Class Notes

Notes about "Young Goodman Brown" and "To My Dear and Loving Husband"

 

1. Hawthorne vs. Anne Bradstreet
   
   1. Anne Bradstreet
      
      1. came from England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630 as part of the Great Migration of Puritans
         
      2. Religious
         
      3. Known as much more intelligent than the typical Puritan woman
         
   2. Nathaniel Hawthorne
      
      1. descended from the Hathornes and the Mannings
         
      2. Ancestors
         
         1. Major William Hathorne (c. 1606/7-1681), known for his persecution of Quakers
            
         2. John Hathorne (1641-1717), the son of Major William and Anna Hathorne and a magistrate of the Court of Oyer and Terminer who was the stern interrogator of the accused witches.
            
         3. He was intrigued, even haunted, by his paternal ancestors, and they appear in his fiction on more than one occasion.
            

            
             

2. Puritan Beliefs about Humanity
   
   1. All humans are sinners because even though people have free will but will naturally choose evil
      
   2. Man lived in darkness without power
      

      Puritan response to this horror
      

      1. Guarding the LIGHT (God) with rigorous DEVOTION
         
      2. God= narrow searchlight probing darkness of the universe, lighting only small group of the Elect
         
   3. Man can achieve good only through control and self discipline
      
      1. self-reliance
         
      2. Industry (work)
         
      3. Frugality
         

      Thus man has limited ability to choose between good & evil
      

   4. Imagination dominated by the presence of EVIL
      
3. Puritan Beliefs about Marriage
   
   1. marriage was a civil union, a contract, not a sacred rite
      
   2. Love and responsibility between a married couple was equal to a moral and religious duty.
      
   3. Through a true, righteous marriage, the reward of everlasting life through love will be obtained
      
   4. Marriage was often used as a metaphor for the divine love between believers and God
      
   5. Puritan leaders made the institution of marriage one of the basic means through which to control and bring order to their society.
      
   6. Thus, adultery was considered the ultimate sin, a moral violation of God's will.
      
   1. True Purpose of "To My Dear and Loving Husband"
      
      1. Interpretations
         
         1. She is being honest and truly loves her husband
            
         2. She is really speaking about religion and her love of God
            
         3. She is making fun of women (satire) and finds the typical behavior of Puritan females ridiculous
            
      2. POETIC DEVICES:
         
         1. rhyme scheme
            
         2. iambic pentameter
            
         3. alliteration
            
   2. True Purpose of "Young Goodman Brown"
      
      1. SHORT STORY
         
         1. Allegory
            
            1. Definition: a form of extended metaphor, in which objects, persons, and actions in a narrative, are equated with the meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. The underlying meaning has moral, social, religious, or political significance, and characters are often personifications of abstract ideas as charity, greed, or envy.
               

               Thus an allegory is a story with two meanings, a literal meaning and a symbolic meaning.
               

            2. Names:
               
               1. Young Goodman Brown
                  
                  1. Goodman—Good Man
                     
                  2. Brown--commoner
                     
                  3. Brown's youth suggests that he is an uncorrupted and innocent young man
                     
                  4. Brown has a personal "faith" in goodness of humanity
                     
                  5. Tilting head back shows the reservation he feels
                     
               2. Faith
                  
                  1. Goodness found in a young wife
                     
            3. Place:
               
               1. Forest
                  
                  1. Subconscious of the mind
                     
                  2. Must travel far away from innocence/purity/goodness to do evil
                     
                  3. The scene of the witch meeting with the flaming altars is an allegory for Brown's baptism into the evil world that surrounds him.
                     
                  4. The farther we walk into the forest, the more caught up in evil we become. Before long, we don't even realize how we ended up so far from innocence and purity.
                     
                  5. We have the choice to turn back to faith all along, but as Puritans believed, we don't because we are instinctively evil.
                     
            4. Objects:
               
               1. Maple Stick
                  
                  1. Rots from inside out
                     
                  2. As humans, everything inside of us is evil; thus, it comes out when we act upon it.