Much concern has been expressed about the significance of Faith's pink ribbons in Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown," and this commentary has perhaps been initiated in part by F. O. Matthiessen's observation that the author's "literal insistence" on them, as they first appear to Goodman Brown in the forest, damages the effect of what is otherwise portrayed as "the realm of hallucination" (American Renaissance, New York, 1941). More recently, Richard Harter Fogle has attempted to explain this apparent inconsistency by suggesting that the ribbons in this same instance "may be taken as part and parcel of [Brown's] dream," adding that because they vanish into their "shadowy background" their impact is "merely temporary" (Hawthorne's Fiction: The Light and the Dark, 1952). While these observations may help account for the concrete appearance of the ribbons, they tell us little about their meaning in the story.

To be sure, Hawthorne does "insist" on the pink ribbons—three times in the opening six paragraphs and twice thereafter at crucial points in the story—but what observers have failed to underscore is the fact that each time he mentions the ribbons Hawthorne is careful to specify that they are pink. This failure seems surprising, for it is common knowledge that color symbolism was a favorite Hawthorne device; and if we look to the color of the ribbons to yield their meaning we find an obvious interpretation for this detail which contributes to the meaning of the story perhaps more than any other single image within it. Neither scarlet nor white, but of a hue somewhere between, the ribbons suggest neither total depravity nor innocence, but a psychological state somewhere between. Tied like a label to the head of Faith, they represent the tainted innocence, the spiritual imperfection of all mankind.

As a Puritan who had been taught his catechism, Goodman Brown should have been fortified against the shock of this knowledge of the human condition. Yet, discovering the pink ribbons during his forest adventure, he cries "My Faith is gone!" It is significant that he does not refer to his faith in God, for he later dreads "lest the roof should thunder down" on the Sabbath day congregation in the meetinghouse. It is, instead, his faith in man that has been shaken, and it is in the immediate context of this piercing confession that he makes an even more terrible pronouncement: "There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name."

Hawthorne implies, however, that Goodman Brown is in error, for Faith's ribbons are still intact the next morning in Salem village as she skips to meet him, and Hawthorne "insists" they are still pink, not scarlet, as Goodman Brown would have them. Since they symbolize the condition of mankind, it is ironic that the protagonist has rejected "the communion of [his] race" and excluded himself from that condition, for in Puritan eyes he is thus guilty of the worst of all sins. It is his pride which isolates him and prevents him from seeing that he too, figuratively speaking, wears pink ribbons. This hubris, to use the classical term, leads to his psychological destruction and accounts for the "darkly meditative" and "distrustful" man whom Hawthorne describes at the end of the story.