaves no doubt about Brown's relationship to the rest of
mankind:
The verse died heavilyaway, and was lengthenedby a chorus,not of
humanvoices, but of all the soundsof the benightedwilderness,pealing
in awfulharmonytogether.GoodmanBrowncriedout; and his crywas
lost to his own ear, by its unisonwith the cry of the desert.
(X, 84-my italics)
Brown does not hear his own cry for the cry around him, but the narrator
hears both.
Although he does not accept the idea, Brown has already joined the
congregation of evil, "with whom he felt a loathful brotherhood, by the
sympathy of all that was wicked in his heart" (X, 86). He does not need the
"baptism"to experience evil but to know its nature and the way it relates him
to all people. The devil stresses this point by associating the knowledge of the
catalogue of "secretdeeds" with the ability "to penetrate, in every bosom, the
deep mystery of sin, the fountain of all wicked arts, and which inexhaustibly
supplies more evil impulses than human power-than my power, at its
utmost!-can make manifest in deeds" (X, 87-my italics). Every bosom
would include Brown's.
It would be a mistake, however, to assume that the devil is the real hero,
trying his best to awaken Brown to the reality of human nature. Hawthorne's
ironic ambiguities are much too complex for that. The devil is still one of
Hawthorne's numerous false guides, subtly encouraging people to extend
partial truths into erroneous absolutes. Although he admits the source of evil
lies in the individual human, he does all in his power to foster its development
and expression, as was illustrated earlier by the kinds of assistance he had
offered Brown and all his friends and relations. Now he will succeed in
securing Brown's damnation by encouraging him to refuse the baptism.
Essentially, he plays upon Brown's Manichaean conviction that everybody
else is totally committed to evil. If you wish to be fully human, to join "the
communion of your race," he in effect tells Brown, you too must commit
yourself to evil as "your only happiness" (X, 88). That the devil lies when he
says that "evil is the nature of mankind" (X, 88-my italics) is established by
the narrator, who makes a special point of referringto the religious activities
the next morning of "the good old minister"and "thatexcellent old Christian,
tian," Goody Cloyse, as well as to the anxious and joyful Faith (X, 88-89).
Part of the irony of the characterizations may well be turned against the
characters themselves, in view of their previous night's associations, but, in
any case, their holy activities are certainly no less real than' the witches'
sabbath, and a great deal more plausible, given the total lack of ambiguity in
the narrator's descriptions.
But Brown has already thrown the good out with the bad. Rightly convinced that a conscious commitment to the idea of total depravity would be
disastrous, he naively accepts the devil's explanation, which is actually only a
necessary consequence of Brown's beliefs, that a commitment to the knowl-
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The Journal of Narrative Technique
edge of the moral community of human beings means the same thing. By so
believing, Brown throws out forever any possibility of sympathetic identification with other people, thus cutting himself off from the only way for him to
test the validity of his perceptions. His rejection of brotherhood is, therefore,
equally a disaster, for it is ironically based on an unconscious commitment to
the concept of total depravity. It is this commitment that allows Brown (and
Brown alone, as the narrator stresses) to hear only oaths, anathemas, hypocrisy, and anthems of sin, instead of prayers, blessings, preaching, and psalms
(X, 89).
The narrator insists on this ironic quality by such devices as his remark that
Brown is followed "to his grave" by Faith (X, 89-90), an ironic inversion of
Brown's previous belief that he would hereafter cling to Faith's skirts "and
follow her to Heaven" (X, 75). Such a commitment would have succeeded,
not because Faith was "an angel on earth" as he originally thought, but
because he would be accepting humanity.
Thus the narrator carefully works out the culminating irony of the story. In
seeking to cut himself off from the evil in the external world, Brown has
committed himself to the evil of his own mind, without hope of understanding
or correction. Seeking salvation for himself, he has committed himself to the
only course that will guarantee his destruction, for only those who believe in
the reality of ideas independent of sense impressions can have hope for any
future except the grave. And so "his dying hour was gloom" (X, 90).
One of the consequences of being aware of the nature of Brown's obsession
is that the critic can no longer safely dismiss Brown at the end of his analysis as
merely a deluded or even deranged person. Brown, after all, clearly retains the
ability to behave acceptably in his social relationships. But he has lost the
ability to transcend the external forms of these relationships and thus has lost
the power to create moral relationships. Hawthorne's structure and theme
imply that only through moral relationships can one create a positive human
existence. Brown's failure in this regard is at once more subtle than is suggested by the references to "depraved imagination" and "distorted mind"" and
more universal than is suggested by the historical confinement of the problem
to seventeenth-century Salem'6 or even to Hawthorne's own mind.'7 Brown's
problems with perception and the products of his own imagination are potentially those of every human being. The reader dismisses the possibility of
identification with Brown only at the peril of falling into Brown's obsession
-another example of the complex ironies Hawthorne leaves waiting to trap
the unwary reader who fails to recognize that it is precisely the contrast between the narrator's and Brown's perceptions that allows one to accept the
universality of the experience while denying the validity of Brown's response
to it.
University of Nebraska
Lincoln, Nebraska
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Narrative Structure and Theme in "Young Goodman Brown"
227
NOTES
1. David W. Pancost suggests a relationship in Hawthorne's works between
the uncertainty of appearances and intuitive sympathy in "Hawthorne's
Epistemology and Ontology," Emerson Society Quarterly, 19 (1973), 813. Nina Baym also notes Hawthorne's position that "the imagination
controls what people do and hence is inseparable from actuality" (The
Shape of Hawthorne's Career[Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1976], p. 33).
2. In Mosses From an Old Manse, The Centenary Edition of the Works of
Nathaniel Hawthorne, X (Columbus: Ohio St. Univ. Press, 1974), 74-90.
References made in the text will be to the volume and page number of this
edition.
3. Some critics do not even recognize the existence of the narrator. For
example, Robert E. Morsberger asserts that "nowhere does the author
intrude; such moral generalizations as the story contains are spoken by
the devil" ("The Woe That Is Madness: Goodman Brown and the Face of
the Fire," Nathaniel Hawthorne Journal, 3 [1973], 177). Perhaps Morsberger means only the "author,"but the narrator generalizes frequently.
When he does so, he usually shifts from the past to the present tense (e.g.,
"The fiend in his own shape is less hideous, than when he rages in the
breast of man" [X, 84-my italics]). This shift draws attention more
sharply to the distinction between the narrator's point of view and
Brown's.
4. Compare such authors as F.O. Matthiessen, David Levin, and Paul J.
Hurley, who stress the former, with those whose typical concern is for the
latter, such as Richard H. Fogel, Daniel Hoffman, Roy R. Male, and
Rita K. Gollin: Matthiessen, American Renaissance: Art and Expression
in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (New York: Oxford Univ. Press,
1941), pp. 282-84; Levin, "Shadows of Doubt: Spectre Evidence in
'Young Goodman Brown,"' American Literature, 34 (1962), 340-52;
Hurley, "Young Goodman Brown's 'Heart of Darkness,"' American
Literature, 37 (1966), 409-19; Fogle, Hawthorne's Fiction: The Light and
the Dark, rev. ed. (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1964), pp. 15-32;
Hoffman, Form and Fable in American Fiction, corrected ed. (New
York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1965), pp. 136-54; Male, Hawthorne's Tragic
Vision (1957; rpt. New York: Norton, 1964), pp. 76-80; Gollin, Nathaniel
Hawthorne and the Truth of Dreams (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
Univ. Press, 1979), pp. 124-128 and 134-139.A minority view sees Brown
as primarily a vehicle for Hawthorne's attack on historical Puritanism. In
the most detailed of these, Michael J. Colacurcio argues that Brown is
representative as a culturally-conditioned victim of the Half-Way Covenant ("Visible Sanctity and Specter Evidence: The Moral World of
Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown,'" Essex Institute Historical Collections, 110 [1974], 259-99).
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228
The Journal of Narrative Technique
5. The Sins of the Fathers: Hawthorne's Psychological Themes, (New York:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1966), p. 106.
6. Hawthorne's Fiction, pp. 15-32. The chief value of Fogle's work, to which
I am much indebted, lies in his stylistic and structural exposition of the
counterbalanced ambiguity of meaning and clarity of technique.
7. Hawthorne's Fiction, pp. 17-18.
8. Levin, "Shadows of Doubt," pp. 347-50. Not being concerned about the
functions of the narrator, however, Levin accepts the reality of the devil,
who in turn creates all the other spectral aspects of the story. The central
question for Brown, as it was for Mather, is determining whether or not
the devil had the people's consent to impersonate them (pp. 351-52). Cf.
Hurley, who argues that the pervasive ambiguity necessitates the conclusion that none of the characters, including the devil, have any existence
except as Brown's visions ("Young Goodman Brown's 'Heart of Darkness,'" pp. 414-15), and Crews, who argues that "Brown is facing embodiments of his own thoughts in the characters he meets in the forest" (The
Sins of the Fathers, p. 100).
9. To be sure, Brown's preceptor calls her "Goody Cloyse" too, but only
after Brown does. Moreover, as the story later makes clear, the reader
cannot trust the devil to tell the truth either.
10. American Renaissance, p. 284.
11. Hawthorne's Fiction, pp. 18-19.
12. Cf. the use of the verb "beheld"in The Scarlet Letter, where the narrator
specifically argues that the red A that Dimmesdale thought he "beheld"in
the sky was primarily a product of his "guilty imagination" (V, 189).
13. Cf. Levin, "Shadows of Doubt," who cites similar evidence to argue that
the ribbon is simply another of the devil's spectres (p. 350). Critics who
desire a literal alternative can provide one easily enough. For example, if
Hoffman is right about the night being Halloween (Form and Fable, p.
150), then the something might as well as not be a reddish leaf falling. But
the ambiguity seems firmly established without one of the narrator's
usual literally expressed alternatives. Crews also notes in passing that
"Brown shares Othello's fatuous concern for 'ocular proof'" (The Sins of
the Fathers, p. 101), a concern that most definitely is not shared by the
narrator.
14. Fogle, Hawthorne's Fiction, p. 31.
15. Hurley, "Young Goodman Brown's 'Heart of Darkness,"' pp. 411 and
419.
16. Levin, "Shadows of Doubt," pp. 351-52; Colacurcio, "Visible Sanctity
and Specter Evidence," pp. 289-90.
17. Crews, The Sins of the Fathers, p. 106.
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