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History Vs. Fiction: a New Historicist Reading of Hawthorne's

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History Vs. Fiction: a New Historicist Reading of Hawthorne's 현대영어영문학 제60권 2호 Modern Studies in English Language & Literature (2016년 5월) 231-55 http://dx.doi.org/10.17754/MESK.60.2.231 History vs. Fiction: A New Historicist Reading of Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” Kim, Jungmin (Seoul National University of Science and Technology) Kim, Jungmin. “History vs. Fiction: A New Historicist Reading of Hawthorne’s ‘Young Goodman Brown.’ ” Modern Studies in English Language & Literature 60.1 (2016): 231-55. Nathaniel Hawthorne, descendant of Puritan colonialists and member of the New England community chiefly conditioned by the Puritan heritage, was particularly obsessed with the nature and effects of sin. One of his famous short stories, “Young Goodman Brown” effectively dramatizes the neurosis resulting from committing a sin. The story has an “everyman” atmosphere, which makes Goodman Brown, with his common name, symbolic of mankind. Since the Puritan setting is basic to the story, we can expect that a variety of its thematic patterns derive from traditional Christian concepts. In addition to diverse notions of theme, other ambivalences such as alternative possibilities and multiple choices ultimately make its meanings indefinite and elusive so that it can be commonly acclaimed as one of Hawthorne’s most intriguing tales. The story whose framework seems to be quite simple is actually too complex with a lot of questions. Is Brown’s experience in the forest a dream or a reality? Does Brown lose his faith or not? Do Faith and other respectable people of Salem participate at the witches’ Sabbath? Hawthorne seems to purposely avoid answering such questions, which suggests that it is futile to examine the facts of the narrative to determine the meaning of the story. (Seoul National University of Science and Technology) Key Words: Goodman Brown, new historicism, witchcraft, withes’ Sabbath, communion with Devil I. Introduction As we may readily grant that literature is primarily a form of art, we do not need to refer to Hippolyte Taine to assume that art does not exist in a vacuum. It is a creation by someone at some time in history in order 232 Kim, Jungmin to appeal to other people about some issues of human relevance. Literature is not a sphere distinct from history with which it has been closely associated. A competent literary critic will not overlook what may be called a “thick description of the historical contexts of literature” (Murfin 331). Situating a literary work historically, he/she ought to know both the history of the time when it was set and the history of the time when it was produced. Of course, he/she should not ignore the historical contexts in which we now read it, for our literary present is constituted as an imitation of a historical past. In this sense, “all acts of reading are present,” whereas “all acts of writing are past to the reader” (Colacurcio 37-38). Properly speaking, literature does not occur until someone actually reads it. While reading a literary work, we first need to be aware of its background or context. A novel will always mean much more to knowledgeable people than to uninformed ones. In particular, a historical novel is likely to be more meaningful when either its milieu or that of its author is fully understood. It is within bounds to say that our understanding of it grows in proportion to our information about the historical contexts of the world where it has been set, written, and read. Anyone who has read “Young Goodman Brown” will instantly admit its historical dimension. Writing this story, Nathaniel Hawthorne drew several events from early American history: Salem witch trials, the persecution of Quakers, and King Philip’s war. These three dark incidents were significantly relevant to Puritan colonists. During the Salem witch trials (1692-93), one of the darkest periods in American history, the villagers of Salem killed twenty-five innocent people accused of being witches. Accusations for witch-hunting were mostly based on revenge, jealousy, and other reasons that had little to do with perceived witchcraft. The persecution of Quakers in the second half of the seventeenth century was committed chiefly by Puritan settlers. Seeking freedom of religion and History vs. Fiction: A New Historicist Reading of Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown 233 economic opportunities alike, both Puritans and Quakers immigrated to America and established their own colonies. However, Puritans firmly excluded Quakers simply due to the difference of religious creeds and carried out a diversity of imprisonments and hangings. King Philip’s war (1675-76), the single greatest calamity to occur in seventeenth-century New England actually showed a series of skirmishes between Indians and colonists. Indians attacked colonists at frontier towns in western Massachusetts, and colonists ruthlessly retaliated by raiding Indian villages to win the war in the end. Besides these actual events, real persons in history such as “Goody Corey” and “Martha Carrier” who were accused of being witches during the Salem witch hunt are mentioned as well as specific locales such as “Salem [village],” “Boston,” “Connecticut,” and “Rhode Island.” Terms like “ministers,” “Deacon,” “catechism,” “elders,” “meetinghouses,” “selectmen,” and “lecture days” used in Puritan religion and government are also frequently noticed. Historical realities such as actual events, real names of persons and places, and particular terms are not at the center of Young Goodman Brown, but they lie behind and inform the main action of the story. They are realities that critics other than those historically-oriented might conceivably overlook. By including these references, Hawthorne reminds the reader of the dubious history of Salem Village and the legacy of the Puritans and emphasizes the historical roots of Goodman Brown’s fascination with the Devil and the dark side. As such, we can easily place the story of Young Goodman Brown in the seventeenth-century Puritan New England, a common setting for Hawthorne's works. To put it concretely, Young Goodman Brown is set during the Salem witch trials, for which Hawthorne's great-great-grandfather acted as a judge.1 The Salem witch trials consisted of a series of hearings 1 According to James Mellow, Hawthorne, plagued by guilt by his ancestor's role, 234 Kim, Jungmin and persecutions of people accused of witchcraft in colonial Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May 1693. Although it was generally known as the Salem witch trials, the preliminary hearings in 1692 were conducted in such places as Salem Village (now Danvers), Ipswich, Andover as well as in Salem town. The most infamous trials were conducted by the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 in Salem town. The episode is one of the nations's most notorious cases of mass hysteria, and has been used in political rhetoric and popular literature as a vivid cautionary tale about the dangers of isolationism, religious extremism, and false accusations. Accordingly, we need to perceive something of Hawthorne’s biographical history as well as Puritan ecclesiasticism. Hawthorne viewed his Puritan ancestors with a contradictory concept of pride and guilt. He felt pride in seeing the history of his own family interwoven with that of Salem. He was proud of their prominence and accomplishments that greatly overshadowed the declining fortunes of subsequent generations. On the other hand, he felt guilty for his ancestors’ roles both in the witch trials and in the intolerant persecution of Quakers.2 “Young Goodman Brown”, in which Hawthorne addresses the Calvinist/Puritan belief that all of humanity exists in a state of depravity, often functions as an allegory of the recognition of evil and depravity in human nature. Hawthorne, with such a genealogy, was obsessed with the nature and effects of sin. “Young Goodman Brown” dramatizes the neurosis of a wrote the story to vindicate his grandfather by featuring two fictional victims of the witch trials who were witches and not innocent victims of the witch-hunt (Mellow 60). It was also this ancestral guilt that inspired Hawthorne to change his family's name, adding a ‘w’ in his early twenties, shortly after graduating from college (McFarland 18). 2 Speaking of the witch-condemning magistrate and of an earlier Hathorne who had scourged the Quakers, Hawthorne writes in the introductory chapter of The Scarlet Letter, “I, the present writer, as their representative, hereby take shame upon myself for their sakes, and pray any curse incurred by them—as I have heard, and as the dreary and . may now and henceforth be removed” (Scarlet Letter 10). History vs. Fiction: A New Historicist Reading of Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown 235 young Puritan who is tempted by the Devil and succumbs because of his curiosity and the weakness of his faith. The story has an “everyman” atmosphere that makes Goodman Brown, with his common name, symbolic of humankind. Brown is a naive young man who accepts both society in general and his fellow men as individuals at their own valuation. As an everyman of average intelligence, Brown is striving to live a good life, but loses his faith as one of the elect in the end. As we recognize that Hawthorne built “Young Goodman Brown” firmly on his historical knowledge, the tale comes to have a sociological dimension as well as an allegorical one. Judging this young Puritan who finally loses his faith forever, Hawthorne sought to condemn that graceless perversion of true Calvinism that actually led a community to the unjust persecution of more than twenty innocent people. We ought not to underestimate his use of historical materials, even when he was writing an allegory. It is owing to the combined effect of history and allegory that Hawthorne achieved a remarkable variety of insights into human experience, working upon even an amazingly narrow range of subject matters.
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