Okay, so as I was saying, there are four of you that are connected from
home and there are four more that are here. I want to go over what we've
agreed to do with the classes of this semester. We have one session less
than we need to cover the 12 authors and therefore, we're going to need to
come to some type of agreement. My recommendation was, and the students
here at home have agreed, is to skip Henry Wadworth Longfellow in the
established order and then we would do Nathaniel Hawthorne-Taylor, and
Nathaniel Hawthorne-Taylor today, Thurman Melville next week, Edgar Allan
Poe the following, Frederick Douglass, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Walt
Whitman would be on March the 20th. On March the 20th, we would start our
class at 4.45 and we would have the first 45 minutes dealing with Henry
Wadworth Longfellow in a separate conference, and we would have the
opportunity to have an additional conference, the one we have set for that
day on March the 20th. I'm going to send all of this by email, so don't
worry if this doesn't make too much sense because I've written too many
things on the board. After this, the following week, March the 27th, we
have a session where we're going to deal with Emily Dickinson. And the
same, that day we will start at 4.45, we'll finish Longfellow, and at 5.30,
we will stop Longfellow and start with Emily Dickinson. On April the 3rd,
we will deal with Mark Twain, April the 10th, so what we're doing is all of
these are moving back one day, okay? Because May the 15th is a holiday.
That's why we can't take May the 15th because this year we have Semana
Santa, we have May the 1st, and we have May the 15th. So we have three
holidays where normally we only have one holiday during the course year.
It's normally only Semana Santa, but this year we haven't been very
fortunate with the way the days are set. So just to make it clear, Henry
James would be on April the 10th. Kate Chapin would be on April the 17th.
Stephen Crane would be the last class on May the 8th. We finish really soon
this year. Okay? I'm going to put my telephone away. We're doing silence.
Okay, so today we're going to deal with a probably my favorite or one of my
three favorite authors. Nathaniel Hawthorne is an author. is a typical
writer from Romanticism. What is Romanticism and the Gothic literature
like? These are the authors that are more representative of this period,
Hawthorne, Tull, and Melville. I think that that dark unity are the
trademark of what American literature became. So before we get going with
the presentation, I'm going to talk about some of the information that I
hope that you learned. In the last semester, we talked about many authors.
And I think that one of the most important takeaways that you walked away
with was the fact that there were two authors that create a legacy, that
turn the purity movements into something different. Puritanism has a style
and an intent. We know that Puritanism is plain in style, and it's not. And
we know that it is religious and intense. I assure you that I have better
handwriting than the one you can see here. It's just not working very well.
This Puritan plain style is a deep religious style. This intense was the
predominant form of literature during the first full century of American
literature. During the 18th century, that's what we had. We had a highly
religious, didactic type of literature. And as every movement in culture,
as every cultural movement, one of the things that normally happens is
that. But everything that was established as the de facto standard comes to
be put in question. And in this case, it is very quickly put into question.
Thanks to movements like, well, thanks to authors like, for example,
Benjamin Frye with his libertarian writings. Thanks to Emerson, especially.
Emerson. Emerson supersedes the religious intents of Puritanism with
something that is more spiritual and based on contact with nature, OK? And
in the transcendental. So movements, we have as big figures Emerson and
Thoreau. Both are key figures of this period. We're already in the 19th
century in both places. In the case of the Puritan plain style, it is very
soon also superseded by a more sophisticated way of writing that is brought
to America. . By Washington Irving. So if we have to say, who are the
grandparents or the godparents, who is the godfather of Romanticism? From a
literary point of view, we should say Washington Irving. From a spiritual
point of view or from the capacity to attract Romantic writers and a whole
pool of the relevant people of the time, we have undoubtedly Emerson.
Thanks to Irving, we know that we transition from the romance, the novel,
to the short story where he is inspired, wow, he's looking terrible. His
two major works that remain relevant in our days, The Legend of Sleeping
Hollow and Ruth Van Winkle, are heavily indebted, I would not say that they
are plagiaristic, versions of German tales, of German folklore. So what
Irving is doing is he's taking a model that he's seen works, German
folklore, and he's bringing it to American tradition. The way of producing
American literature is by taking another model and making it your own. So
why would he want to do that? One of the reasons is very clear. In this
early American republic, one of the biggest shortcomings from the cultural
point of view is that... America felt inferior, culturally, to the British
Empire, really. So creating something that was purely American, something
that was big, something that was inspiring for the rest of the world, such
as a short story, is a key element that is going to turn American
literature not into a follower of other international trends, but a
trendsetter. America is going to... America is going to produce some of the
major figures in the universal canon of the 19th century. When we talk
about the authors that you saw before, the 12 authors that you'll see
there, out of those set authors, there is a very relevant amount of those
authors that are major figures and major influencers in the entire world.
They're going to inspire entire cultural movements. They're going to be...
very influential in their time, not only in America, but outside of
America. We... Thanks to Emerson and where he decided to live, Calcutta,
Massachusetts, the entirety or the majority of the literary movement of the
first half century, the first half of the 19th century, we'll eradicate or
we'll revolve around that area of Concord, Massachusetts. So Concord,
Massachusetts is a new place to be if you want to be something in the
literary scene. And we're going to see how the lives and the biographies of
all these authors intertwine. Emerson rented a house from... Sorry, I'm in
a car park. Rented a house from Emerson. Thoreau lived in a house that
belonged to Emerson. Melville was so fascinated by Hawthorne that he
dedicated his biggest work of art to Hawthorne. And a part of Melville's
work were analyzing Hawthorne's work. Edgar Allan Poe, from a distance,
because he was from a different part of America, he's from Boston, observed
and commented on these authors. And that's another important factor of this
period. Now that there is a unique and a very American type of literature,
there's also going to be something that is truly relevant about the way
that the authors interact. Most of these authors are exposed through the
works of all the rest of them. They comment on them, and they turn not only
into writers, but into critics. Prescribing or criticizing, depending on
their view of Romanticism or other types of literary movements, how they
see the work of the other people. So for example, in the case of Emerson,
we can draw parallelisms to the work of Hawthorne, but in the case of Poe,
we see that his work seems to be in a frontal clash with the ideas of
Emerson. But at the same time, it's very easy to relate Poe to Hawthorne.
So for some aspects, the three trinity that I talked about before, I think
before we started to record, there are three relevant authors in the first
half of the 19th century, that first half of the 19th century is the golden
period of American literature. It's very difficult to find a period where
there is a bigger amount of masterpieces being published than in that first
half of the 19th century. That would be like the Siglo de Oro, the Spanish
Siglo de Oro. The counterpart in American literature is that period that
goes from the beginning of the 19th century to more or less 1850, when the
drums of war are sounding again. And it's not just the sound of
independence and liberty, it's the sound of civil war. So embedded in that
period that goes from independence to civil war, there is a period of
profound exploration of literary topics. And we're going to see how this
first half of the 19th century is going to be extremely unique, extremely
fruitful, and is going to mark the rise and the fall of Romanticism. The
fall of Romanticism you will see at the end of this semester that leaves
place to other literary movements such as realism. That's in the final part
of the semester where we will be able to see some of the key figures of
American and also universal literature. So I want you to think of these two
authors as extremely important, not only for Hawthorne, for Melville, but
even for Edgar Allan Poe. In the case of Poe, maybe not because he agreed
so much, but because he had a wall against which he could oppose his ideas.
Sometimes it's good to have people to agree with, but sometimes you need an
opponent, a literary challenge, to contrast your ideas and think that
you're writing exactly the opposite of what the other person is writing. So
Emerson is sort of a 50th-year of the 19th century spiritual leader, very
relevant figure, but at the same time he produces art. We know that nature
is one of the key components in the works of Emerson. In the work of
Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the elements that you'll see is a subversive
way of seeing nature. A subversive way of seeing nature. Nature is dark, is
dangerous, hides secrets, and that's what we're going to see. We see that
Emerson's way of talking about contact with nature was, was a way of being
at peace with yourself. Whereas, Hawthorne is going to create the idea of
sin and guilt. Those, these three words, are key words in Nathaniel
Hawthorne. Subversive way of using nature, the feeling of a never-ending
sin, a very heavy sin, and we're going to see it in the work of Ruth Reith,
and a sense of unredeemed guilt. There's a framework that Hawthorne is
going to use as his way of telling a story. It could seem that it's similar
to a fable, but actually, it's not so much of a fable, even though
sometimes he's criticized for using this structure. It's more of an
allegory. He uses an allegoric framework, but to indicate those elements
above, in the Ministry of Black Rail, in The Birthmark, in Young Women
Brown, in The Scarlet Letter. We're going to see how the idea that we read,
we have the feeling that we're reading a fable, something that has to have
a moral idea. It just has the same structure, but we come to different
conclusions than when we read a fable. It's going to be a very different
outcome than what we're expecting or what we're used to. Now that we're in
the core of romantic authors, let me warn you about something. One of the
ideas that you could walk away with or that you could come into this
semester thinking is that romantic writers are going to be very easy to
read, very nice. Romantic sounds like a sweet word. We're going to enjoy it
a lot. I particularly think it's the most interesting period in American
literature, but that doesn't mean necessarily that it's the easiest type of
writing to read. Sometimes on the contrary, some of these are going to be
very typical. In Hopper especially, his intentional use of archaic
language, a dark and sometimes elusive manner of writing, he's talking
about elusiveness, an elusive way of presenting conclusions. It is not very
clear whether the author is trying to give you an ending that you have to
understand or if you have multiple ways of interpreting or defending the
story. That's what's so radically different in Hopper regarding other
authors, that Hopper is going to change the way that narrative is normally
presented. Up to now, we've seen slave narratives, captivity narratives,
Omer Cooper's adventure stories, Washington Irving's tales. They're all
about a narrative arc where we come to a set of conclusions at the end of
each story and we more or less know what's going on and we know what the
story wants to send to us as a message. One of the ideas behind romanticism
is to play with the way that conclusions are presented in the third act of
the story, the conclusion of the story. From now on, we're going to have to
put in some interpretation work and come to a conclusion that we're reading
about the ending of the story ourselves. It might not be the same way of
understanding the story that another reader could have. That's one of the
interesting things. What you're going to see is a very polished and
elaborate prose style. You can use those words, polished and elaborate. Not
especially easy to read. Sometimes the aesthetic qualities of his work make
him difficult to read because he sounds archaic. He sounds difficult to
read. His most important work or the work by which Nathaniel Hawthorne is
well known nowadays is probably the first major novel in American
literature. There wasn't a major novel in American literature before
Nathaniel Hawthorne published his Scarlet Letter in I think it's 1832,
which would be the same year as Washington Urban was publishing Alhambra.
So that just goes to show that even if we've seen an author many, many
weeks ago, it's not a guarantee that these authors are not coexisting at
the same time. They're definitely from different generations because
Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1832 was still in his 20s. Do you want to go drink
some water? Yeah, okay. Hawthorne has a very interesting personal story.
His father died when he was very young and he lived with the women of his
house. So he lived in a matriarchal environment in a very Puritan society,
a highly Puritan society. So you can imagine that there is a contradiction
between living in a house full of women in a society where Puritanism
conceives life revolving around the man of the house, the head of the
family. So very soon the ideas of responsibility, burden, guilt are going
to be present in Hawthorne because of his family situation. But even more
than that, because of his past generation's heritage. Hawthorne ancestors
were part of the founders of Salem City. Salem, if famous for anything, is
famous for the witch trials. And his ancestor was in fact one of the judges
that has the sin of having sent women, probably innocent, to be burnt. And
that guilt is a guilt that he feels as something that goes on from
generation to generation to generation. And now you understand why I'm
talking about guilt as one of the key words in Hawthorne. The final letter
is considered a psychological romance. It's a genre that we see, for
example, Frankenstein is also considered a psychological romance from a
similar period. It adds supernatural elements or mysterious elements giving
space to explore the around the world. with the romantics, remember what
romanticism is all about, we're going to normally see a repetitive
framework, a tendency to include supernatural elements inside their stories
and mix them in a factual way. So, supernatural elements are brought into
the story with a sense of the reality world. I think that's being normal.
So, you come to acknowledge that those supernatural elements as part of
these narratives, they don't stand out. They're not bizarre elements but
they're just other narrative elements inside the story. In the case of some
of the authors, specifically Hawthorne and Coe, there is a more gothic
style to talk about gothic literature very much today. I'm going to leave
that for everyone but I just want you to know that Hawthorne, his initial
work, Fanshawe is considered by the majority of people as being a gothic
work. Hawthorne seems to be obsessed in a way current theme of
religiousness. The way he faces religiousness is part of the core features
of his work and his ambivalence towards Puritanism, criticizing in a
subversive way the tenets of Puritanism but at the same time using Puritan
as a core feature of Hawthorne's work. We're going to leave Young and New
Brown and we're going to examine these elements of allegory and how they're
used subversively. Let me read from Professor Givetz, Dr. Givetz's Study
Guide for American Literature and the definition that they give for
allegory. That way when you ask in the exam you've already highlighted the
section and you can remember it easily. Allegory is a literary form closely
related to fable and parable which is often used to convey moral messages
or teach ethical principles so it's very pure in its core. It has this
didactic purpose but Hawthorne is not going to use it like that. He's going
to flip the usage. In allegory it's understood through the first. Allegory
points to a referent which stands outside itself and it demands a strict
correspondence between the concrete form and the abstract idea it
represents. Characters in allegory may be given names such as faith or
charity. So it's the same allegorical framework. These characters represent
personifications which are not symbols because they are the precise
embodiment of these virtues. So these characters are not going to be very
deeply defined or going to be put forward in a way that you understand
there's a very direct correlation between the way they're called and the
purpose that they serve. Some works contain allegories or are allegorical
in part but not many are entirely allegorical. Manichaean allegory is based
on the struggle between opposites which are interpreted in terms of good
and evil. Manichaean allegory if you want to highlight that and if you have
to write about young Whitman Brown in June for describing young Whitman
Brown. Well very quickly going over the biography we talked about how he
became orphan very soon. His origin is from Salem a town that went through
difficult periods and according to the interpretation it could be seen as a
way of paying for the sins of the past. He was at the beginning he seemed
to be in pursuit of a career such as becoming a lawyer or a doctor. He
befriended Professor Franklin Pierce and in fact his entire biography is
linked and especially the end of his life is linked to the life of Franklin
Pierce and he had a long life friend that even though his work could not be
more different and built on the work of Longfellow they remained lifelong
friends. About Longfellow let me just note that Longfellow was a huge
celebrity during his lifetime and nowadays he's almost a celebrity He had a
few runs of success but he wasn't considered internationally relevant
figure and afterwards has turned into one of the core figures of American
literature so their careers went in a very progressive way and Hawthorne
has become more and more popular over time. You've probably seen
cinematographic versions of The Scarlet Letter you have probably not heard
the name Longfellow before I suppose to show how relevant one author is in
literature one has left an indelible legacy through necessity and he began
to publish with a sense of struggling to find his own personality because
the first work that he published Fanshawe in 1828 when he was I would say
two was he was so dissatisfied with writing he tried to burn all the copies
to cover and burn all the copies something that seems a bit of a dramatic
way of facing writing the bad feeling that he got after writing Fanshawe
led him to resort to walk away from long fiction and resort to short
stories and that's where he became a relevant author and he managed to
publish many of his works in the form of short stories in magazines one of
the elements that we're going to see is extremely important in the early
19th century thanks to the confidence that he gained publishing through
magazines he was able to retake writing longer novels and he ended up
writing The Scarlet Letter and other works but basically he has romance
writer and author in the short story master in both cases he's a very
relevant author but he's probably more influential with his own generation
through the elements that he introduced and the styles that he experimented
with in the short story even though he was physically very close to Emerson
he was renting Emerson's house The Mosses and in fact one of his stories is
called after the name of the house that he rented from Emerson and he had
an outstanding relationship with Melville and we'll talk about this strange
relationship where they became very close even though Melville was probably
15 years younger than Hawthorne and afterwards they became estranged and
Longfellow a lifetime school friend under the presidency of Pierce he
served as the American consul in Liverpool he's considered one of the major
writers of American Renaissance American Romanticism and this is by far the
richest period in American literature not only in prose but also in poetry
okay he is one of the key core figures that explain the importance of
American Renaissance as a literary movement he is contemporary writers that
he co-existed with Henry James Herman Melville Edgar Allen Poe Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow all of them had the feeling that they were in the
presence of talents some could likely work more or less but was what was
indubitable also Emerson of course what was indubitable was the quality the
literary quality that Hawthorne possessed that was never put into question
because fictions have allowed for many interpretations and they come to
they've been seen under the light of different light and the first major
work in American literature the first major novel in American literature
and it can be seen from different aspects because it is the first major
novel and again as we saw with poetry the core figure in the story is a
woman the heroine of the story is a woman and that is an outstanding role
that was an oddity very strange to see a story revolve around a woman and
using these ideas of sin and guilt and hiding and concealment create a
story where the person that everybody is pointing as being guilty of
terrible sins emerges as the heroine of the story emerges as the most
virtuous figure of a story dark leaving a closed ending, leaving an open
ending that readers had to come to their own conclusion. By putting forward
that framework that was far from simplistic, he enriched his work and
created a form of interpretation that has made his work enduring in time.
What elements does Hawthorne use in his literature? Irony, paradox,
symbolic complexity, psychological depth, subtlety, density of composition.
This is basically difficult to read. Forever use of deliberate ambiguity to
allow the reader to speculate. All of these are traits that make Hawthorne
unique. They make him an author that is very easy to enjoy. When you read
them, despite the archaic language, he seems fresh. He seems classic on the
one side but fresh on the other because we can relate to his stories even
though they're placed two centuries back in time. That's the true traits of
a classic writer. A writer that even though time goes by, you can still
reinterpret the story that he's telling in a new light, in a modern light.
His work is currently viewed as a way of fighting against the current of
sentimentalist literature of his time. One of the biggest sentimentalists
was Longfellow. What was he fighting about? He was fighting... There is a
moment in his life where he talks about a mob of scribbling women. Even
though in The Scarlet Letter he seems to be the first of the feminists, he
has a very negative point of view about the sentimentalism that has
transformed the literature of his time. He writes against that. He seems to
feel forced. He can write in a dark and obscure way. The purity of his
literary style is what Poe calls grammatically complex yet rhetorically
subtle. It's one of the most appreciated factors in writing. His prose is
intentionally old-fashioned and archaic, even for his time, which is a lot
to say. Hawthorne had a very hard time being published. Since his first
work tanked so severely, he tried to publish in a short story format. First
of all for survival reasons. If you can't get anybody to publish long
fiction, you start to write shorter stories and you're in a bread-winning
mode. He submitted short stories as a way to get food on the table of his
family. A short story turned into a profession, but he turned it into an
art. By taking that long path of writing for a very short period of time...
Short stories, he eventually returned to long novel that he was able to
write in more long novels. Despite that, nowadays his reputation as an
innovator lies as much on the long fiction side as it does on the short
story side. He has relevant works in both realms. In the early 1830s, he
commenced to publish short stories. Some of these stories deal with his
major themes. Puritanism past and ambiguous heritage. Human sin and guilt.
Complex, deceitful messages of nature. Falsely perceived of perfection. As
you can see, he's not the most optimistic person in the world. In the early
1830s, he commenced to publish short stories. Short stories in New England
magazines and other ladies' magazines in an anonymous manner. He was
convinced by a friend, Horatio Bridge, to republish his tales again. So, in
another work of irony, he decided to republish his tales as A Christ's Tall
Tales. He did a selection of the tales that he thought were the best.
Curiously enough, Young Goodman Brown was not selected for this compilation
of his best short stories. So that means that the rest of his short stories
are very good because Young Goodman Brown is a very good story. Twice Tall
Tales comes from a Shakespearean poet. He is writing his relationship with
Nathaniel Hawthorne. I have to go very fast because we want you to read.
Very important, he was in very close contact with Transcendentalists. He
listened to them, but he was not a Transcendentalist. He used
Transcendentalism as a testing bench for his own ideas. And we're going to
see this pattern repeated time and time again. Transcendentalism had a very
relevant period with Emerson himself and with Thoreau. Thoreau was a true
Transcendentalist, but the rest of the authors that came in close contact,
they used Transcendentalism as a way of disputing ideas. Maybe they tried
him out. He lived in that sort of... hippie lifestyle that Emerson seemed
to suggest everyone to do, but he didn't do it himself. We've always talked
about Emerson's duality. Don't do what I do, do what I say. And at the end,
Hawthorne opted out of that lifestyle and he walked his own path. He served
in politics. And during that period, he was able to write his suite, a
successful full-length novel between 1850 and 1862, A Year Before His
Death. Department Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blitzdale
Romance. He wrote a biography of President Franklin Roosevelt. He wrote a
book called The Peers, The Fourteenth President of the United States, as a
way of campaigning for peers. One year... This shows what an intense period
of literary gem we're going through. One year after publishing The Scarlet
Letter. I put 1852 right off the mark. 1852. One year after The Scarlet
Letter was published. 1850, 1861, Colonel Melville published Moby Dick. And
on the first page of Moby Dick, the first words that you read are, in token
of my admiration for his genius, this book is ascribed to Nathaniel
Hawthorne. So, Melville wrote probably the biggest masterpiece in American
literature. The counterpart of maybe El Quixote in American literature.
Moby Dick. It is inscribed such a tremendous work. A terrible failure, but
we'll talk about that in a bit. To Nathaniel Hawthorne. And that goes to
show the dimension of the influence that Hawthorne has for his own
generation and for the generations to come. Again, we talk about the idea
of romantic novel... Horror-fooling novel. novel. Another very key figure
for American novelists or American romances of the 19th century was Sir
Walter Scott, very influential for Emerson, for Washington. He defined
romance as a patricious narrative composed of words, music of which turns
upon marvelous and uncommon incidents. This is what fiction is all about.
It was not only fictional from the point of view that it's not based on
true facts. It's fictional in the point of view that it inserts
supernatural elements. In this period, the initial writers are writing with
a supernatural purpose. They're not only putting forward a different
intent. It's not religious anymore. It's about experience. It's about life.
It's about people. It's not factual. It's not a biography. It's a story
that has supernatural elements. As you can see, Romanticism is a very clear
frontal opposition to Romanticism. Now you can understand why realism is a
counterpart and a frontal answer to Romanticism because this element of not
bringing any fact to the table, but bringing elements that are
supernatural. Find this opposition in other writers of the next generation
that want to do different things. They want to talk about real experience.
They want to talk about real life. They want to talk about real experience,
real feelings, real people, real situations. That's how we're going to
transition out of Romanticism. In these first units, we know how we're
getting into Romanticism because of Emerson, because of Irving, because of
all of these relevant writers that plant the seeds of Romanticism. We know
the course that Romanticism is going to follow, how the Civil War is like a
reality bite of the American Civil War. We know that Romanticism is going
to be a part of American society when people start to demand stories that
they can relate to, stories that sound real. Romance gave Popper the
freedom to explore irrational forces that affect the human mind, not
explainable with empiric evidence, and to incorporate mysterious and
supernatural elements. The author insisted on judging his lengthy work of
romances, a genre that would eventually be named after psychological
romance. Young Goodman Brown is an example of an allegory, a literary form
that is supposed to favor horrible. It's probably Popper's best example of
what allegorical is and what it allegorizes as evil. Don't tell me
afterwards that I didn't tell you that Young Goodman Brown allegorizes
evil. Special attention must be paid to double meaning. To this way of
creating allegoric names like Kate and Goodman's own name, Young Goodman
Brown. That resembled the everyman of classic literature, or the equivalent
of Popper's type of authority. Popper entirely felt that his literary
quality was lower than other tales, and excluded it from being included in
the twice-called tale. Apart from the allegorical interpretation, there's
an analyzed aspect to it. or psychology. The motives of this story, the
driving forces of the story are guilt, arrogance, Puritan binary good and
evil. It's like we're good, we wrestle evil, and he's going to play with
it. Our present and in-explosive Puritan ideas about witchcraft, endeavor,
faith, or innocence, among others. Puritans and sins, with the witch hunts
excelling, are present as guilty stains of human nature in all of Popper's
work. Of course, in this one, I'm going to address you to a page... When is
it 15 minutes? Let's see if we can pull that off. I'm going to read from
beginning to end. I hope my voice holds. On page 224, Professor Givet
writes in the box before that isn't included in twice-called tales. And...
This early story was not one that made its author great in the eyes of
contemporaries, except for Melville. Melville loved this story. This is one
of the stories that really inspired him. He singled it out as a preeminent
illustration of the blackness he praised in Hawthorne. Since then, it has
drawn a great deal of critical attention, especially in the last several
decades and many modern scholars consider it to be Hawthorne's best work.
best tale. Remember that crampy of darkness, that crampy of blackness that
I talked about? Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe. Think of the three Hawthorns
together and you'll come to richer conclusions than if you single them out
excessively. Young Goodman Brown. Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset
into the streets of Salem Village but put his head back after crossing the
threshold to exchange a parking kiss with his wife, Mrs. Goodman Brown. And
Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the
street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap while she
called to Goodman Brown. Dearest heart, whispered she softly and rather
sadly when her lips were closing her ears to his ear. Free we put off our
journey until sunrise and sleep in your own bed tonight. A lone woman is
troubled with such dreams and such thoughts that she's a herd of herself
sometimes. Pray tarry with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in
the year. Obviously, this is on Halloween nights. My love and my faith,
replied Young Goodman Brown. Of all nights in the year, this one night must
I tarry away from thee. And I'll be back again, and forth and back again.
Must needs to be done. Twixt now and sunrise. What, my sweet pretty wife,
does there doubt me already? And we but three months married? Then God
bless you, said Faith with the pink ribbons, and may you find all well when
you come back. Think about pink and what pink can symbolize in this story.
Amen, cried Goodman Brown. Say the prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at
dawn. And when I see you, at last, the night is at last, and no harm will
come to thee. So they parted, and the young man pursued his way until being
about between the corner by the meeting-house, he looked back and saw the
head of Faith still peeping after him, with a melancholy air in spite of
her pink ribbons. Poor little Faith! You could take that sentence and refer
to it as not referring to a person, thought he. But his heart smote him.
What a wretch am I to leave her on such a night! such an errand. She talks
of dreams, too, me thought, as she spoke. There was trouble in her face, as
if a dream had warned her what work is to be done tonight. But no, no, it
would kill her to think it. Well, she's a blessed angel on earth, and after
this one night, I'll cling to her skirt and follow her to heaven. With this
excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in
making more haste on his present evil purpose. He had taken a dreary road,
darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside
to let the narrow path creep through and closed immediately behind. It was
all as lonely as could be. There is this peculiarity in such a solitude
that the traveler knows not who may be concealed by the innumerable trunks
and the thick boughs overhead. So that with lonely footsteps, he may yet be
passing through an unseen multitude. Look at the ways that the forest seems
to serve a personified character in the story, and how it has personified
features. There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree, said Goodman
Brown to himself. And he glanced fearfully behind him as he added, what if
the devil himself should be at my very elbow? His head being turned back,
he passed a crook of the road, and looking forward again beheld the figure
of a man in grave and decent attire, seated at the foot of an old tree. He
arose at Goodman Brown's approach and walked onward side by side with him.
You are late, Goodman Brown said he. The clock of the old south was
striking as I came through Boston, and that is full fifty minutes ago gone.
Faith kept me back a while, think of the double meaning of that sentence.
By the young man, with a tremor in his voice caused by the sudden
appearance of his companion, though not wholly unexpected. It was now deep
dusk in the forest, and deepest in that part of it where these two were
journeying. As nearly as could be discerned, the second traveler was about
fifty years old, apparently in the same rank of life as Goodman Brown,
bearing a considerable resemblance to him, though perhaps more an
expression than feature. Still they might have been taken for father and
son. And yet, though the elder person was as simply clad as the younger,
and as simple in manner too, he had an indescribable air of one who knew
the world, and would not have felt abashed at the governor's dinner table
or in King William's court, were it possible that his affairs should call
him thither. But the only thing about him that could be fixed upon as
remarkable was his staff, which bore the likeness of a great black sailor.
He was a man of good character, a man of good taste, and a snake, so
curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself
like a living serpent. This, of course, must have been an ocular perception
assisted by the uncertain lights. As you can see, there is devilish
features in the staff. Tom Goodman Brown, hardly young, was his fellow
traveler. This is a good place for the beginning of the journey. Take my
staff if you are so soon weary. Friends sat together, exchanging these slow
plays for a poor sailor. The sailor, having kept covenant by making me
here, it is my purpose now to return once I came. I have scruples touching
the matter, though worse felt. Say as though so, replied he and the serpent
smiling apart. Let us walk on nevertheless, reasoning as we go. And if I
convince ye not, thou shalt turn back. We are but a little way in the
forest yet. Too far, too far, explained the good man. Unconsciously
resuming he walked. it's not capitalizing my father never went into the
woods on such an errand nor his father before him we have been a race of
honest men and good christians since the day of the marchers and i and
shall i be the first of the name brown ever took this path in text such
company though would stay observed the elder man interpreting his part well
said didman brown i have been as well acquainted with your family as with
every one among the puritans and there is no trifle to say i helped your
grandfather the constable when he lashed the quaker woman so smartly
through the streets of salem and it was i that brought your father a pitch
pine knot a kindled at his own hearth to set fire to an indian village in
king philip's war they were my good friends both many a pleasant walk have
we had along this path and return merrily after midnight i would fain be
friends with you for their sake if it be as those say is replied didman i
marvel they never spoke of these matters or verily i marvel not seeing that
the least rumor of the sort would have driven them from new england we are
a people of prayer and good works to boot and abide no such wickedness
wickedness or not said the traveler with the twisted staff i have a very
general acquaintance here in new england the deacons of many a church have
drunk the communion wine with me the select men of diverse towns make me
their chairman the majority of the great and general court are firm
supporters of my interest the governor and i too but these are state
secrets can this be so cries didman brown with a stare of amazement at his
undisturbed retirement how do they have nothing to do with the governor and
council they have their own ways and are in no mood for but where where i
need to go on with these how should i meet the eye of that good old man our
minister at southern village oh his voice would make me tremble both
sabbath day and lecture day remember the awakening and how lecturing took
place thus far the elder traveler had listened with due gravity but now
burst into a pit of irreversible work taking himself so violently that it
like staff actually seemed to wriggle and sympathize again and again and
composing himself well go on good go on the freebie don't kill me with
laughing well then to the end to end the matter at once goodman brown
considerably nettled there is my wife faith i would break her dear little
heart and i'd rather break my own nay if that be the case answer the other
you can go thy ways goodman brown i would not for 20 old women like the one
hobbling before us that faith should come to any harm as he spoke he
pointed the staff at a female figure on the path improving goodman brown
recognized a very pious and exemplary dame who had taught him his catechism
in youth and was still his moral and spiritual advisor jointly with the
minister and deconvicted him a marvel truly that goody place should be so
far in the wilderness at nightfall said he but with your leave friend i
shall take a cut through the woods until we have left this christian woman
behind being a stranger to you she might ask whom i was consorting with and
whether i was going be itself said the least fellow traveler and take you
to the woods and let me keep my cup apparently the young man turned aside
but kicked her to watch his companion to advance softly and along the road
until she had come within the staff's length of the old game she meanwhile
was making the best of her way to singular speed for so age the woman and
mumbling some indistinct words of horror doubtless as she went the traveler
put forth his staff and touched her with her neck with what seemed the
serpent's tail the devil screamed the pious old lady then goody close knows
her own friend observed the traveler confronting her and leaning on his
living stick ah for sooth and it is your worship indeed cried the good dame
yeah truly is it and in the very image of my old gossip goodman brown the
grandfather of the silly fellow that now is but would your worship believe
it my broomstick has strangely disappeared stolen as i suspect by that
unhang witch goody corey and that me there is a nice young man to be taken
into communion tonight, but now your good worship will lend me your arm and
we shall be there in a trinket room. That can hardly be, answered her
friend. I may not spare you my arm, goody Christ, but here is my staff, if
you will." So saying he threw it down at her feet for perhaps an assumed
life, being one of the robes which his owner had formerly lent to the
Egyptian Magi. Of this fact, however, Goodman Brown did not take any
cognizance. He had passed up his eyes in astonishment and looking down
again, he felt that he waited for him as calmly as if nothing had happened.
That old woman taught me the catechism, said the young man, and there was a
world of meaning in that simple comment. They continued to walk onward, but
no more did they have to stop. And while the end of their journey was near,
the young man said, The elder traveler exhorted his companion to make good
speed and persevere, and the path was coursing so aptly that his arguments
seemed rather to spring up in the bosom of his auditor than to be suggested
by himself. As they went he plucked a branch of maple to serve for a
walking stick, and began to strip it of the twigs and little boughs which
were wet with evening dew. The moment his fingers touched them they became
strangely withered. They began to shudder and dried up as if the weeks were
sunshine. I think you know the direction in which the allegory is going. He
thinks that Goodman Brown believes in all his innocence, that he's
surrounded by saints and Puritans and is going to discover or we believe
that he's going to discover the true true nature of the way the people
around him became. I strongly recommend you to read through the story. It's
one of the best stories you'll read in the book. And to work through not
only the self-exploratory questions, sorry, not only the self-explanatory
questions, but the exploratory questions to come to conclusions. Here we
finish. I'm William Brown. Next week we'll talk about Novo. Today I'll send
an email with the dates. Thank you very much to everybody that's connected
from home. I haven't seen any questions typed in the presentation, I mean
in the chat room. You can download the presentation and next week we'll
continue. Thank you very much.