Passages
from The Scarlet Letter Passages from The Blithedale Romance Passages from "Young Goodman Brown" Passages from "The Minister's Black Veil" Passages from "Hawthorne and his Mosses" by Herman Melville Passages from "The New Adam and Eve" Passages from "The Man of Adamant" Passages from "The Old Manse" Passages from "The Procession of Life" Passages from "The Great Stone Face" Passages from "The Antique Ring" Passages from "The May-Pole of Merrymount" Passages from "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" Passages from "Lady Eleanore's Mantle" Passages from "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment"
Passages from The Scarlet Letter Relating to Ideas
of Good and Evil
Excerpt from Chapter 8 ofThe
Scarlet Letter relating to Satan The idea that Satan, or the Black
Man, lived in the forest was common among Puritans. Here Hawthorne uses
that idea and the idea of the prevalence of witches to indicate that a descent
into evil is a real possibility for Hester
Excerpt from Chapter 10 of The Scarlet Letter
relating to Satan The idea that Satan, or the Black Man, lived
in the forest was common among Puritans. In this passage Roger Chillingworth
is unmistakably linked with the Black Man or Satan.
Excerpt from Chapter 11 of The Scarlet
Letter Here Hawthorne illustrates how Arthur Dimmesdale's guilty
misery leads him to discount those healthy intuitions that otherwise would
have allowed him to defend himself from the evil machinations of Roger Chillingworth.
False in one part of his consciousness, Dimmesdale has no faith in himself
and so unwittingly aids his fiercest enemy.
Excerpts from Chapter 11 of The Scarlet
Letter and "The Minister's Black Veil" Because of his obsession
with his secret sin, which is really an obsession with himself, Arthur Dimmesdale
can take no pleasure in the world around him. Instead, as Hawthorne emphasizes
here, his world is one of phantasms, an interior world pale and inferior
to the rich wonders around him to which he has grown blind. Similarly, Reverend
Hooper of "The Minister's Black Veil" cuts himself of from the world and
literally dims his sight as he hides his face behind what is for him, his
parishioners, and the reader a symbol of secret sin.
Excerpt from Chapter 14 of The Scarlet Letter
relating to Satan Roger Chillingworth readily identifies himself
with a fiend in connection with his torturing of Arthur Dimmesdale. Satan
is commonly referred to as the fiend.
Excerpt from Chapter 20 of The Scarlet
Letter Even as he is about to consciously choose flight over confession,
Arthur Dimmesdale still cherishes the outward appearance of holiness, a
failure Hawthorne describes as "pitiably weak" and which we may understand
to be Dimmesdale's deepest descent into hypocrisy.
Passages from The Blithedale Romance Relating to
Ideas of Good and Evil
Excerpt from Chapter 11 of The Blithedale
Romance relating to Satan Hawthorne suggests Westervelt's evil
is of a particular Satanic variety. The devil peeping out of Westervelt's
black eyes would be the same that visited Adam and Eve in Eden.
Excerpt from Chapter 11 of The Blithedale
Romance relating to Satan Hawthorne pictures Professor Westervelt
much as he has the devil in "Young Goodman Brown." Note that in both stories,
these figures carry a stick carved in the shape of a serpent.
Excerpts from "Young Goodman Brown," The
Blithedale Romance, and The Scarlet Letter read in the context
of John Winthrop's "Model of Christian Charity"
Taken in the context of John Winthrop's "Model
of Christian Charity", the three passages excerpted here are provocative.
It may be that, in a richly ironic way, Hawthorne allows both Young Goodman
Brown of "Young Goodman Brown" and Miles Coverdale of The Blithedale Romance
to witness and reject as demonic the very kind of Christian gathering suggested
by Winthrop's address. In the forest congregation in "Young Goodman Brown" and
in the woodsy masquerade in The Blithedale Romance, the entire range
of human experience is represented as massed in a manner both non-judgmental
and, in The Blithedale Romance and nearly so in "Young Goodman Brown,"
cheerful. Contrast those crowds with the urban one that introduces The Scarlet
Letter, a crowd in which both Brown and Coverdale might well feel at ease,
and it may be that we can discern in those "devil's" gatherings hints about
what Hawthorne values as real human community. (Thanks to Eliza New of Harvard
University's English Department for pointing out the happy democratic quality
in the forest gathering in "Young Goodman Brown.")
Passages from "Young Goodman Brown" Relating
to Ideas of Good and Evil
Excerpt from "Young Goodman Brown" related to
Satan Hawthorne often used a figure recognizable as the devil to suggest
a confrontation with evil or, as in this case, a journey toward evil.
Excerpt from "Young Goodman Brown" related to
Satan Hawthorne often used a figure recognizable as the devil to suggest
a confrontation with evil or, as in this case, a journey toward evil. Here
Goody Cloyse is pictured as a witch meeting up with Young Goodman Brown's
companion, the devil himself.
Passages from "The Minister's Black Veil"
Relating to Ideas of Good and Evil
Two passages from Hawthorne's "The Minister's
Black Veil" These passages dramatize Hawthorne's interest in the Satanic.
Excerpt from "The Minister's Black Veil"
Sadly, Hooper's veil, which is a figure for his sin, separates him even
from Elizabeth who loves him truly as is evidenced by her life-long loyalty.
Like Arthur Dimmesdale of The Scarlet Letter, Hooper lives a lonely,
pitiable life even as he is a celebrated minister.
Excerpt from "The Minister's Black Veil"
In a passage which verges on the humorous, Reverend Hooper becomes frightened
when he catches a glimpse of himself in a mirror. The isolating sin typified
by the black veil appalls even Hooper and allows the reader some insight
into the terrifying loneliness Hawthorne imagined waiting for those who
set themselves above others.
Excerpt from Melville's review
of Hawthorne's Mosses from an Old Manse, "Hawthorne and His Mosses,"
first published in The Literary World, vol. 17, 24 August, 1850. In
this excerpt Hawthorne's perspective is linked to influence by the Calvinistic
Doctrine of Original Sin. Melville finds this element in Hawthorne to be a
source of both strength and mystery.
Excerpt from "The New Adam and Eve"
When Hawthorne's imagined pair, the new Adam and Eve, tour Boston, they
visit a jail, which, like the entire city, has been emptied of its human inhabitants.
In this passage, he makes it clear that Love, a treatment never tried, might
well be the antidote to sin. It is helpful to compare this passage with the
representation of Mary Goffe in "The
Man of Adamant."
Excerpt from "The Man of Adamant"
As the man of adamant, Richard Digby spurns the curative water offered
by Mary Goffe, who had been a convert to his teachings before his heart turned
to stone. Mary's sad, kind charity in the face of Digby's churlishness offers
an idea of Hawthorne's idea of spiritual virtue for at the end of the passage
Mary Goffe is called a "dreamlike spirit, typifying pure Religion."
Excerpt from "The Old Manse"
In a passage reminiscent of one of Thoreau's descriptions of Walden
Pond, Hawthorne metaphorically suggests that as the Concord river or even
a lowly mud puddle can reflect a glorious sky, so the meanest human retains
some "infinite spiritual capacity."
Excerpt from "The Procession
of Life" While Hawthorne continually demonstrates a fascination with
the ways in which human beings can turn themselves into demons, he does, on
occasion, offer hints about how we can become angelic. In these two passages,
Hawthorne offers visions of virtue at work in the world.
Excerpt from "The Procession of Life"
It would appear that for Hawthorne humility is a precondition for virtue.
In this passage, when the Good are called to march in the procession of life,
none answer the summons, not because there are no worthy people, but because
part of being worthy is the recognition of one's own shortcomings.
Excerpt from "The Procession of Life"
For Hawthorne, to be good is to withhold judgment of others. Were one to take
delight in the suffering of another or to imagine that another's crimes were
deeds entirely out of the realm of personal possibility, those judgments would
be evidence of a tainted spirit. The truly virtuous, for Hawthorne, experience
themselves as capable of the most grievous errors.
Excerpt from "The Great Stone Face"
In sharp contrast to the hypocritical Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale of
The Scarlet Letter, Ernest, also a preacher, has a simplicity of heart
and mind that make him not only an effective minister, but also incapable
of recognizing that he is the redeeming personage for whom he, and others,
have waited a lifetime. Where Dimmesdale is all tortured vanity, Ernest is
serene humility.
Excerpt from "The Antique Ring"
In this passage Hawthorne suggests that the human heart, once freed
from Falsehood, would shine with the purity of a diamond. As the story suggests,
Falsehood can be defeated by acts of unconditional charity or Love.
Excerpt from "The May-Pole of Merrymount" The
image of "Gothic monsters" frolicking around a may-pole and the stern Puritan
judgment upon such a scene brings to mind the harsh judgment of Young Goodman
Brown when he witnesses what he takes to be a witches Sabbath in the wilderness.
In both cases, it is clear that whatever the true nature of the gatherings,
the Puritan who comes up then brings to them a point of view darkened by
a preoccupation with sin and evil.
Excerpt from "The May-Pole of Merrymount" In
contrast to the forced mirth of the "Gothic monsters" who comprise the Merrymount
crew, Edgar and Edith share premonitions of "care and sorrow, and troubled
joy," the products, it seems of the "real passion" they feel for each other.
Genuine feeling brings them face to face with the genuine condition of human
beings, a condition of mixed pleasure and pain.
Excerpt from "The May-Pole of Merrymount" In
these contrasting passages, it is clear that if the Puritans, as exemplified
especially by Endicott, are grim, iron visaged, and mirthless, the inhabitants
of Merrymount are equally discouraging on their side in that their mirth
is a matter of policy rather than a matter of the heart and keeps them,
in some instances, from real happiness. It appears that Hawthorne suspects
doctrinal gloom is as empty as enforced cheer. Neither represents a genuine
response to human experience.
Excerpt from "The May-Pole of Merrymount" Hawthorne
makes clear in this passage that it is religious intolerance that drives
Endicott and the other Puritans in destroying Merrymount. The particularly
cruel and unsavory quality of Endicott's narrow-minded views is expressed
in his willingness to shoot the poor bear.
Excerpt from "The May-Pole of Merrymount" The
"mutual support" and "pure affection" Edgar and Edith share places them
outside both the Puritan gloom and the false mirth of Merrymount. Because
they truly care for each other, the pair transcends systems and doctrines
and, in the touching willingness of each to sacrifice for the other, we
can see hinted the central message of Christianity.
Excerpt from "The May-Pole of Merrymount" Hawthorne
mitigates his unflattering portrait of Endicott by having that stern Puritan
recognize the genuine virtue in Edgar and Edith's affection. He also suggests
that their ascent to heaven is a consequence of their mutual support, a
variant of their mutual willingness to accept the other's punishment.
The "little metropolis of a New England colony" Robin enters at the beginning
of "My Kinsman, Major Molineaux" is a nightmare of moral and physical darkness
in which his innocence is an affront to most of the townsfolk and an opportunity
for others. His inquiry after his kinsman, Major Molineux, offends in turn
the man of authority, the innkeeper, and the night watch who threaten him
with either time in the stocks or arrest. Of those who appear to befriend
him, the prostitute and his companion at the story's conclusion seek instead
varying versions of exploitation. Robin successfully avoids the
blandishments of the "dainty little figure" but is no match for the
urbanity of the figure he meets later on whose interest appears to be first
witnessing the young man's
loss of innocence and then recruiting
him for citizenship in the dark city to which Robin has traveled.
Excerpt from"My Kinsman, Major Molineux"
In the culminating moment of the tale, it is as if all the forces of the
"little metropolis" are joined both in ridiculing Major Molineux and in
inviting Robin's complicity. That he does not resist, that he's overcome
with "a sort of mental inebriety," which leads to his spontaneous and heartfelt
shout of laughter which was the loudest of all, allows the reader as well
as Robin's urbane companion to understand that Robin has chosen to ally
himself with the mob of fiends.
Excerpt from"My Kinsman, Major Molineux"
Robin's recollections of "domestic worship" at his rural childhood home
serve as sharp contrast to the urban dangers that surround him in the metropolis
of his kinsman. That the latch falls into place as he would enter that home
suggests not so much that Robin has been excluded, but rather, as his spontaneous
shout at the end of the tale hints, he may have chosen the realm of fiends
over his past life of innocence.
Excerpt from"My Kinsman, Major Molineux"
In this passage, Hawthorne makes clear that whatever Major Molineux's political
sins may have been, those who take such delight in "trampling on an old
man's heart" are themselves far greater sinners in that their behavior makes
them "like fiends."
Excerpt from"My Kinsman, Major Molineux"
In his confrontation with the apparent leader of the party that tars and
feathers Major Molineux, Robin encounters a character painted in such a
way as to seem like two fiends combined into one, a clear suggestion that
whatever the reasons may have been for punishing Robin's kinsman, the punishers
were themselves evil characters.
Excerpt from"My Kinsman, Major Molineux"
In contrast to the sylvan place of worship Robin remembers from his home,
this urban church, abandoned in the darkness of the night, may derive its
sanctity from the absence of "impure feet within the walls." The suggestion
is that those who comprise the band of fiendlike rebels are the very ones
who would destroy the holiness of the place.
Excerpt from"My Kinsman, Major Molineux"
The word "shrewd" is used in reference to Robin no less than eight times
throughout the tale and, since whatever else "My Kinsman, Major Molineux"
might be, it is surely a tale of the confrontation of unsophisticated innocence
with urbane experience, the repetition is worth examination. While there
are, no doubt, numerous possible interpretations of the use of the word,
one must be that Hawthorne is suggesting by its repetition both that Robin
is not shrewd at all, a fairly plain irony, and that, if he is, his shrewdness
consists of a shallow regard for his own welfare, a quality that makes him
a good candidate for membership of the nightmare metropolis he visits
Excerpt from"Lady Eleanore's Mantle" Here
Jervase Helwyse, in an attempt to draw his beloved Lady Eleanore back inside
the circle of human sympathy, pleads with her to drink from the communion
vessel from the Old South Church. She refuses, but the connection between
the religious communion rite and the possibility of salvation is made explicit.
Excerpt from"Lady Eleanore's Mantle" Here
Jervase Helwyse, in an attempt to draw his beloved Lady Eleanore back inside
the circle of human sympathy, pleads with her to drink from the communion
vessel from the Old South Church. She refuses, but the connection between
the religious communion rite and the possibility of salvation is made explicit.
Excerpt from"Lady Eleanore's Mantle" These
contrasting passages suggest that if aristocracy, and those who admire it,
will not recognize in the course of ordinary life that we all share "human
sympathies," then we will make that discovery when we share the human miseries
to which we are all susceptible. It is as if Hawthorne is making clear that
while social excesses may be distributed unequally, physical pain is not
and it is that which binds us to each other at last.
Excerpt from"Lady Eleanore's Mantle" In
these remarkably provocative passages, Hawthorne suggests that pride is
tantamount to death. In the first the maddened Jervase wants to see Lady
Eleanore one more time and proclaims, "she and death sit on a throne together."
In the second the connection between the mantle that both enhances her beauty
and contains the small pox and the haughty scorn she feels because of that
beauty is made explicit. It is as if the pestilence that ravages Boston
is the pride. The people believe that her "pride and scorn evoked a fiend"
and so Hawthorne underscores the terribly destructive power of Lady Eleanore's
sin.
At first a puzzling tale, "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" appears to show us that
age brings no wisdom, only fatigue. Heidgger's demonstration with the rose shows
he already knows that the water will rejuvenate his friends. The experiment
must be, then, an inquiry as to whether these four would employ the lessons
they gained as they aged. They don't, despite his warning,
and the doctor concludes that he wants no part of
the water, presumably, to save him from a repetition of the mistakes he himself
made when young. What are those mistakes? A careful reading of the description
of his study offers some intriguing clues, and one
sees that, while the doctor's four friends are certainly beset with serious
faults, none is as dark as those of the doctor himself.
Excerpt from "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment"
In this complicated passage, the contents of Dr. Heidegger's study reveal
his interests, past, and proclivities. As much sorcerer as physician, Heidegger
is yet another of Hawthorne's characters whose intellectual pride leads
them astray. That he dabbles in the dark arts makes his character questionable.
It is, however, the suggestion, inherent in the story's title, about his
relationship with his lover, Sylvia Ward, that demonstrates the true darkness
of the old man's spirit.
Excerpt from "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" That
Dr. Heidegger does not himself partake of the drink he offers his friends
is one of the indicators that he separates himself from others, remaining
aloof, a cool observer of experience rather than full participant in it.
In this he reminds one of Hawthorne's other famous Doctor, Roger Chillingworth,
of The Scarlet Letter who carefully scrutinizes the agony Arthur
Dimmesdale's experiences as a result of Chillingworth's manipulations.
Excerpt from "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment"
In this passage Dr. Heidegger scolds his friends for not having used the
lessons they learned in aging to prevent them from being foolish once they
regained their youth. While Heidegger's observations of the four are accurate,
the passage leads the reader to wonder what shortcomings beset Heidgger
when he was young.
Excerpt from "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" Here
the doctor warns his friends about the potential "sin and shame" they risk
by drinking the rejuvenating water he offers them.
Excerpt from "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" That
Hawthorne provides such a detailed account of the youthful failures of Dr.
Heidegger's four friends not only sets up our understanding of their return
to these bad habits, but also prompts us to wonder what Dr. Heidegger's
own failures might have been.
Excerpt from "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment" In
this passage we see the subjects of Dr. Heidegger's experiment revert to
their sinful ways. It is this reversion that teaches the doctor to scorn
the water of the Fountain of Youth and leads the reader to the amusing,
if discouraging idea, that we do not gain wisdom with our years.
