SOURCE: “Deodat Lawson's Christ's Fidelity and Hawthorne's ‘Young Goodman Brown,’” in Essex Institute Historical Collections, Vol. 104, No. 4, October, 1968, pp. 349-70.

[In the following essay, Cohen contends that Deodat Lawson's Christ's Fidelity, a work about the Salem witchcraft trials in 1692, inspired Hawthorne to write “Young Goodman Brown.”]

Despite much praise and many fine words expended on Hawthorne's “Young Goodman Brown,” interpretations of this well-wrought tale have varied as widely as the critics and their personal biases. The abundant ambiguities present in the story yield opportunity to all: those who would see Hawthorne as confirming Calvinism's central doctrine of man's innate depravity, others who view him as rejecting the same tenet, some who would apply a latter-day symbolism involving phallic pine trees and sexual guilt, and still others who would by expert juggling of old ideas in new semantic dress convey the impression that an original interpretation is being offered.¹

After such great argument it is refreshing and heartening to see an admirable article by Professor David Levin, in which he sanely urges that we “try to read the story in terms that were available to Hawthorne.”² Professor Levin cogently argues that belief in the validity of spectral evidence, as it was acceptable to the magistrates, offered the rationale on which Hawthorne constructed “Young Goodman Brown,” and that any attempt to interpret the story must take this factor into account. If heeded, this plea that we consider the tale in its historical context will prevent us from wandering in an hypothetical forest as variously populated as was that which Brown entered on the fateful night.

Even before Professor Levin's essay, others had explored Hawthorne's interest in the Salem history that underlies “Young Goodman Brown.” Hawthorne's concern about the role of Judge Hathorne in the witchcraft delusion of 1692 has long been recognized by biographers and critics, and the autobiographical expression of his guilt feelings in the Custom House essay is frequently cited. Further evidence of his ancestral burden appears in such works as “The Hollow of the Three Hills,” “Alice Doane's Appeal,” and “Main Street.”

It is also generally understood that Hawthorne during his long years of apprenticeship read widely in old state papers, legal records, musty sermons, and other colonial relics. Here he often encountered significant names linked with Judge Hathorne, and he made use of them in his fiction. G. Harrison Orians and Tremaine McDowell were among the first to point out that some of the characters appearing in “Young Goodman Brown” represent actual citizens of Salem who had been accused as witches before Hathorne.³ In a later study Professor Arlin Turner disclosed the names of two additional colonial worthies who are prominent figures in the story, and, in extension of the investigation, attributed much of the basic material to Cotton Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World.⁴

Unnoticed among these autobiographical and historical stimulants to Hawthorne's imagination is a book that was in his personal library—Deodat Lawson's Christ's Fidelity. This slender volume was dedicated to Judge Hathorne, among others, and across from his ancestor's name on the dedicatory page Nathaniel Hawthorne affixed his own signature.⁵ The contents include a sermon delivered in Salem Village on 24 March 1692, when John Hathorne conducted a vigorous interrogation of accused witches.⁶ In an appendix Lawson related his own observations of the witchcraft phenomena and other “Remarks [which] were afterwards, (at my Request) Revised and Corrected by some who Sate Judges on the Bench …”⁷

A careful examination of Hawthorne's copy of Christ's Fidelity reveals how the volume, so intimately linked with the grim judge who hovered always on the threshold of his descendant's consciousness, may have provided the imaginative impetus to the creation of “Young Goodman Brown.” The details in the Appendix of Lawson's book and the theology contained in his jeremiad gave Hawthorne the psychological basis for, and the artistic approaches to, his story. In effect, “Young Goodman Brown” is an imaginative and ironic rejoinder to Lawson's version of the witchcraft phenomena.⁸

I

Undoubtedly wide and random reading contributed to “Young Goodman Brown,” but emotional attachment may have made indelible some of the details found in Lawson's Appendix to the 1704 volume. This enumerates matters of record which could have suggested to Hawthorne the psychological basis of his story with its dream-like atmosphere so suitable to the mental aberrations involved in spectral experiences. Above all, some details cited by Lawson may have provided Hawthorne the master psychological and structural symbol of his story: the pink ribbons.

Basic to the psychological structure of “Young Goodman Brown” is the problem of what constitutes reality. The crucial question may be phrased thus: Do the events in the historical and fictional Salem Village actually occur, or does the imagination or heart, no matter how distorted, create its own vision of reality? Accepting as truth the existence of supernatural agents capable of intervening in human activities, Lawson and Cotton Mather consider the seemingly unreal witchcraft occurrences as reality and attribute them to the power of Satan. For Hawthorne the events have reality only as they exist in an aberrant human mind which conjures up its own spectres and doubts. Utilizing recorded data from Puritan history, Hawthorne offers us a psychological version of reality as it might be created in the mind of any man.

The witchcraft experiences recounted by Lawson in his Appendix stress the power of evil spirits to alter reality. For instance, the testimony of Joseph Ring describes the phenomenon of forced transport to witches' meetings. To Lawson and the officials of Salem Village, Ring's adventure is the work of evil spirits and hence evidence against witches. To Hawthorne, transport represents an excellent example of the mind's distortion of reality and serves as the fundamental motif of the journey in his story.

As a faithful recorder of contemporary events, Lawson inscribes the following account of Ring's testimony:

A Person who has been frequently Transported to and fro by the Devils, for the space of near Two Years … did depose upon Oath, that … he was many times Bodily Transported, to places where the Witches were gathered together, and that he there saw Feasting and Dancing … [and] he did take his Oath, that he did with his Bodily Eyes, see some of the Accused at those Witch-meetings several times; … he also proved by sundry Persons that at those times of Transport, he was Bodily absent from his Abode, and could no where be found, but being met with by some on the Road at a distance from his home; was suddenly conveyed away from them.⁹

This passage helps explain the feeling of compulsion which Brown expresses when Faith tries to prevent his departure from Salem Village. In the same account there are also hints of Brown's evasive actions: the hide-and-seek played by Brown with Goody Cloyse, as well as his shifting aside from the woodland path to avoid a direct encounter with the minister and Deacon Gookin. Brown's later frenzied rush through the dark forest to the rendezvous reflects the hypnotic force of the trance-like experience of transport. Neither Ring, the case history, nor Brown, the fictional character, actually had such experiences. Both perceived them only in their imaginations, but both undoubtedly believed in them.

Other details in Lawson's Appendix may have added to the atmosphere of delusion which Hawthorne created in his story. The situation in which Deacon Gookin and the minister force Brown—or so he believes—to come to the baptismal font reflects the records kept by Lawson.¹⁰ There are also vivid descriptions of the sacramental rites of witches, as in this passage:

They were also Accused to hold and Administer Diabolical Sacraments, viz., a Mock-Baptism, and a Devil-Supper, at which Cursed Imitations of the Sacred Institutions of our Blessed Lord, they used Forms of Words to be trembled at, in the very Rehearsing. … At their Cursed Supper, they were said to have Red Bread, and Red Drink, and when they pressed an Afflicted person to Eat and Drink thereof, she turned away her Head, and Spit at it, and said, I will not Eat, I will not Drink, it is Blood, that is not the Bread of Life, that is not the Water of Life, and I will have none of yours.¹¹

Here Hawthorne may have obtained the artistic and psychological clue to the magnificent rendering of lights, shadows, colors, and sounds filtering through Brown's consciousness.

To this climactic scene Lawson could have contributed other details. For example, the appearance of the ghost of Brown's father and mother may be an echo of Lawson's interest in testimony that ghosts of his own wife and daughter had appeared to the afflicted (pp. 98-100). In this detail Hawthorne, of course, saw an opportunity to place a supernatural vision within the framework of an experience of transport which already demonstrated dislocation of reality. For Brown, this mental distortion leads to family discord and distrust—a reflection of Lawson's reports of children accusing their parents of witchcraft (pp. 118-119). Even the devil-minister's powerful pronunciamento on the supremacy and universality of evil finds a parallel in Lawson: “They affirmed that many of those Wretched Souls, had been Baptized … and as to the manner of Administration, the Great Officer of Hell … said over them, Thou art mine, and I have Full Power over thee, and thereupon they Engaged and Covenanted to Renounce God, Christ, their Sacred Baptism, and the whole way of Gospel Salvation, and to use their utmost Endeavours, to Oppose the Kingdom of Christ, and to set up and Advance the Kingdom of Satan.”¹² The words uttered in this rite become for Brown the reality of a lifetime after he returns to the village.

Each of the parallels cited thus far suggests that reality in Hawthorne's story is not derived from the power of evil spirits but from Brown's fancied construction of events. In each detail which Hawthorne took from his source or sources, the real and unreal, the familiar and unfamiliar, the natural and supernatural become inextricably mingled in the deluded consciousness of Brown. In fact, since the same problem of the nature of reality is implicit in the many case histories cited by Lawson, Hawthorne's reading of the Appendix may have inspired him to focus on the psychological distortions within one mind representative of many in Salem Village. In this sense, Brown's fearful single journey symbolizes the frightful experience of an entire community.

Although the story is told by an omniscient author, some of whose comments and judgements are quite clear, Hawthorne did limit himself almost exclusively to the consciousness of his central character. Within this consciousness so uncertain of actuality, the experience of transport can indeed begin with a confrontation of a man (as devil image) who resembles Brown's grandfather. Thus to Brown the sacraments so customary in his everyday religion become part of a Satanic meeting. Thus people familiar and close to him are participants in his vision of the distortion of God's ordinances. Thus even witch spectres and the ghosts of dead people mingle in the surrealistic experience stirred by his own fancy.

Since Hawthorne concentrated on the inner experiences of this single representative consciousness, he attempted to render an atmosphere suitable to the central mind of the story. That atmosphere blurs any true comprehension of reality, creates constant tension between the trappings of everyday life and spectres, and ultimately conveys a set of dream-like experiences. Hawthorne's basic method is to create in the forest those shifting lights and shadows and strange images and sounds which lurk at the threshold between the imagined and the actual stimuli of vision and hearing, and which, as critics have pointed out, are powerfully rendered in the story. It is an atmosphere adapted to the psychological distortions going on in Salem Village—distortions which a Lawson or a Mather could not understand as well as Hawthorne did.

Because it has not been fully understood that Hawthorne created ambiguities of atmosphere and plot detail in “Young Goodman Brown” in order to capture in fiction the hallucinatory nature of transport, much quibbling has occurred about whether the experiences of Brown were reality or dream. Hawthorne never explicitly says that the sequence of events during the forest journey is a dream. After he poses the choice, he does refer twice to these occurrences as a dream. However, it is more important to realize that from the details included in Lawson's book Hawthorne chose to create not necessarily a dream but a dream-like or visionary atmosphere appropriate to his psychological interpretation of historical events. Essentially interested in mental and emotional conflicts and aberrations, Hawthorne uses the ingredients of the dream to convey psychological states. The dream-like quality of the story serves beautifully to portray the mingling of the real and unreal, the consequent blurrings of actuality, and the creation of a new kind of reality which encompasses distrust and loss of faith in man and even God. Thus neither Ring nor Brown literally dreamed his journey; in Hawthorne's view each underwent a profound psychological experience which may have seemed like a dream.

The most important factor in the portrayal of Brown's wavering consciousness is Faith's pink ribbons. Some accounts in Lawson's Appendix help explain their prominent function in the psychological and narrative structure of the story. As Professor Levin has pointed out, Faith's pink ribbons are related to spectral evidence, which was a baffling and agonizing problem during the witchcraft trials. Strangely enough, the two seemingly disparate elements—the spectral evidence which was used to convict and hang nineteen people, and the innocent pink ribbon which in her husband's eyes condemned a simple housewife—are inextricable.

As Lawson's sermon, which will be discussed, shows, the spectral aspect of the witchcraft hysteria goes back to the Puritan's theological belief in a titanic Satan of chameleon nature. During the disturbances of 1692, this image of the devil became so frightfully enlarged that legal and ministerial authorities found it hard to define the limitations of Satan's spectral powers. Could a witch, while being corporeally present to some observers, yet venture outside his own person and, visible only to the afflicted in a “shape” or “spectre,” impose torments on another individual who might recognize and accuse the witch? Did the appearance of such a “spectre” afford a reasonable presumption that the person from whom it emanated was indeed a witch? Judge Stoughton insisted that the devil could appear in the shape of a guilty person but could not assume the shape of an innocent person. Thus it followed that to him anyone whose spectre appeared to the afflicted was presumed guilty of being in league with Satan.¹³ On this point there was great dispute. Even Mather's attempt in Wonders to settle the issue was equivocal.¹⁴ In Lawson's sermon, delivered before Wonders was compiled, the ex-minister of Salem Village avoided facing the problem directly, yet at the same time he justified the actions of the judges, who did condemn on merely spectral evidence. In addition, he presented in his Appendix many examples of spectral experiences as if they were history or fact¹⁵—the kinds of experiences which Hawthorne, as we have seen, may have borrowed for his story.

To corroborate the allegations of the afflicted, the magistrates sought physical evidence of spectral actions. In the testimony during the examinations of witches there is emphasis on visible marks imprinted on the sufferers; for example, the teeth marks of George Burroughs were said to have been found on the body of one of his victims. In the accounts of Lawson and Mather, one also finds concrete, physical objects cited as evidence of a spectral visitation. It is from this kind of experience that Hawthorne derived the artistic symbol of the pink ribbons.

As “an Eye and Ear Witness, of most of those Amazing things, so far as they came within the Notice of Humane Senses” (p. 93), Lawson records two anecdotes which help us to understand the appearance of the pink ribbons in “Young Goodman Brown.” Since the spectres of Salem obeyed the immutable laws of poltergeists the world over, they were often invisible themselves but contrived to leave tangible tokens of their immaterial presence. Lawson describes one such incident:

A iron Spindle of a woollen Wheel, being taken very strangely out of an House at Salem Village, was used by a Spectre, as an Instrument of Torture to a Sufferer, not being discernable to the Standers by; until it was by the said Sufferer snatched out of the Spectres Hand, and then it did immediately appear to the Persons present to be really the same iron Spindle.¹⁶

Certainly to persons already inclined to accept as fact the existence of a world of infernal spirits, this concrete evidence must have been extremely convincing!

Lawson's own amazement and credulity can be read even more plainly between the lines of an entry which he placed in the climactic portion of the first section of the Appendix:

A young Woman that was afflicted at a fearful rate, had a Spectre appeared to her, with a white Sheet wrapped about it, not visible to the Standers by, until this Sufferer (violently striving in her Fit) snatched at, took hold, and tore off a Corner of that Sheet; her Father being by her, endeavoured to lay hold upon it with her, that she might retain what she had gotten; but at the passing-away of the Spectre, he had such a violent Twitch of his Hand, as if it would have been torn off; immediately thereupon appeared in the Sufferers Hand, the Corner of a Sheet, a real Cloth, visible to the Spectators which (as it is said) remains still to be seen.¹⁷

Hawthorne's choice of the pink ribbon as the familiar physical evidence which leads to Brown's condemnation of Faith and his own wild plunge into the forest of doubt certainly could have been based on this incident of the sheet.¹⁸ Like all the details taken from Lawson and other sources, those involving the spindle and the sheet fuse the familiar tangible item with the bizarre, unfamiliar spectres. Just as the spindle and the sheet confirmed the reality of spectres for the credulous people of Salem, so Hawthorne employs the pink ribbon to support Brown's widening suspicions in the haunted forest created by his mind.

Like Brown's experiences of transport and Satanic baptism, which have counterparts in the records kept by Lawson, his vision of the ribbon on the branch of a tree in the Puritan forest relates to the problem of reality. Was the ribbon there? Did he seize it in his hand? Or did the waverings of his mind created by the ambiguous and fearful mingling of the familiar and unfamiliar lead him to imagine that the ribbon fell? In the context of all the witchcraft details cited thus far, the descent of the ribbon is perhaps the most important distortion of reality in Brown's mind.¹⁹

The ribbons, which are both real and spectral, and hence emphasize the psychological basis of the story, contribute a great deal to the structure of “Young Goodman Brown.” The tale consists of three parts. There is a frame: (1) departure from home and Faith, and (2) return to Faith and Salem Village. In the latter section of the frame the permanent results of the night away from home are concisely depicted. Not only are these parts relatively short and almost exactly equal, but they are the clearest sections of the story; that is, the details narrated and the effects summarized by Hawthorne are vivid and effective. Within this frame is the source of the changes in Brown observable by the end of the story: the forest journey, which is one of the longest temptation scenes Hawthorne ever wrote. This long sequence of temptation divides into two parts, each with smaller components. The first shows the erosions of Brown's trust in his forbears and in his respected contemporaries: his ancestors, plus Goody Cloyse, Deacon Gookin, and the minister. Between this part and the next comes his loss of belief in Faith. The next section of temptation plunges Brown deeper into the forest in his progress to the witch meeting, where Faith seems to appear and where Brown's doubts envelop all humanity.

In the opening part, the ribbons, referred to three times, are identified with Faith. Brown's last glimpse of Faith emphasizes both the ribbons and a human response in her to his departure: “… he looked back and saw the head of Faith still peeping after him with a melancholy air, in spite of her pink ribbons.”

In the long temptation sequence, where Hawthorne is concerned chiefly with Brown's consciousness, Faith never really appears clearly as a human being. However, the ribbon, the prime spectral evidence of her guilt, descends between the two parts of the Satanic temptations. In effect, Hawthorne builds up the distortions in Brown's mind so that the ribbon, so pointedly emphasized at first, can become spectral assurance for Brown. In the baptismal scene the ribbon does not appear, but a spectre of Faith is present, or so Brown believes. Since he has already accepted the falling ribbon as evidence of Faith's venture into witchcraft, it is not surprising that the appearance of her spectre completes the process of conviction in his credulous mind.

In the final portion of the tale the real ribbons, as depicted in the early half of the frame, return. However, the spectre of the ribbon and of Faith in the forest have contributed immeasurably to the new version of reality which Brown brings home with him. Although in the cases of the spindle and the sheet the victims of spectres were left with tangible evidence of the visitations, Brown does not hold the ribbon in his hand, even though he was supposed to have seized it. The ribbons are still in Faith's cap as she welcomes him on his return. This fact makes Brown's experience even more spectral than the cases cited by Lawson.

In this analysis of the structure, the ribbons emphasize the nature of Brown's psychological experience and at the same time provide important links in the construction of the story. The ribbons are a token of Hawthorne's ability to convert his source materials into literary art.

II

Without fully realizing the impact which his sermon might have on the congregation in Salem Village, Lawson in effect provided theological explanation for the spectral nature of witchcraft. Although this sermon of 1692 does not contain the kinds of vivid case histories in the Appendix, Hawthorne may have seen in it the essential allegorical and dramatic conflict between faith and Satan which is central to Brown's spectral delusions. In addition, he ironically deploys Lawson's theological position in the narrative and psychological structure of his story by balancing Lawson's emphasis on prayer against Brown's growing doubt, and Lawson's faith in sermons against Brown's reactions to them in the story.

In his address Lawson had to face crucial problems: why should a God-fearing community suddenly be enveloped by supernatural phenomena upsetting the family, community, and religious security of the people? And how can individuals noted for their godliness become agents or victims of Satan? Lawson's answer, supported by countless Biblical passages and by the arguments of covenant theology, places all the responsibility for witchcraft on Satan's malignity and powers of seduction. God, Lawson argues, is testing the faith of the village by granting Satan freedom to spread evil. Thus Satan is God's agent used to serve His own “most Holy Designs … by the Trying of his People and the Judicial Blinding, and hardening of Obstinate and Impenitent Sinners unto their Eternal Destruction” (p. 43).

Such an attempt to explain witchcraft phenomena on theological grounds led Lawson into the ironical position of emphasizing the dominion of Satan as much as the supreme power of God, if not more so. Like his contemporary clergymen, he thinks in black and white categories: Satan versus God or each member of the Trinity, Satan versus man, the accused versus the afflicted, breaking the covenant versus faith, the kingdom of darkness versus the kingdom of light. Yet at the same time he acknowledges Satan's power to blur the splendor of God and to impersonate an angel of light. In attributing all to the seduction of Satan, Lawson had to stress the frightful dangers of the Devil's cunning, and therefore at least one third of the sermon is devoted to this power. Even when Lawson turns to God, Satan is ever present as the opposing force in the struggle, and when in the last part of the sermon he offers advice to his former parishioners the image of a terrifying devil is kept vividly before them.

Early in his discourse Lawson comprehensively portrays the powers of Satan:

He is a Spirit, and hence strikes at the spiritual part the most Excellent (Constituent) part of man. Primarily disturbing, and interrupting the Animal and Vital Spirits, he maliciously Operates upon, the more Common Powers of the Soul, by strange and frightful Representations to the Fancy, or Imagination, and by violent Tortures of the body, often threatning to extinguish life; as hath been observ’d, in those that are afflicted amongst us. And not only so, but he vents his malice; in Diabolical Operations, on the more sublime and distinguishing faculties, of the Rational Soul, raising Mists of Darkness, and ignorance, in the Understanding … Stirring up, the innate Rebellion of the will, though he cannot force it unto sin. Introducing Universal Ataxy, and inordinancy, in the Passions, both Love and Hatred, the Cardinal or Radical affections, with all other that accompany or flow from them …

(pp. 18-19).

This discussion of Satan's powers as they operate in terms of the Puritan concept of man could have suggested to Hawthorne the process of emotional and spiritual disintegration stimulated in Brown's mind.

In a passage which may have been marked by Hawthorne, Lawson stresses the methods employed by Satan to undermine the “Rational Soul” and to stir up emotions:

… when he useth Mankind, he seemeth to bring in what he intends, in a way of Familiar Converse with us Mortals, that he may not be suspected at the bottom of all. Hence he Contracts and Indents with Witches and Wizzards … [and] he will use their Bodies and Minds, Shapes, and Representations, to Affright and Afflict others, at his pleasure, for the propagation of his Infernal Kingdom, and accomplishing his Devised Mischiefs, to the Souls, Bodies, and Lives of the Children of men; yea, of the Children of God too, so far as permitted and is possible.

(pp. 28-29).

In such operations Satan is adept at assuming the form of an angel of light “endeavouring to look so like the true Saints, and Ministers of Christ, that it were possible, he would deceive the very Elect … by his Subtilty” (p. 31). This power of Satan accounts for the grim uncertainties of spectral evidence.

Because of these powers and methods employed by Satan, Lawson is acutely aware of the potentialities for discord and distrust. In his Introduction he had stressed God's giving Satan freedom to range and “to introduce as Criminal” God-fearing people who may become “the Instruments of his [Satan's] malice, against their Friends and Neighbours.” In the sermon itself during a plea for humility, he emphasizes the conflict between the kingdoms of Satan and Christ and sees the people of Salem in the middle of the struggle. In the same passage (marked, perhaps, by Hawthorne) he describes the possibility of Satan's dividing Christ's kingdom “against itself, that being thereby weakened, he may the better take Opportunity to set up his own Accursed Powers and Dominions” (pp. 63-64).

Sensing such a danger, Lawson feels it his duty to warn the Salemites against spreading the blight and turning brother against brother by “giving way unto Sinful and unruly Passions, such as Envy, Malice, or Hatred of our Neighbours and Brethren. These Devil-like, corrupted Passions, are Contrary Unto, and do endanger the letting in Satan, and his Temptations …” (p. 71).

Despite such admonitions, however, Lawson, envisioning the “roaring Lyon Satan” as the great and all-but-omnipotent enemy, rallies his hearers to a supreme effort to defeat the Devil, a kind of New England crusade. In the most belligerent passage in the sermon even the printed words seem to shout: “I am this day Commanded to Call and Cry an Alarm unto you, Arm; Arm; Arm; handle your Arms, see that you are fixed and in a readiness, as Faithful Soldiers under the Captain of our Salvation, that by the Shield of Faith, Ye and We all may Resist the Fiery Darts of the Wicked” (p. 81). Here is the basic irony of Lawson's position: his vigorous urging of warfare against evil would encourage the very emotional responses which he warns against. In seeking the destruction of Satan, he sounds the war cry against the witches and hence stimulates further hate and distrust.

As counterbalance to Satan's malevolence, the positive forces offered by Lawson to support the people in their tribulations seem somewhat colorless and ineffective. The sources of faith, the church and God, are portrayed in rather conventional terms. The church he compares to a woman “shining with utmost brightness, of the Faith and Order of the Gospel” (p. 29). God is described as the real power—albeit the unleasher—behind the surge of witchcraft and the supreme party to the true convenant. The Christian virtues which Lawson would have the people of Salem Village embrace anew during these dark hours are those already familiar to them: fidelity to the covenant, self-examination under the eyes of God, and humility before Him. For the afflicted—but not for the accused—he urges “True Spiritual Sympathy,” the compassion central to Christianity. And above all there is the duty, and the inspiration, of prayer: “Again, Let us be Faithful in Prayer. The life of Prayer, lies in the Exercise of Faith therein. It is to the Prayer of Faith that the promise of Answer is made … Besides, it is said the Prayer of Faith, shall save the sick … Faith in Prayer engageth the Glorious Intercessor on our behalf … Faith in Christ Exercised in Prayer, is the token of God's Covenant, with his Elect under the Gospel …” (p. 83).

The godly or Christian side of Lawson's argument is well summed up in a passage which reminds us of Brown's desire to cling to Faith's skirts: “… we should take the faster hold of God by Faith, and cleave closer to him, that Satan may not, by any of his Devices or Operations, draw us from our steadfastness of Hope, and Dependance on the God of our Salvation” (p. 54).

In this way Lawson tried to balance the two “mighty opposites” of a perplexing theological problem. In his attempt to justify God's unleashing of Satan, Lawson may have had a neat theological argument, but his psychological insight was sadly deficient. What he did not realize was that his vivid depiction of the powers of Satan might outweigh his emphasis on faith and Christian virtues. Bound by his covenant theology, he did not realize that he could not call for restraint of distrust and hatred, while at the same time urging even greater militancy against those in league with Satan.

The fallacy inherent in Lawson's theological argument may have suggested to Hawthorne the allegorical and dramatic conflict—the clinging to Faith during the temptation of the devil-figures—which is so significant in the structure of “Young Goodman Brown,” especially in the long middle section. Instead of using theological or Biblical arguments, Hawthorne visualizes the opposing forces as human beings struggling within Brown's mind, and at the same time he allows them to assume a symbolical meaning which points up the dichotomy of Lawson's thesis.

On one side in Brown's vision is the fresh image of a youthful wife, Faith, to whose skirts Brown hopes to cling during a flight heavenward after the one compulsive experience in the dark wilderness. The pink ribbons, as we have seen, are the important structural device which identifies Faith early in the story, becomes the spectral evidence promoting Brown's doubt, and ultimately leads him to the delusion of condemning her. While this image of a youthful woman is very real, it also operates symbolically in terms of faith—of Brown's loss of faith.

The other side of Lawson's theological argument is conveyed in Brown's mind through the devil images in human form, both old and distrustful of man. In portraying the first, who resembles Brown's grandfather, Hawthorne skillfully endows the mortal shape with attributes of supernatural power: the old man's snakelike staff and his powers to summon the spectres of people familiar and dear to Brown. As a background for the New England minister who is the second devil figure, Hawthorne creates a surrealistic mélange of visions and sounds which reflect Brown's mind. In this latter setting, full of ocular deceptions, the devil image is quite direct and blunt in his condemnation of human nature. This directness, as compared to the deviousness and sophistry of the first devil figure, indicates the degree to which Brown's mind has disintegrated. Softened by the subtleties of the first devil and of spectral experiences, he is now ready to absorb the message from whose destructive impact he will never recover.

During the psychological and symbolical conflict the balance of power is on the side of Satan, not faith. Actually the wife Faith does not struggle with the images of Satan; it is Brown who is torn between visions of Faith and the seductions of the devil. The preponderant power of the devil is indicated in the structure of the story. Satan does not appear in the brief opening part, although the premonitions expressed there do prefigure the emotional conflicts to come. However, in the long middle section the devil conjured by Brown literally and figuratively consumes and distorts Brown's mind and emotions. The third part demonstrates the horrible effects of Satan's triumph over Brown and over Faith. No matter how desperately he had tried to cling to Faith's skirts, Brown is irrevocably pulled away from her, and he becomes a thrall of the devil.

In this, Brown's progress toward a hell of his own making, Hawthorne shows his understanding of the psychology of the witchcraft delusion. Versed in theology but not in human behavior, Lawson erected well-worn safeguards against the onslaught of Satan. To him the conflict between Faith and Satan was explained in theological terms; to him faith would be triumphant. On the other hand, Hawthorne saw the same conflict as a psychological struggle within Brown. In narrative form Hawthorne attempted to indicate how Lawson's emphasis on Satan's powers could have an effect on the Goodman Browns of Salem Village—and of the world—which would be exactly opposite to that intended. By giving concrete and human form to Fidelity and to Satan's Malignity warring in the mind of Brown, and by artistically recreating the psychology of spectral conflict, Hawthorne expressed his disapproval of Lawson's theological position.

The fallacy of Lawson's dogma enters the psychological and narrative structure of Hawthorne's story in another way: the ironic motif emphasizing Lawson's injunction to prayer and trust in heaven as a mainstay. In every division of the story there are references to prayer. At the beginning, Brown, attempting to quell Faith's fears about his sojourn and about her being alone, tells her to pray: “‘Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no harm will come to thee.’”

Such confidence in prayer, like his feeling that Faith is “‘a blessed angel on earth,’” becomes a part of the psychological struggle during the experience of transport. After the first devil-tempter tries to undermine his ancestors, Brown says, “‘We are a people of prayer, and good works to boot, and abide no such wickedness.’” When the shape of Goody Cloyse appears, she is described as mumbling indistinct words, “a prayer, doubtless.” Because of his prayerful gesture of looking up to heaven, Brown does not actually see the devil-figure give his staff to Goody Cloyse. Shortly after, when Brown thinks that he hears the voices of Deacon Gookin and the minister, their spectres are described as passing “through the forest, where no church had ever been gathered or solitary Christian prayed.” To counter the impact of this experience and the “heavy sickness of his heart,” Brown looks up to the sky again, but in the turmoil of doubt he wonders “whether there really was a heaven above him.” However, seeing the blue arch and the brightening stars, he says, “‘With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the Devil!’” But, as he lifts “his hands to pray,” a cloud covers the stars. In these references to prayer before the ribbon falls, the struggle in Brown's mind between faith and the seductions of the devil clearly echoes Lawson's ineffectual emphasis on prayer as a solution to the witchcraft problem of Salem Village.

When the spectral ribbon moves him to strong doubt, Brown comes to the witch meeting, where he finds people who, “Sabbath after Sabbath, looked devoutly heavenward.” In the sermon which he now hears, the devil underscores the hypocrisy of the people present: “‘There … are all whom ye have reverenced from youth. Ye deemed them holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own sin, contrasting it with their lives of righteousness and prayerful aspirations heavenward. Yet here are they all in my worshipping assembly.’” A few moments later, just before he emerges from the state of transport, Brown urges the spectre of Faith to “‘look up to heaven, and resist the wicked one.’” This last reference to the saving force of heaven and prayer is ironical because Brown has already succumbed to the spectral temptations summoned by his own imagination. As soon as he returns to the village he demonstrates that he has adopted the devil's concepts of hypocritical piety and of the universal evil of man. In this way Hawthorne reverses Lawson's faith in prayer.

Hawthorne's distrust of Lawson's belief in prayer is clearly depicted in the final section. When Brown hears the holy words of Deacon Gookin's prayer through an open window, he asks, “‘What God doth the wizzard pray to?’” And when his own family kneels down “at prayer,” he scowls, mutters to himself, gazes sternly at Faith, and turns away. With such severity Hawthorne underlines the psychological damage done to Brown in the forest, as well as his new version of reality which no longer includes prayer, faith in covenant theology, faith in man, or even faith in God.

Just as Hawthorne makes ironic rejoinder to Lawson in regard to prayer, he also emphasizes the paradox of the theological argument by the placement of sermons or references to them in the structure of his story. Not until the first devil image begins to operate upon Brown does the sermon become prominent. To this “shape” of evil, Brown objects, “‘But were I to go on with thee, how should I meet the eye of that good old man, our minister, at Salem Village? Oh, his voice would make me tremble both Sabbath day and lecture day.’” This statement, ironically foreshadowing Brown's attitude toward the minister in the last section, is made after Brown loses faith in Goody Cloyse, who had taught him his catechism, and before the voices of Deacon Gookin and the minister are heard on the forest path. After he thinks that he has evidence of their fall, Brown's confused mind seems to hear a sermon delivered by a Satanic minister who is described as follows: “With reverence be it spoken, the figure bore no slight similitude, both in garb and manner, to some grave divine of the New England churches.” In the witchcraft documents, including Lawson's Appendix, this divine can be literally identified as George Burroughs, who, among other misdeeds alleged, was said to have administered the sacraments at fiendish orgies. However, if this figure is identified with Lawson, or with any minister supporting his theology, then one may interpret the sermon in the wilderness—which is a naked, almost sensuous pronouncement of the supremacy of evil—as representing that aspect of Lawson's theology which magnified the powers and dominion of evil in order to arouse the faithful to destroy it. The net effect of Hawthorne's irony is to make Lawson the devil's spokesman who under the guise of fidelity to Christ is actually leading people to distrust and loss of faith.

This climactic sermon is balanced by another reference to a sermon. So profound is the spectral baptismal experience that Brown can no longer listen to the supposedly true word of his minister, whose voice formerly inspired his reverence. On his return to the village—the final structural frame—Brown is unable to accept the opposite side of Lawson's theological coin: the injunction to exercise positive Christian virtues. He shrinks from the gentle blessing of the old clergyman, and “When the minister spoke from the pulpit with power and fervid eloquence, and, with his hand on the open Bible, of the sacred truths of our religion, and of saint-like lives and triumphant deaths, and of future bliss or misery unutterable, then did Goodman Brown turn pale, dreading lest the roof should thunder down upon the gray blasphemer and his hearers.”

Brown has heard two sermons, one during the forest scene which reflects his deluded vision and one after his return home. These parallel Lawson's theology (faith versus Satan's malignity), but instead of a divine victory, Hawthorne stresses Satan's triumph. Instead of having the faith he once had in his minister, in prayer, and in God, Brown has irrevocably converted himself to Satanic hatred and suspicion.

III

Whereas Adam and Eve may have experienced a felix culpa from which a regeneration of positive virtues might spring, Brown has suffered a complete fall from faith.²⁰ Temptation has conquered him, not in a mythical Garden of Eden but in a spectral New England forest. Relying on materials from the American past, materials intimately connected with his own family, Hawthorne gave us a memorable portrayal of the psychological erosion of one Goodman Brown of Salem Village in 1692. In a dramatic and detailed temptation scene which artistically renders the states of Brown's mind, Hawthorne used Lawson's Christ's Fidelity and other sources for the names of actual people, details from recorded experiences, and the theological arguments current in that historic time. But his Brown is not just a Salemite or a completely destroyed Adam, because Hawthorne with his keen understanding of human nature realized that the inner struggle between faith and doubt transcends Salem Village. With the artist's genius for insight and technique, Hawthorne thus created a new and timeless drama about the distortions of the human mind.

Notes

1. For a very able listing of seven “different” interpretations of the theme of the story, see D. M. McKeithan, “Hawthorne's ‘Young Goodman Brown’: An Interpretation,” MLN, LXVII (Feb. 1952), 93-96. (The reader can, I believe, easily note considerable overlapping, with differences more apparent in terminology than in substance.) To these should be added the following: Thomas E. Connolly, “Hawthorne's ‘Young Goodman Brown’: An Attack on Puritanic Calvinism,” AL [American Literature], XXVIII (Nov. 1956), 370-375; Thomas F. Walsh, Jr., “The Bedeviling of Young Goodman Brown,” MLQ [Modern Language Quarterly], XIX (Dec. 1958), 331-336; Paul W. Miller, “Hawthorne's ‘Young Goodman Brown’: Cynicism or Meliorism?,” NCF[Nineteenth-Century Literature (formerly Nineteenth-Century Fiction)], XIV (Dec. 1959), 255-264; Roy R. Male, Hawthorne's Tragic Vision (Austin, Texas, 1957), pp. 76-80; Daniel G. Hoffman, Form and Fable in American Fiction (New York, 1961), pp. 149-168; and E. Arthur Robinson, “The Vision of Goodman Brown: A Source and Interpretation,” AL, XXXV (May 1963), 218-225. Two other important works deal with the story: F. O. Matthiessen, American Renaissance (New York, 1941), pp. 283-285; and R. H. Fogle, Hawthorne's Fiction: The Light and the Dark (Norman, Oklahoma, 1952), pp. 15-32.

2. “Shadows of Doubt: Specter Evidence in Hawthorne's ‘Young Goodman Brown’,” AL, XXXIV (Nov. 1962), 344-352. For a dissenting view, see Paul J. Hurley, “Young Goodman Brown's ‘Heart of Darkness’,” AL, XXXVII (Jan. 1966), 410-419. It is partly my purpose to expand and reinforce Professor Levin's position, and to give some indication of the artistry with which Hawthorne shaped the original materials.

3. Orians, “New England Witchcraft in Fiction,” AL, II (March 1930), 54-71; McDowell, “Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Witches of Colonial Salem,” N&Q [Notes & Queries], CLXVI (March 3, 1934), 152. Goody Cloyse, Goody Cory, and Martha Carrier are the witches mentioned. Orians cites Mather's Wonders of the Invisible World as a source of the description of the witches' Sabbath.

4. “Hawthorne's Literary Borrowings,” PMLA, LI (June 1936), 545-546, 552. Turner adds Goodman Brown and Deacon Gookin to the cast of characters drawn from history and identifies other details in the story—such as the experience of transport, the respectable nature of the participants in the perverted sacraments, and the allusion to child murder—as elements possibly drawn from Mather's Wonders. Both Orians (p. 65) and Turner describe as an almost exact quote from Wonders the auctorial comment in “Young Goodman Brown” that Martha Carrier had received the devil's promise that she would be queen of Hell.

5. This volume, now in the collection of the Houghton Library, contains fulsome information on its title page: “Christ's Fidelity, the only Shield against Satan's Malignity. Asserted in a Sermon Deliver’d at Salem-Village the 24th of March, 1692. Being Lecture-day there, and a time of Publick Examination of some Suspected for Witchcraft. By Deodat Lawson, Minister of the Gospel. The Second Edition. Printed at Boston in New England, and Reprinted in London, by R. Tookey, for the Author … 1704.” Although there is no date of acquisition in the signed volume, the evidence presented in this essay indicates that Hawthorne had the book in his library or at least had read Christ's Fidelity before he wrote “Young Goodman Brown.” In fact, Hawthorne may be responsible for the markings in the volume. These appear on pp. 28-29, 62, 63-64, 69, 73, 93, 109, 112, 115. They consist of occasional underlining of words in Lawson's text; a few “X” marks; and lines drawn vertically in either the right or left margins. In some instances both margins have vertical lines, and the passages are boxed in by horizontal lines. On page 69, the word appropriate is written beside a boxed passage. The context deals with repentance, and the annotated passage tells of a condemned witch who speaks to the Reverend Mr. Simmes about the truth of his sermon which she had heard him deliver twenty-four years ago. The subject of the sermon was “Your sin will find you out …” This passage could have some relevance to The Scarlet Letter.

   I am indebted to the Houghton Library for permission to examine Hawthorne's copy of Lawson's book and to quote from it in connection with the present study. In addition, I should like to acknowledge my gratitude to Professor Norman Holmes Pearson, whose investigations into Hawthorne's personal library originally led me to the volume.

6. Deodat Lawson had succeeded George Burroughs as minister of Salem Village and had served there from 1683 until 1688. His tenure was marred by factionalism and discord, chiefly about financial arrangements, with the result that early in 1687 a committee composed of Major Gedney, John Hathorne, William Brown, and the elders of the Salem church was appointed to arbitrate the troublesome matters. Although the committee report appears to have sustained Lawson's position and warned his parishioners against prejudice and animosity, his ministry evidently continued to be an uneasy one, for in May 1688 he removed to Boston, and shortly afterward the Salemites began negotiations with the Reverend Samuel Parris to settle among them. The record of Lawson's service in Salem Village has been published by the Danvers Historical Society in its Historical Collections, XIII (1925), 103-118; and XIV (1926), 66-75.

   It is not surprising that with such close links to the prominent figures involved in the witchcraft hysteria, Lawson, then minister of the Scituate church, should have been invited to return to Salem in March 1692 to deliver a lecture-day sermon. He was perhaps the more eager to appraise the local situation because it was alleged that his first wife and daughter, both of whom had died during his residence in Salem, had been murdered by a witch. During his visit from the 19th of March to the 5th of April, he carefully noted down all that he observed, and on his return to Boston he published his account in A Brief and True Narrative, which, identifying individuals by name or initials, became the first printed report on the witchcraft phenomena. This Narrative was included by Cotton Mather in his Wonders of the Invisible World, published in October 1692, and it has been reprinted by George L. Burr in Narratives of the Witchcraft Cases, 1648-1706 (New York, 1914), pp. 147-164.

7. Preface to the Appendix, Christ's Fidelity, p. 94. This Appendix in the 1704 edition incorporates most of the material in the earlier Narrative, but it has been rearranged, the identifications have been dropped, and additional data have been added. This version has been reprinted as “Deodat Lawson's Narrative” at the conclusion of C. W. Upham, Salem Witchcraft (Boston, 1867), II, 525-537. All references in this essay are to the 1704 edition owned by Hawthorne.

8. It is not my intention to displace Mather's Wonders as a possible source but to focus on an important volume which complements Mather's work. In footnotes I shall indicate parallels between Wonders and Christ's Fidelity.

9. Lawson, p. 113. This testimony is also reported by Cotton Mather, who identifies the deponent as Joseph Ring. See Wonders of the Invisible World (Mount Vernon, New York, n. d.), p. 120.

10. This passage follows the account of Joseph Ring: “The Afflicted Persons related that the Spectres of several Eminent Persons had been brought in amongst the rest, but as the Sufferers said the Devil could not hurt them in their Shapes, but two Witches seemed to take them by each hand, and lead them or force them to come in.” (pp. 113-114). I have found no parallel account in Mather.

11. P. 111. See also pp. 117-118, where Lawson again discusses the administration of the sacrament. Cf. Wonders, pp. 107, 128, and 130. Lawson's accounts are frequently more vivid than those of Mather.

12. P. 118. Cf. Wonders, p. 124. The Mather version is pallid.

13. Stoughton's view, which is implicit in Lawson's narrative, inevitably caused an epidemic of suspicion in Salem Village. This phenomenon may be reflected in the direction which Brown's distrust takes throughout the story—moving from specific people who had previously been among the innocent in his mind, to all men.

14. This issue has been covered by Perry Miller in The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Boston, 1961), pp. 191-208. He makes clear the fact that Mather's Wonders, written at the behest of Stoughton, was a stumbling apologia for the judges, an attempt to convince both Mather himself and the public that no defendant had been convicted solely on spectral evidence.

15. Lawson's prefatory address to the 1704 edition indicates that this new printing was occasioned, at least in part, by a desire to justify the actions of the judges. It is distinctly defensive in tone: “… I have given way to the Publishing of them [these Amazing things]; that I may satisfy such as are not resolved to the Contrary; that there may be (and are) such Operations of the Powers of Darkness on the Bodies and Minds of Mankind; by Divine Permission; and that those who Sate Judges in those Cases, may by the serious Consideration, of the formidable Aspect and perplexed Circumstances, of that Afflictive Providence; be in some measure excused; or at least be less Censured, for passing Sentance on several Persons, as being the Instruments of Satan in those Diabolical Operations, when they were involved in such a Dark and Dismal Scene of Providence, in which Satan did seem to Spin a finer Thred of Spiritual Wickedness, than in the ordinary methods of Witchcraft; hence the Judges, desiring to bear due Testimony, against such Diabolical Practices, were inclined to admit the validity of such a sort of Evidence, as was not so clearly and directly demonstrable to Human Senses, as in other Cases is required, or else they could not discover the Mysteries of Witchcraft …” (p. 93).

    It is suggested by some authorities that Lawson himself came under some obloquy because of his association with the witchcraft proceedings, for he is referred to in contemporary records as “the unhappy Deodat Lawson,” and mention is made of his having returned to England in disgrace. See Burr, p. 150.

16. Pp. 102-103. See Wonders, pp. 69, 131.

17. Pp. 108-109. See Wonders, p. 132. On p. 69 of Wonders Mather also reports a suggestive detail not recorded by Lawson, an incident in which money stolen by “wicked Spectres” was later, before spectators, dropped out of the air into the hands of the sufferers.

18. In the first three references and in the final one to the ribbons, Hawthorne uses the plural form. In the forest scene, however, he refers to a ribbon. This distinction between ribbons and ribbon suggests a part for the whole, just as the small piece of sheet in Lawson's account represents the entire sheet. In my discussion I shall follow Hawthorne's practice of alluding to the spectral ribbon in the singular.

19. To complement the pink ribbon and the other details cited, we should refer to the passage which seems to represent Brown's loss of the feeling of transport: “He staggered against the rock, and felt it chill and damp; while a hanging twig, that had been all on fire, besprinkled his cheek with the coldest dew.” The parallels are clear: the real rock versus that which had contained the spectral font; the real twig versus the one which, like everything else in the spectral vision, had seemed to be on fire. All quotations from “Young Goodman Brown” are in the Riverside Edition, ed. George P. Lathrop (Boston, 1883).

20. For a fuller explanation of Brown's fall, see my essay “Paradise Lost and ‘Young Goodman Brown’,” E. I. Historical Collections, XCIV (July 1958), 282-296.