[In the following essay, Stein claims that Hawthorne's “The Minister's Black Veil” is modeled on II Corinthians.]

The ambiguity of “The Minister's Black Veil” has been unnecessarily exaggerated in modern criticism,¹ though, paradoxically, its critics have not been entirely at fault. In the note to the subtitle of the tale, “A Parable,” Hawthorne appears deliberately to sidetrack the impulse of the reader to seek an analogue to the action in the logical source—the New Testament. Instead he cites a historical origin for the symbol of the veil, the artifice of conflict in the plot. But then he alters certain facts concerning Mr. Hooper's prototype, a clergyman named Moody. One alteration is particularly important; the latter wore a handkerchief over his face, not a veil as does Hawthorne's character.² Though it may seem pedantic scholarship to labor this point—an attempt to deprive the creative imagination of its dramatic license—this innocuous departure from truth has led critics to extrapolate the parable almost exclusively from Hawthorne's alleged adaptation of the event in the footnote. This emphasis has fostered many ingenious speculations on Mr. Hooper's perverse behavior. But since Hawthorne offers no basis upon which the critic may dogmatize the focus of his sympathies, any judgment passed upon the moral character of the act must therefore be somewhat gratuitous. This interpretive predicament is somewhat alleviated if one turns to the Bible, Hawthorne's vade mecum.

A section of Paul's second epistle to the Corinthians especially illuminates the ambivalent moral problem. The subject of “The Minister's Black Veil,” the relationship between the minister and the congregation, is treated at length in this epistle, and, of crucial importance, its implications are dramatized through the dominant symbols of the fictional narrative—the veil and the mirror. As does Hawthorne, Paul assumes that the closeness of the laity to God resides in the nature of the relationship between the people and the minister. But whereas Paul vehemently protests the shortcomings of personal ministration, Hawthorne is noncommittal. The apostle places the burden of responsibility upon the minister who is entrusted with the custodianship of the sacred message. Unlike Hawthorne's Mr. Hooper, Paul's minister is called upon to teach the availability of grace to any sinner who will place his faith in Christ. He is also urged to practice forgiveness, lest he lapse into self-righteousness and spiritual arrogance. In short, according to Paul, the minister must teach others to perceive the salvation which awaits them when they possess a true knowledge of Christ:

Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savor of his knowledge by us in every place. For we are unto God a sweet savor of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish: To the one we are the savor of death unto death; and to the other the savor of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things? For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we of Christ.³

Hawthorne, of course, directly affirms no ideal of ministration, thereby imparting ambiguity to his parable. Yet, as he moves Mr. Hooper through the sequence of action, a mode of ecclesiastical practice is illustrated. As it unfolds, each of the apostolic principles is violated, as if Hawthorne contrived a series of events deliberately contradicting Paul's advice. Coincidentally his travesty omits not a single aspect of the scriptural harangue. Not until Mr. Hooper dons the veil does this profanation take place, the significance of which act will be clarified in the analysis of the ensuing chapter in II Corinthians. Once he takes this step, the people are alienated, not only from him but also from the word of God which he preaches: “it [the veil] threw its obscurity between him and the holy page, as he read the Scriptures; and while he prayed the veil lay heavily on his uplifted countenance.” This scene excites the following rhetorical question from Hawthorne: “Did he seek to hide it from the dread Being whom he was addressing?”⁴ Thus an association is immediately engendered with Paul's contrary instructions that the true minister of the gospel ought to speak the word of Christ in the sight of God.⁵ In effect, Hawthorne suggests that Mr. Hooper is perverting the sacred text;⁶ instead of bringing the congregation closer to God, he incites them into sinful introspection: “Each member of the congregation, the most innocent girl, and the man of hardened breast, felt as if the minister had crept upon them, behind his awful veil, and discovered their hoarded iniquity of deed or thought.”⁷

In the two incidents of the funeral service and the marriage Hawthorne extends the profanation of the divine office. The funeral prayer, which ought to leave the listeners with a belief that the deceased has attained the comfort of Christ, instead terrifies them: “The people trembled, though they but darkly understood him when he prayed that they, and himself, and all of mortal race, might be ready, as he trusted this young maiden had been, for the dreadful hour that should snatch the veil from their faces.”⁸ The corruption of the sacrament of marriage is dramatically communicated through two symbolic details. The union of man and wife, a promise of new life, instead presages death; the veil casts a shroud over the flames which consecrate the happy event: “Such was its immediate effect on the guests that a cloud seemed to have rolled duskily from beneath the black crepe, and dimmed the light of the candles.” And to enhance this blasphemy Hawthorne contrives the spilling of the toast to the happiness of the wedded couple. Involving himself in the horror of the veil he wears, the minister is momentarily distraught: “His frame shuddered, his lips grew white, he spilt the untasted wine upon the carpet, and rushed forth into darkness.”⁹ The wine in this context, with its implicit allusion to the presence of Christ in the sacrament of marriage, is still another shocking overtone of sacrilege.

The final inversion of Paul's message to the Corinthians occurs in the parting between Mr. Hooper and Elizabeth. And here Hawthorne's addiction to name symbolism appears pertinent, since the name Elizabeth in its common biblical association means consecrated to God. This rejection of heavenly light is symbolized by darkness behind the black veil. In response to Elizabeth's exhortation, “‘let the sun shine from behind the cloud,’” there is only “unconquerable obstinacy” and recourse to self-righteous piety: “‘If I hide my face for sorrow, there is cause … and if I cover it forsecret sin, what mortal might not do the same?’”¹⁰ Thus, scene by scene, Hawthorne exhibits Mr. Hooper's apostasy from the teachings of Christ. Not only does he invert the essence of Paul's epistle, but he also introduces various symbolic actions which enhance the degree of blasphemy. And in this dramatic exaggeration it may be said that he enjoins the reader to look askance at the minister's behavior.

This interpretive instruction becomes more insistent in the remainder of the parallel in the Corinthians as the veil and the mirror symbols converge to comment on secret sin and spiritual cowardice. The delineation of Mr. Hooper's inflexible conviction of secret sin seems consciously contrasted with Paul's stress upon the message of redemptive love in the gospels, written “with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart.” Mr. Hooper's stubborn devotion to the equivalent of irredeemable natural depravity reflects “the letter [that] killeth” in scorn of “the spirit [which] giveth life.” And when Paul designates the covenant which Moses sealed with God as “the ministration of death,”¹¹ Hawthorne's invocation of the associations of death instead of immortality and happiness at the funeral and the marriage respectively moves into clearer focus. He urges that darkness and death be taken as correlatives of the veil in contrast with the light and life which are the surrogate images of the Christian idea of salvation.

Paul is especially vehement in arguing this polarity. He reduces Moses' tables of the law to “a ministration of condemnation,” not unlike the accusation of secret sin which Mr. Hooper voices. And there seems little doubt that from this point on Hawthorne's adaptation of the Corinthian text is beyond dispute. Parallel follows parallel, and the case against Mr. Hooper's piety develops into an indictment of the betrayal of Christ. Paul, for instance, declares that Moses indirectly acknowledged the transitory glory of the old covenant when he “put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel could not steadfastly look to the end of that which is abolished,”¹² that is, accept with their hearts the belief that they were the chosen people. Hawthorne's apparent adaptation of this act is charged with savage irony. For when Mr. Hooper affects the veil, he symbolically undermines the dispensation of the new covenant of Christ, denying as it were the doctrine of salvation. Inadvertently he commits heresy! And as Paul next ridicules the concealment of Moses as the opposite of the way the followers of Christ receive his message, “written in [their] hearts, known and read of all men,” so Hawthorne introduces the same thought into his fictional narrative. Mr. Hooper's equivocations on the authority of his pronouncements of secret sin reflect deadened spiritual perceptions. He is like the doubtful Israelites whose “minds were blinded, for until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which veil is done away in Christ. But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart.”¹³ Of course, Mr. Hooper's position is even more sacrilegious. In the name of Christianity, he preaches the penal code of Moses, entirely forgetting the message of love in the new covenant. This interpretation is really not extreme when considered in the light of Hawthorne's constant affirmation of the heart as a symbol of redemptive love. Indeed, one is compelled to consider the black veil a satanic mask: a symbol of denial.

This conclusion is strengthened by a Corinthian reference which Hawthorne seems to invert: “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”¹⁴ On two different occasions he invokes the mirror symbol to illustrate Mr. Hooper's contempt for spiritual candor. Its usage parallels Paul's earlier warning to the Corinthians that they must not pervent the Christian gift of love, “Lest Satan should get an advantage” over them.¹⁵ At the wedding the minister is frightened by the image of his veiled face: “… catching a glimpse of his figure in the looking-glass, the black veil involved his own spirit in the horror with which it overwhelmed all others.”¹⁶ Blackness here again is opposed to light, and is a symbol of the antichrist: “But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.”¹⁷ In Hawthorne's next observation Mr. Hooper's obsessive fear of reflecting surfaces is once more designed to enforce the latter's inability to practice his faith with unbared face in the spirit of Paul's injunction: Mr. Hooper's “antipathy to the veil was known to be so great, that he never willingly passed before a mirror, nor stooped to drink at a still fountain.”¹⁸ Ultimately Hawthorne leaves no doubt that he encourages an identification of the black veil with the devil: “It was said that ghost and fiend consorted with him there.”¹⁹ He implies that the minister's fear of the black veil is a fear of the devil with whom he refuses to cope. Instead he cowardly skulks behind it, unwittingly conspiring with the devil to authorize the subordination of good to evil. This corruption of his holy office radically contrasts, not only with Paul's message, but also with Hawthorne's various speculations on the psychology of evil, “Young Goodman Brown” serving as a notable secular parallel to the predicament of Mr. Hooper.

The final scene of the story, ending with the minister's violent rebuke of the colleague who urges him to “‘cast aside this black veil …!’”²⁰ represents Hawthorne's portrayal of a man “walking in craftiness … handling the word of God deceitfully.”²¹ For the sentiment he expresses contradicts the Christian watchword that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”²² He indulges only in negative recriminations, lifting his voice in a thundering denial of the love of God: “‘When the friend shows his inmost heart to his friend; the lover to his best beloved; when man does not vainly shrink from the eye of his creator, loathesomely treasuring up the secret of his sin; then deem me a monster. … I look around me, and, lo, on every visage a Black Veil!’”²³ The irony of this statement is quite apparent. What Mr. Hooper perceives on the faces of the spectators is a shadow of his own veil. The darkness which envelops his heart blinds him to the meaning of Christian love, even though it now attends him in the person of Elizabeth, who as before noted is a symbol of consecration to God. With a distrust of the power of redemptive love, human or divine, man virtually commits himself to the devil.

On this point Hawthorne admits of no compromise. One needs only to recall the selfless spirit of Beatrice in “Rappaccini's Daughter” and Georgiana in “The Birthmark.” They are spiritual guides in the divine-human sense who sacrifice themselves in order to redeem their beloved ones. But perhaps more pertinent to this story is the saving grace of love which Rosina exercises in “Egotism, or The Bosom Serpent.” Her name in its obvious association with the rose fosters a conventional identification with the Celestial Rose of Christian iconography and Dante's Paradiso. Her kiss awakens the hero from an enchantment of evil, and his heart reads the message of love. Not so with Mr. Hooper. Estranged from the woman he loves, from himself, and from the community, he dies with “the veil … upon [his] heart.”²⁴

Thus the parable of the black veil is the story of betrayal, of a man of God turned antichrist. This cannot be denied, for in the resolution of the plot Hawthorne affirms the dedication of his hero to the old covenant of God, the covenant of irresolution, of spiritual cowardice, of glory veiled? As this legalistic code of morality is objectified in the actions of Mr. Hooper, it plays havoc with the nobility of man which Hawthorne continually exalts in his conception of the great brotherhood of humanity. For him law is a symbol of the intellect, an attempt to reason man into a state of moral awareness. Love, on the other hand, addresses itself to the heart, forever speaking a parable of light and life—humanly and divinely.

Notes

1. Examples of two different approaches to the story may be contrasted in the two most recent studies of the author, Richard Harter Fogle's Hawthorne's Fiction (Norman, Okla., 1952), pp. 117-127, and William Bysshe Stein's Hawthorne's Faust (Gainesville, Fla., 1953), pp. 3-4, 80-81.

2. The Best of Hawthorne, ed. Mark Van Doren (New York, 1951), p. 421.

3. II Corinthians 2:7-17.

4. The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, ed. George P. Lathrop, 12 vols. (Boston, 1883), I, 54. Italics are mine. References to Hawthorne's works are to this edition, cited only by volume and page.

5. See II Corinthians 2:17 and 4:6.

6. Ibid., 4:2-4.

7. I, 55.

8. I, 58.

9. I, 59.

10. I, 61-62.

11. II Corinthians 3:3, 6, 7.

12. Ibid., 3:13.

13. Ibid., 3:2, 14-15.

14. Ibid., 3:18.

15. Ibid., 2:10-11.

16. I, 59.

17. II Corinthians 4:3-4.

18. I, 64.

19. I, 65.

20. I, 68.

21. II Corinthians 4:2.

22. Ibid., 3:17.

23. I, 69.

24. II Corinthians 3:15.