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NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE' S USE OF WITCH AND DEVIL LORE

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Chairman of" the Department of English

Dean of the Graduate School Robb, Kathleen A., Nathaniel Hawthorne;s Fictional Use of Witch and Devil Lore. Master of Arts (English), December, - v 1970, 119 pp., bibliography, 19 titles. Nathaniel Hawthorne's personal family history, his boyhood in the Salem area of New England, and his reading of works about New England's Puritan era influenced his choice of witch and Devil lore as fictional material. The witch- ci"aft trials in Salem were evidence (in Hawthorne's interpretation) of the errors of judgment and popular belief which are ever-present in the human race. He considered the witch and Devil doctrine of the seventeenth century to be indicative of the superstition, fear, and hatred which governs the lives of men even in later centuries. From the excesses of the witch-hunt period of New England history Hawthorne felt moral lessons could be derived. The historical background of witch and Devil lore, while helpful in illustrating moral lessons, is used by Hawthorne to accomplish other purposes. The paraphernalia of witchcraft with its emphasis on terrible and awesome ceremonies or practices such as Black Sabbaths, Devil compacts, image-magic, spells and curses, the Black Man in'the forest, spectral shapes, and familiar spirits is used by Hawthorne to add atmospheric qualities to his fiction. Use of the diabolic creates the effects of horror, suspense, and mystery. Furthermore, such 2 elements of witch and Devil doctrine (when introduced in The Scarlet Letter, short stories, and historical sketches) also provide an aura of historical authenticity, thus adding a v dimension of reality and concreteness to the author's fiction. In developing fictional characters Hawthorne uses witch and Devil lore, too. Self-idolatry, inner predilections to evil, and the presence of psychological inner "devils" or "demons" are matters which confront Hawthorne's characters in the language or atmosphere of witch and Devil tradition. The diabolic and all its accompanying paraphernalia even lends itself to humor and irony. Hawthorne often uses his Devil and witchcraft material to emphasize the discrepancy between appearance and reality. Whimsy, fantasy, and illusion are the forms which Devil and witch lore adopt in less serious contexts. Hawthorne uses the terminology of witch and Devil tradition to satirize, amuse, and comment ironically on man and society.

Whether employed seriously, humorously, or ironically, Hawthorne's frequent use of the language, imagery, symbolism, and atmosphere of witch and Devil lore indicates that he found it to be a valuable literary tool. Manipulated in various ways, the lore of witches and the Devil either adds historical concreteness to' ambiguous and fantastic plots or characters, or it provides the necessary illusion and whimsy to make a plot 3 acceptably light and fanciful. Characters, settings, psychological insights, and themes revolve around witch and Devil lore in a number of Hawthorne's works. v NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE'S USE OF WITCH AND DEVIL LORE

THESIS

Presented to the Graduate Council of the

North Texas State University in Partial

Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the. Degx-ee of

MASTER OF ARTS

Kathleen A. Robb, B. S. Denton, Texas January, 1971 PREFACE

In The Scarlet Letber and several short stories such as v "Young Goodman Brown," "Alice DoaneTs Appeal," "My Kinsman Major Molineux," "The Hollow of the Three Hills," and "Feathertop," Nathaniel Hawthorne uses his conception of the Devil and the historical background of the Salem witch de- lusion. Hawthorne's ancestry partly accounts for his interest in Salem witchcraft. One of his ancestors (whom he mentions in the introduction to The Scarlet Letter) participated wholeheartedly in the witchcraft period of New England's history. During the twelve years after 1825 that Hawthorne spent in Salem in secluded study, he immersed himself in a study of the history and legends of New England.

From his readings in various sources Hawthorne drew material for the historical background of his writings. Milton and Bunyan provided a classic Puritan description of the Devil and his activities. Histories of New England were factual sources for material on the Salem trials and executions. By reading the accounts of the Devil and his confederates in the works of Cotton and Increase Mather, Hawthorne derived information about seventeenth century New England doctrine and mythology concerning the diabolic wonders of the invisible world.

111 The many aspects of New England witchcraft which Hawthorne uses contribute historical authenticity to his work. Spectral evidence, Black Sabbaths, witches, wizards, Devil compacts, the Black Man, demonic Indian sachems, bewitched children, and familiars were all part of the paraphernalia of the witch panic of seventeenth century New England. I'ictional use of the Devil and witches or wizards provided Hawthorne with a realistic and vivid historical background, and qualities of horror, suspense, and mystery in the Gothic tradition.

Hawthorne uses the Devil and his associates, however, as more than just historic backdrops or elements of sen- sationalism. The diabolic element is used to develop themes and characters. Using the terminology of witch and Devil lore figuratively and symbolically, Hawthorne employs the language and composite elements of diabolicism seriously, humorously, or ironically to achieve literary effects. Often the diabolic is Hawthorne's device for exploring such abstract concepts as sin, evil, and temptation in terms of demons, devils, and witches. Hawthorne found the elements of witch and Devil doctrine to be so adaptable to various fictional purposes that he includes them in many of his short stories, sketches, and novels. The diabolic was a valuable and frequent fictional tool for Nathaniel Hawthorne.

IV TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE . . * iii Chapter Page I. HAWTHORNE*S USE OF THE HISTORY OF NEW ENGLAND WITCHCRAFT 1 II, HAWTHORNE'S USE OF WITCHCRAFT PARAPHERNALIA . . 2k III. HAWTHORNE1S CHARACTERIZATION OF THE DEVIL AND DEMON!CS 56 IV. HAWTHORNE'S LIGHTER USE OF THE DIABOLIC ... 90 V. CONCLUSION ...... 110 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 117 CHAPTER I

HAWTHORNE'S USE OF THE HISTORY .OF NEW ENGLAND WITCHCRAFT

The Devil and witchcraft are topics which figure promi- nently in Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories, sketches, and in two of his novels. Hawthorne was able to draw on history and his own personal background for materials about witchcraft in seventeenth century New England. Often he used actual historical events and personages to lend authenticity and realism to his work. He selected some historical and traditional materials, and then altered history for literary effects. The witch and Devil beliefs of the seventeenth century are some external aspects of Puritan DeviL and witchcraft doctrine which Hawthorne employs. He uses these beliefs to probe the hidden psychological or moral implications of his characters' actions. A great deal of Hawthorne's interest in the Devil and witchcraft stemmed from the author'-s awareness of his Puritan ancestry. Hawthorne could trace his Puritan background through five generations, starting with William Hathorne who came, to Massachusetts from England in 1630. "William Hathorne became a distinguished early citizen of Salem. He held the office of speaker in the House of Delegates and became a 2 major in the Salem militia.Hawthorne describes this illustrious ancestor in "The Custom House" as, "this grave, bearded, sable-cloaked and steeple-crowned progenitor" who was "soldier, legislator, judge . . . and ruler in the Church." Hawthorne found the "dim and dusky grandeur" of his first ancestor to be further darkened by the fact that William Hathorne was a "bitter persecutor" in his position as a judge.^ The Quakers, whose lively and unconventional forms of worship shocked staid Puritans, found Major William Hathorne to be a harsh foe. The Major ordered the chastise- ment of one Quaker zealot, Ann Coleman. She was publicly flogged through the streets of Salem--a fact to which Hathorne refers several times in his writings.3 Another early ancestor whose career interested Hawthorne and influenced his writings was Judge John Hathorne, son of Major Hathorne. Like his father, John Hathorne was a prominent citizen of New England. He was one of the two original justices of the preliminary witch examinations in Salem in 1692. Many magistrates at the trials took part in the proceedings at various intervals. Hathorne acted as judge almost

^Randall Stewart, Nathanielfeawthorne, A Biography (New Haven, 1948), p* 1. Stewart says that Hawthorne changed" the family name,by adding a "w" shortly after leaving college. ^Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Works of_ Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by George Parsons Lathrop ("Boston, 1883), V,~2^TT Citations from Hawthorne in my text are to theL-athrop edition, hereafter cited, as Works. 3Ibid., II, 92; III, 462-463; V, 24. continuously through the trial period from its beginning to its end.*"1" Hathorne's steady attendance and zealous participation indicated to Hawthorne (as well as early colonial and modern historians) that Judge John Hathorne was a deep believer in the presence of the Devil in New England and in the diabolic work of witches and wizards. Judges John Hathorne and Jonathan Gorwin were, first sent to Salem Village to conduct preliminary examinations of accused witches on March 1, 1692. Transcripts of the trials indicate that Hathorne conducted the examinations and trials almost singlehandedly, although he presumably had Gorwin's consent and moral support.^ For the most part the Judge's conduct of the trials was not a model of equi- table jurisprudence. The guilt of the accused was not in doubt; the trials were conducted mainly to force confessions. Nathaniel Hawthorne and historians have consistently viewed Hathorne's judicial conduct with strong disapproval. Ac- cording to a modern historian, Chadwick Hansen:

John Hathorne asked most of the questions and established the judicial attitude that was to prevail throughout most of the examinations and trials. Rather than adopting the stance of an impartial investigator ... he acted more like a prosecuting attorney than a

^Chadwick Hansen, Witchcraft at Salem (New York, 1970), p. 61. ^Marion Starkey, The Devil, in Massachusetts (New York. 1949), p. 38. magistrate, assuming the guilt of the person under examination and trying to force a confession with bullying questions ... .6 The great-great grandson of John Hathorne was deeply impressed by his ancestor's participation in the witch trials. In "The Custom House" Hawthorne describes the judge as one who had "inherited the persecuting spirit, and had made himself so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches . . . . Another of Hawthorne's ancestors, Philip English, was also involved in. the Salem witch trials, but in a different way. English was Salem's richest merchant and a leading citizen. Despite his wealth and position, he and his wife were accused of witchcraft and were forced to leave Salem in order to save their lives.® Philip English is never - mentioned by Hawthorne in any of the witch tales or novels. Hawthorne's interest in early members of his family was focused on those he considered guilty of crimes against humanity, men capable of much evil as well as good. Hawthorne expresses some concern about the sins his misguided or over-zealous ancestors might have committed and passed on to future generations of Hawthornes, for he believed that the past reflects on and influences the present.

* Major HathorneTs persecution of the Quakers is regarded by the writer as an almost indelible "stain" upon the age (as

^Hansen, pp. 58-59. 7Works, V, 2^. "HansenO , p. 268. 5 well as the man) which would endure for generations. In "Main Street" Hawthorne, implores, "Heaven grant that, as the rain of many years has wept upon it [the trail of blood

0" .... so there may have been a dew of mercy to cleanse this cruel blood-stain out of the record Q of the persecutor's life!"^ The remains of Judge Hathorne also bear a "stain" from the blood of his victims, the executed witches. "So deep a stain, indeed," writes Hawthorne, "that his old dry bones . . . must still retain it, if they have not crumbled, utterly to dusti""*"^ Hawthorne believed that men must repent of their sins in order to achieve salvation. In many stories and his novels he advocates public confession as a means of "cleansing the soul" of "stains" like those his ancestors had incurred. The possibility of repentance by Major William Hathorne and Judge John Hathorne for their sins is pondered by Hawthorne in the introductory essay to The Scarlet- Letter. Hawthorne probably doubted that Major Hathorne repented of his treatment of religious dissenters since the author was aware of Puritan intolerance of other faiths. There is no historical record that Judge John Hathorne ever recanted or repented publicly his part in the trials (although many of his fellow justices and citizens did. In "The Custom House," there- fore, Hawthorne claims the right as a representative of his 9Works, V, 24-25. ^Ibid. -^Hansen, pp. 265-268. 6 ancestors to "hereby take shame upon myself for their sakes, and pray that any curse incurred by them . . . may now and henceforth be removed."*-^ This passage and several of his witch tales may be taken as evidence that-part of Hawthorne's writings on seventeenth century New England is a form of exculpation for a feeling of ancestral guilt. Hawthorne playfully suggests that a family curse directed at ancient members of the family might account for the Hawthornes' degenei^ate condition in modern times.^ The influence of the past on the present has serious as well as humorous implications for Hawthorne. The idea of a family curse was taken from Hawthorne's family history. It was a traditional belief among the Hawthornes that a witch about to die on the scaffold had flung a curse at Judge John Hathorne and his descendents.^ The only historical precedent for such a belief was a prophetic i-emark made by Captain Nathaniel Gary in 1692. Mrs. Gary was examined on charges of witchcraft by Judge Hathorne and his associates. Hathorne conducted most of the proceedings himself, with his customary severity and bias. Captain Cary was angered by the court's "inhuman dealings" and "uttered a hasty speech Cthat God would take vengeance on them . . . )."^5 But whatever the basis for the tradition of a family curse, Hawthorne found

•^Works, V, 25. -^Ibid, ^"Stewart, p. 2. ^George Lincoln Burr, editor, Narratives of the Witch- craft Gases 16A-8-1706 (New York, 191^+), p. 351. 7 the idea fruitful, and he uses it in The House of the Seven Gables. •I-n The House of the Seven Gables the tradition of a family curse is a central plot element, and Hawthorne adds actual historical details to provide the substance of the curse. Matthew Maule's imprecation is hurled from, the scaffold at Colonel Pyncheon just as the convicted witch's legendary curse was directed at Judge John Hathorne. The actual words of Maule's curse are adapted from the execution of a seventeenth century New England witch, Sarah Good. She was executed for witchcraft with five other women on July 19, 1692. As she stood on the scaffold, the Reverend. Nicholas Noyes reproached her once again with being a witch and urged her to repent. She replied, "'You're a liar! I am no more a witch than you are a wizard I If you take my life away,

1 fi God will give you blood to drink:'" Hawthorne shortened the form of the curse to a brief, "God will give you blood to drink!" He also used the traditional story of Nicholas Noyes1 death as a pattern for Colonel Pyncheon's death in the novel. Noyes supposedly suffered an internal hemorrhage and died while bleeding profusely at the mouth, thus physically fulfilling Sarah Good's prophesy.^ In The House of Seven Gables, Colonel Pyncheon dies from undetermined causes, ^Starkey, p. 181. ^Hansen, p. 167. 8 but as with Noyes the curse is fulfilled with his death. The Colonel and his descendent, Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon, die seated, stained with blood about the mouth and throat, in their habitual poses of stern judgment and unrelenting severity toward others. Hawthorne's ancestry undoubtedly influenced his choice and treatment of the content of his writings concerning the Devil and witchcraft. His familiarity with the historic Salem area reinforced his interest in the past. Hawthorne was born in. Salem and lived there until he was twelve. In 1816 he moved with his family to Raymond, Maine, but he returned to Salem to attend school in 1819. After attending Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, for four years, Hawthorne again established his residence in Salem. From 1825 to 1837 he lived and, wrote under the social and historical influence of Salem.His awareness of Salem's history and his strong identification with his ancestors gave him "a sort of home feeling with the past . . and the period of the witchcraft trials was one of the most vivid aspects of the past for Hawthorne.^ He often found the social atmosphere of Salem to be stifling and oppressive, and yet its history was so prominent and visible that his writings clearly reflect the influence of the historic and picturesque area. As Hawthorne remarks, his feelings toward Salem, though

I8Stewart, pp. 16, 26. I9Works. V, 24, 9 ambivalent, were always strong. He writes, "Though in- variably happiest elsewhere, there, is within me a feeling for old Salem, which, in lack of a better phrase, I must be content to call affection,"2® The landmarks and traditions of old Salem were aspects of the ancient New England village which Hawthorne incorpo- rated into his stories and novels. In "Main Street," for example, he describes the tj>pical architectural design of Salem houses with their huge central chimneys and "flues so vast that it must have been easy for the witches to fly out of them," and their gables, lattice windows, and overhanging second stories.21 Gallows Hill is a favorite landmark.for Hawthorne's witch tales and a novel. It is a part of the setting of "Alice Doane's Appeal," "Main Street," and the introduction to The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne found landmarks like Gallows Hill to be so stimulating that (as he remarks in "Alice Doane's Appeal"), "For my own part, I have often courted the historic influence of the spot."22

Hawthorne's interest in the past and in the Puritan Devil is evident in his choice of reading materials. He read Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress as a boy and was familiar with Milton's work. The historical American witch and Devil tradition, however, is the element most strongly reflected in his writings. Most of Hawthorne's devils, witches, and

20Ibid., p. 23. 2IIbid. 22Ibid., XII, 280. 10 wizards are shrewd, powerful, malignant and, occasionally, almost sympathetic characters. He introduces into his work the theories of Devil-worship and satanic temptation which ^ ministers like John Hale, Deodat Lawson, John Higginson, and

Cotton and Increase Mather accepted as proven fact. Hawthorne, however, shades his tales with skepticism, inserts psychological motivations for mankind's beliefs and actions in the place of seventeenth century superstition and cre- dulity, and moralizes about the results of blame and suspicion during the witchcraft period of New England history. Hawthorne's knowledge of the Puritan era was derived from his readings in histories, sermons, and diaries of New

Olx Englanders.During the twelve years after 1325 which Hawthorne spent in Salem, he devoted much of his time to reading about the history and legends of New England. Early histori.es which Hawthorne read included Samuel Sewall's Diary, Joseph B. Felt's Annals of Salem, John Winthrop's Journal, and Thomas Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts.^^ Most influential in terms of sources of witchcraft and Devil materials were the works of Increase and Cotton Mather, for their writings provided studies of "afflicted children," details of witch 23Burr, pp. 145-162, 395-425, 389-402. ^Marion Kesselring, Hawthorne's Reading 1828-1850 (New York, 1949), passim. ? 5 ~ Arlin Turner, "A Study of Hawthorne's Origins," un- published doctoral dissertation, Department of English, Uni- versity of Texas, Austin, Texas, 1934, p. 32. 11 trials, theoi^ies about the development of witchcraft, and reasons for defection to the Devil. Two of Cotton Mather's works, The Wonders of the In- visible World (1692) and Magnalia Christi Americana; or The Ecclesiastical History of New England (1702) were particularly influential sources for Hawthorne. In The Wonders of the Invisible World, Mather reports on five witch trials "not as ?6 an Advocate but as a Historian."- Mather chose five "witches" as illustrative examples of the workings of the Devil in New England. He records the events of the trials of Martha Carrier, George Burroughs^ and three other accused persons with the zeal and scientific observation that matters pertaining to the supernatural aroused in him.27 Occasionally he recorded his observations and theories like an advocate rather than as a historian. Mather's record of Martha Carrier's trial, for example, is concluded with a subjective note: "Memorandum. This rampant Hag, Martha Carrier, was the person, of whom the rest, agreed, 'That the Devil had promised her, she should be OO Queen of Hell.'" Hawthorne lifted Mather's words from The Wonders of the Invisible World and used them almost verbatim in "Young Goodman Brown." As Brown observes the witches1 induction ceremony in the forest he sees Martha Carrier "who had received the devil's promise to be queen of hell." 26cotton Mather, The Wonders of the Invisible World, (London, 1862), p. 110. 27Hansen, pp. 221, 226. 28Mather, p. 159. 12 Hawthorne further characterizes Carrier by saying, "A rampant hag was she."29 Hawthorne utilizes Mather's characterization- of Martha Carrier in "Young Goodman Brown" in order to empha- m size Brown's conception of evil. In another story, however, Hawthorne revises the characterization of Carrier to achieve a different effect. Mather's suggestion of Carrier's ambition as the basis for her bargain with the Devil is further developed by Hawthorne in "Main Street." Pride becomes Martha Carrier's motivation for Devil worship and her character and appearance are elevated to fit the role. Thus in "Main Street" Hawthorne describes Carrier as a woman "with a dark, proud face that has been beautiful, and a figure that is still majestic." Hawthorne's witch is a woman "whom the Devil found in a humble cottage, and looked into her discontented heart, and saw pride there, and tempted 30 her with his promise that she should be Queen of Hell." Martha Carrier undergoes an imaginative treatment as Hawthorne's witch, but the idea behind her characterization can be traced to Mather. Reverend George Burroughs was-the subject of another of Mather's illustrative examples. Burrough's trial is recorded with fascinated horror by Mather who regarded a minister's transfer of allegiance from God to the Devil as significant 29Works, II, 103. 30Ibid., III, 469. 13 evidence of the Fiend's progress in New England. Burroughs was considered by many to be the leader of Satan's New England conspiracy.3^- In The Wonders of the Invisible World Mather reports that Burroughs was "one who had the promise of being a King in Satan's Kingdom, now going to be erected . . . jt32 As in the case of Martha Carrier, Mather interprets Burroughs' motive for becoming the disciple of the Devil to be a desire for power. Hawthorne's sketch of the minister-wizard in "Main Street" develops a different characterization of Burroughs. In this story, pride of intellect rather than desire for power makes Burroughs a victim of "the very strength of his high and searching intellect."33 Reverend George Burroughs of "Main Street" is an individual who yearns for knowledge: "He went groping onward into a world of ' mystery; at first, as the witnesses have sworn, he summoned up the ghosts of his two dead wives, and talked with them of matters beyond the grave; and then ... he called on Satan ."^ Hawthorne's treatment of George Burroughs is thoroughly imaginative and only superficially based on historical fact. To emphasize the sinfulness of questing for forbidden knowledge, Hawthorne gives his character the intellectual appetite of a Faust. The real Burroughs was not an astute or pax'ticu- larly intellectual man. He did not defend himself ably at

31Hansen, pp. 108-109. 32Mather, p. 120. 3%orks, III, 469. 3**Ibid., pp. 469-470. Ik his trial, perhaps because of the nature of the charges or because of elements of his personality which impressed the judges and jury unfavorably.-^ The transcripts of the trial record that Burroughs was not accused of summoning the dead. On the contrary, witnesses testified that the ghosts of the minister's two wives (whom he. supposedly bewitched, to death) had left their graves to seek retribution.^ Hawthorne does observe historic fact in his description of the dignified manner in which Burroughs met his death, appearing less like a guilty man than "a Christian saint . . . now going to a martyr's death."^7 To add historic authenticity to his stories and novels, Hawthorne often uses the names of actual citizens of Salem. Three women who were tried and sentenced to death in 1692 by Judge John Hathorne were Martha Carrier, Sarah Cloyse, and Martha Corey.In "Young Goodman Brown" the novelist uses Mather's epitaph for Carrier and refers to Goody Cory as "that unhanged witch."39 Goodwife Cory was hanged on September 22, 1692. Hawthorne's reference to Cory as an

^Hansen, p. 108. ^Charles W. Upham, Salem Witchcraft (New York, 1959), II, 160. Works, III, k70, SS'premaine McDowell, "Nathaniel Hawthorne and the "Witches of Colonial Salem," Notes and Queries, CLXVI (March 3, 193*+), 152. The woman's name was spelled either "Corey" or "Cory." 39 Works, II, 9U„ 15 unhanged witch dates his story before 1692, but more importantly it emphasizes the emotional estrangement that many Salemites felt from their fellow men during the witchcraft period. For instance, after seeing the forest witchcraft ceremony, Brown regards all his neighbors as converts of Satan, followers of evil. A witch who has not yet been caught and executed can be identified simply, in Goody Cloyse's words, as "that unhanged witch." Sarah Cloyse has a fairly large role in Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown." She is more than an historical prop- she is a witch with a personality, like Mistress Hibbins in The Scarlet Letter» The personality of Goody Cloyse in Hawthorne's tale parallels what is known of the personality of the real Sarah Cloyse. A woman of good reputation, piety, and charity, her Salem neighbors were shocked in 1692 to discover that one who appeared to be of the elect was in reality (according to the "afflicted children") a foul witch.^ In the short story, Hawthorne emphasizes that Goody Cloyse was believed to be "a very pious and exemplary woman, "^•l Brown, however, realizes that she is in reality an old friend of the Devil. Brown's words, "That old woman taught me my cathechism," indicate his growing awareness of evil and loss of faith in those he trusted with his very soul.^

40Upham, II, 326. ^Works, II, 93. 42Ibid., p. 95. 16 Another historical witch is Mistress Anne Hibbins of The Scarlet Letter. She was tried for witchcraft twice, but was not executed until 1656. Her case was one of the it ^ first prior to 1692. Hawthorne's Mistress Hibbins is identified by the novelist as "Governor Bellingham1s bitter- tempered sister, and the same one who, a few years later, was executed as a witch. History records the. argumentative or "bitter-tempered" nature of Mistress Hibbins--she was once censured by her church for quarreling, and a quarrel with two neighbors resulted in a charge of witchcraft and her death. In calling her Governor Bellingham's sister, Hawthorne is repeating a traditional belief. Hawthorne's Mistress Hibbins is an old, sour, and somewhat humorous witch. She urges Hester to take part in orgies in the forest with the Black Man, but Hester cannot be tempted with the crude forbidden pleasures of the witch tradition. Mistress Hibbins' Devil is the mythological Black Man with his book; Hester, Dimmesdale, and Roger Ghillingworth are lured by subtle temp- tations and their Devil is the true master of evil. Even in his most historical writings Hawthorne accepts and rejects personages and events freely. Using seventeenth century materials, he makes nineteenth century value judgments and always observes the past in terms of the present. Re- vising and rearranging historical facts (and sometimes ^Hansen, p. 35. ^Works, V, ^5Hansen, p. 35, 17 ignoring actual history) is a technique which Hawthorne frequently uses to achieve the best effects in realism, interestt pathos, and irony. Realism is a major objective of Hawthorne's historical sketch of Salem in "Main Street." In giving a panoramic view of the development of the town, he introduces a variety of historical figures, especially when discussing Salem witchcraft. The names of those involved in the trials are mentioned by Hawthorne to give the sketch authenticity, and he lists accused witches like George Jacobs, Senior; John Willard; John and Elizabeth Proctor; Martha Carrier; and George Burroughs. Those involved in trying or accusing the witches (Sheriff Curwen, Chief Justice Sewall, the "afflicted children") are also brought to the reader's attention.^ Hawthorne ig- nores historical fact when he mentions the tormented fit of "Mercy Parris, the minister's daughter." At the time of the trials, Parris had only one daughter, Elizabeth, who was sent away from the town shortly after its witchcraft troubles began. The only juvenile in his family to take part in making accusations with the other "afflicted children" was Parris' niece, Abigail Williams.^ More than one girl named Mercy was a "bewitched" child.Perhaps Hawthorne chose to emphasize the behavior of the minister's daughter and to

46Works, III, 466-468. 1+7Starkey, p. 47. ^Ibid. , pp. 20, 257. 18 name her "Mercy" in order to point out the irony of the merciless accusations made by children, and to indicate the spread of witchcraft madness into the homes of the most pious. Hawthorne again changes history by picturing John Proctor and his wife Elizabeth in "Main Street" as senile Salemites who went to death together, hand-in-hand, with courageous devotion to each other. John Proctor was a vigorous and in- dependent individual, not a feeble old man when he was executed for witchcraft. His wife Elizabeth was sentenced to hang, but her execution was suspended and she was eventually pardoned.^ Hawthorne pictures the Proctors "as they go tottering to the gallows" as pathetic victims of "Universal Madness." He emphasizes the falseness of the charges made against the Proctors by sarcastically paraphrasing the charges made against "the pair of hoary reprobates who have whisked up the chimney, both on one broomstick" and who have pur- portedly "shown their withered faces at children's bedsides, mocking, making mouths, and affrighting the poor little

ftCA innocents in the nighttime. u Pathos is also achieved in "Alice Doane's Appeal" by a combined use of fiction and history. The narrator of the story confesses that in picturing'the events on Gallows Hill he is trying to evoke compassion and sorrow. He describes five individuals who represent those who died in 1692 on

**9Ibid. , pp. 198-202. 5QWorks, III, 468. 19 charges of witchcraft. The first two individuals are composite figures, for the qualities assigned to them were typical characteristics of many persons accused of witchcraft. The first is a woman "in her dotage, knowing neither the crime imputed her, nor its punishment.Old age was a common characteristic of many accused of witchcraft—their physical infirmities made them less able to defend themselves in trials, less aware of the import of legal proceedings, and more apt to be the subject of blame and suspicion. Hawthorne's second witch is a woman "distracted by universal madness, till feverish dreams were remembered as realities, and she almost believed her guilt.Many of those confronted by the wild behavior of the "afflicted children" and the incontestable "proof" of spectral evidence became almost convinced of being unwillingly guilty and in desperation confessed to uncommitted 53 crimes. The other three individuals who. climb Gallows Hill in "Alice Doane's Appeal" are patterned more closely after actual individuals. Hawthorne's description of "One, a proud man once, who was so broken down by the intolerable hatred heaped upon him, that he seemed to hasten his steps, eager to hide himself in the grave hastily dug at the gallows" may be a sketch of John Proctor, who was hanged on the same day as the

5IIbid., XII, 293. 52Ibid. 3^Hansen, pp. 147-150. 20 last two witches in the story, Martha Carrier and George Burroughs.Hawthorne's description, of "a caother who looked behind, and beheld her peaceful dwelling; she cast • her eyes elsewhere, and groaned inwardly yet with the bitterest anguish, for there was her little son among the 55 accusers" suggests Martha Carrier. Carrier's sons did testify against her (they were tortured until they accused their mother of being a witch).^ Hawthorne makes Martha Carrier an object of pity in "Alice Doane's Appeal"--a distinctly different treatment than she was given in "Main Street" and "Young Goodman Brown." The last figure in the procession to Gallows Hill is Reverend George Burroughs. Hawthorne writes, "I watched the face of an ordained pastor, who walked onward to . . . death; his lips moved in prayer; no narrow petition for himself alone, but etnbracing all his r *7 fellow sufferers and the frenzied multitude . . . Again, history is used as a means of achieving realism and pathos. Hawthorne was interested in the writings of Cotton Mather, for they provided excellent insight into the workings of the seventeenth century New England mind in supernatural and theological matters. As a nineteenth century thinker, however, Hawthorne could not interpret the witchcraft period through Mather's eyes. What Mather saw as necessary action to thwart Satan's activities in New England, Hawthorne interprets as 5^-Works , XII, 293. 55];bid, 56Burr, p. 363. 57Works, XII, 293-294. 21 "the frenzy of that hideous epoch.Writing as an artist, not as a historian, Hawthorne describes (in "Alice Doane's Appeal") Mather's intervention in the execution of five * witches (Carrier, Burroughs, Willard, Proctor, and Jacobs) in 1692. Before the executions, Burroughs, who had mounted the -scaffold, repeated the Lord's Prayer. It was a common belief that a witch or wizard could not pray. Burroughs said the prayer flawlessly and movingly. His deportment and the calm dignity of the rest of the condemned was so impressive that the crowd became restless. Mather was present, and to prevent a mob attempt to release the accused, he rode into the crowd, telling the citizens to proceed with the necessary executions. Hawthorne refers to this historical incident in "Main Street." He summarizes the situation and Mather's impromptu speech saying, "Listen to wise Cotton Mather, who, as he sits there on his horse, speaks comfortably to the perplexed multitude, and tells them that all has been religiously and justly done, and that Satan's power shall this day receive its death blow in New England."^® In "Alice Doane's Appeal," Hawthorne characterizes Mather as "a friend of the fiend" who was the "representative of all the hateful features of his time; the one blood-thirsty man, in whom were concentrated

58Works, III, 20. 59Starkey, pp. 207-208. 60Works, III, 470. 22 those vices of spirit and errors of opinion that sufficed to madden the whole surrounding multitude.

Hawthorne uses the history of witchcraft in New England in a variety of ways. Trials, executions", actual events, and citizens give his writings an aura of historical authenticity.

From reading histories and from his awareness of his own family background, Hawthorne was able to glean interesting plot elements and materials for character development and motivation. Themes which are prevalent in Hawthorne's writings are supplemented by his knowledge of history. Thus the theme of the influence of the past on the present is a part of The House of the Seven Gables in which seventeenth century witchcraft casts a shadow across other generations.

Hawthorne's concern about the sin of willful separation of an individual from his fellow men is a theme of witch tales like "Young Goodman Brown" and "Main Street." Lack of faith in others or inability to share in the general condition of human society is a frequent theme in Hawthorne's writings.

In the history of Salem witchcraft trials, Hawthorne sees the corrosive effects of fear and suspicion, for then "friend

JjLookedJ askance at friend, and the husband at his wife, and the wife at him, and even the mother at her little child.; as if, in every creature that God has made, they suspected a

, fLO witch or dreaded an accuser."

6IIbid., XII, 29b. 62Ibid. 23 From the past Hawthorne believed mankind could shape a better future. The witch trials could teach "that the influential classes, and those who take upon themselves to be leaders of the people, are fully liable to all the passionate error that has ever characterized the maddest mob."^3 In men like John and William Hathorne and Cotton Mather, Hawtho:cne detected the strength of will and character which can be a fatal flaw, making a man liable to error. Hawthorne advocates that men acknowledge the shared sins and errors of mankind and set up a "monument" to the witchcraft period which is "sadly commemorative of the errors of an earlier race, and not to be cast down, while the human heart has one infirmity that may result in crime.

63Ibid. 64Ibid., XII, 295. CHAPTER II

HAWTHORNE1S USE OF WITCHCRAFT PARAPHERNALIA

The paraphernalia of witchcraft (compacts with the Devil, Black Sabbaths, familiar spirits, enchanted animals, broomsticks, sacrilegious baptisms, and so forth) are notice- able elements in Hawthorne's writings involving witchcraft •and the Devil. Occasionally Hawthorne uses elements of white witchcraft (harmless or magical witchcraft without the malefic design of black witchcraft) as the basis of his work. In some of his most striking literature, however, he uses traditional aspects of black witchcraft to develop characters, plots, and themes. The author also introduces some elements of black witchcraft because of their atmospheric qualities; thev^.evoke..£eel-ing-s- of horror, mystery, and suspense.

Hawthorne derived his knowledge of witchcraft from the historical and theological treatments of witchcraft by seventeenth century New England ministers. The clergy of New England had a thorough background in traditional English folk tales and superstitions having to"do with the supernatural.^ They were also familiar with such popular and well-known works on witchcraft as William Perkin's Damned Art of Witch- crafty (1608), Josepri Glanvil's Saducismus Triumph at us (1.681),

•'•George L. Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England (New York, 1929), pp. 363, 3%ZZ

Oh. 25 and Richard Baxter's Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits (1691), not to mention the treatment of the Devil in Milton, Calvin, and the Bible.2 Increase and Cotton Mather incor- porated many of the traditional beliefs of witchcraft in their writings, and in some cases they recorded the oz^iginal twists in witchcraft doctrine which were invented by the residents of the New World. From reading the Mathers and other early New England theologians, Hawthorne gained a familiarity with the elements of witchcraft-devil doctrine which are prominent in his writings. Various aspects of witchcraft doctrine became system- atized on the continent in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and in England somewhat later. Accepted beliefs about the Devil and his confederates were transported to the New World by immigrating religious dissenters.^ Thus in New England as well as in Old England, people sincerely believed that the Devil's activities followed certain patterns and were conducted in established ceremonies% The Witches' Sabbath, for example, was considered to be the Devil's version of "a combined religious service and business meeting," attended by devotees and converts to Devil worship J* Hawthorne uses certain elements of the New England version of a Witches* Sabbath in "The Hollow of the Three Hills," "The May-Pole of

^Hansen, pp. 52, 204, 230. "^Kittredge, p. 375. 4Ibid., p, 234. 26 Merry Mount," "My Kinsman, Major Molineux," and The Scarlet Letter. Only in "Young Goodman Brown," however, does Hawthorne use nearly all the traditional elements of the Black Sabbath in his story. In the others he separates elements from the Witches' Sabbath tradition and develops each element (be it wild dancing, unholy baptism., a diabolic compact with the Devil, or whatever) apart from the full context of the traditional Witches® Sabbath. iDancing and feasting were considered to be important aspects of the Black Sabbath by those who believed in witchcraft. Many "eye-witness" descriptions of the *Black Sabbath include details of orgiastic dances.^ One "witness" at a Salem witch trial testified that he had "many times been transported to places, where the witches were gathered to~ gether, and that he saw feasting and dancing.In Puritan tradition, according to Norris Yates, dance represents "col- lective evil, . . . pagan sensuality, and lack of restraint." In the witch, tradition dance is an integral part 6t Devil- worship. Hawthorne uses a dance motif in several of his witch tales to emphasize a surrender of body and soul to a frenzied worship of evil.^ Reflecting the traditional/

^Rossell Hope Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology (New York, 19597* p- <+21, 6Upham, II, 533. ^Norris Yates, "Ritual and Reality: Mask and Dance Motifs in Hawthorne's Fiction," Philological Quarterly, XXXIV (January, 1955), 70. . 27 Puritan thinking about dance and the Devil, Hawthorne remarks in "The May-Pole of Merry Mount" that the. "wild revelry" of the Merry Mounters seemed to Puritan on-lookers to be comparable to the masques and dances of "those devils and ruined souls with whom pPuritanj, superstition peopled the black wilderness."® The Merry Mounters dance around the may-pole, a "flower- decked abomination," using it as an'altar ... of worship" like "bestial pagans" worshipping an "idol" in the interpre-

tation of Puritan observers.^ The may-pole is symbolic of a misplaced devotion to frivolity and unreality. Worshipping gay and thoughtless pleasure, the Merry Mounters conduct a kind of Devil-worship in their forest revels. Endicott, the Puritan leader, destroys the may-pole and ends the pagan antics of Merry Mount. In doing so he saves two individuals, Edith and Edgar, from the "systematic gaiety," "wild mirth," and "vanities" which worship of the may-pole entailed. Edith and Edgar renounce the carefree existence they had previously known when they join the Puritan band, and in so doing they also escape "the fiend, and his bond slaves, the crew of Merry Mount."*-0

The devil-dance motif in "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" is developed by Hawthorne as he describes a fantastic midnight

9 ^orks, I, 72. Ibid., pp. 80-81. 10Ibid., p. 78. 28 processional. The hero of the story, Robin, searches for his uncle the best part of an evening and is finally told that if he waits in a certain location his uncle will make an appearance. While waiting Robin hears "the sounds of a trumpet. In New England witchcraft tradition "the. sound of a diabolic trumpet" summoned the society of witches to a Sabbath.^ Robin, as he waits, observes a kind of diabolic dance (really a parade or procession) which is preceded by shouts, "frequent bursts of music from many instruments of discord," and "wild and confused laughter." The music becomes a "tuneless bray" of "fearful wind-instruments" which adds to the turmoil and confusion in the street where Robin

stands waiting with citizens of the town.^-3 Spectators are illuminated by the glaring red light of torches, and in these hellish surroundings Robin catches a glimpse of a strange parade. A procession of wild figures comes into view. Seeing his tarred and feathered uncle, Major Molineux, as the chief spectacle of the procession, Robin joins in the mad, hys- terical laughter about him. His shout "was the loudest there" when he joins in the spirit of the wild scene. The procession's leader, a devilish figure with a two-colored countenance, an "infernal visage," resumes the forward march. "On they went, like fiends that throng in mockery around some

•L1-Ibid. , III, 636. I2Upham, p. 535. 13Works, III, 637, 29 dead potentate, mighty no more, but majestic still in his agony. On they went, in counterfeited pomp, in senseless uproar, in frenzied merriment, trampling all on an old man's heart. Robin is swept up by emotional- strain into a temporary alliance with the wild, senseless surrender to evil which engulfs his fellow men. Although tempted previously the same evening by evil (the desire to strike rude citizens and. the urge to succumb to a prostitute's charms), Robin:surrenders to an evil impulse "only in a period of community frenzy and demonic activity. The moment of temptation and surrender passes, leaving Robin pale and shaken by hi^ experience, yet nevertheless wiser for it. He desires to go home--to the place where only love and innocence were known to him but, as a street companion tells him, he cannot return, "not to-night at least . . . ." Robin's experience with evil has shown him to be a "shrewd youth" and with his new awareness he "may rise in the world without the help of 1 5 his kinsman, Major Molineux." Even in his writings which do not deal primarily with witchcraft, Hawthorne often equates dance with Devil-worship or with the forces of evil.^ Thus, in The Blithedale Ro- mance, the community's members stage a masquerade party in which music is provided by an individual disguised as the Devil. The "Devil" quips that his music lures those who are

l4Ibid., p. 640. I5Ibid, p. 641. l6Yates, p. 66. 30 1 7 "always ready to dance to the Devil's tune.I,J_/ In their forest setting the dancers take on imaginary characteristics of the seventeenth century period. Hollingsworth looks like "a Puritan magistrate holding inquest of life and death in a case of witchcraft," Zenobia becomes "the sorceress herself, not aged, wrinkled and decrepit, but fair enough to tempt Satan with a force reciprocal to his own," and Priscilla seems to be "the pale victim, whose body and soul had .been 1 8 wasted by . . . spells."™ A dance comprises a portion of The Marble Faun, too. Miriam and Donatello initiate a frenzied, paganistic, impromptu celebration of life in a dance which, gay as it appears on the surface, conceals a deeper "doom and sorrow. The model, the Devil-figure of The Marble Faun, interrupts the festivities by suddenly appearing before Miriam, dancing wildly.20 in Hawthorne's writings dance scenes display the discord, frenzy, unnatural mirth, and uncontrolled emotion which are all indications of the dark recesses of men's souls where the Devil reigns and demands worshipThe brotherhood of evil is recognized in communal activities like dance or the Black Sabbath in Hawthorne's works. 'Dance is thus associated with Devil-worship both in the context of the Witches' Sabbath and by itself: 17Works, V, 559. ISlbid., p. 562..

19Ibid., VI, 110. 20Ibid. 31

-An unholy baptismal ceremony is another element of witchcraft common in seventeenth century witchcraft theology and associated, with the Black Sabbath.Deodat Lawson, a Salem minister, recounts a diabolic baptism in which the Devil,

2^Kittredge, p. 243. "'2Uphani, p. 436. 23Works, II, 102. 24Ibid . , p. 104. 32 'In witch tradition both in the Old and New World, the Devil's mock-religious ceremonies always employed blood as the liquid substitute for communion wine or holy water„25 The possibility that blood or liquid flame is to be used in Brown's baptism adds a note of horror and suspense to Hawthorne's story. In his burlesque of true religion, Brown's Devil imitates the Christian ceremony of baptism by dipping his hand into the unholy fluid as he "prepared to lay the mark of baptism upon their foreheads, that they might be

partakers of the Eiystery of sin . . . in a reversal of the Christian ceremony, Brown and his wife will "partake of the mystery of sin" rather than the mystery of salvation. Brown calls upon Faith to resist the awful ceremony, and with his words the society of witches disappears. Had Brown sub- mitted to a baptism by "the shape of evil" he would have delivered his soul entirely to evil. As it is, his faith in others is so shaken by the Devil that he surrenders to the sins of doubt and lack of faith thus giving himself informally to Satan. To renounce faith in God and one's fellow man is to submit to the Devil. The baptism of a character by the Power of Evil is an element of "The Hollow of the Three Hills," also. In this story Hawthorne does not use the full paraphernalia of the Witches' Sabbath--the Devil does not personally attend the

"^Robbins, p. 415. ]_QZ+, 33 rites, and no community of sinners observes the ceremony. In the story a young woman seeks supernatural aid from a witch who conducts her craft in a hollow basin formed at the foot of three hills. A pool of water stands in the middle of the hollow creating a scenic backdrop similar to that used by "the Power of Evil and his plighted subjects" where, "at midnight, ... they were said to stand round the mantling pool, disturbing its putrid waters in the preformance of an impious baptismal rite."27

The young woman desires knowledge of her parents, her husband, and her child, all of whom she sinned against by neglecting her natural duties in a pursuit of unnatural and selfish desires. She has violated the roles of child, wife, and parent by having "defiled a holy love with a profane Love,"28 according to William Stein. Her visit to the old hag in the hollow is symbolic of a final surrender to evil. She desperately wishes to know what has happened to those whom she deserted. The young woman is willing to bargain with her soul for a vision which will ease her remorse and guilt.

Told to kneel at the old woman's feet, and to place her head on the witch's knees, the young woman allows her cloak to dip into the pool. The wetting of her garment is a

27Ibid., I, 228-229. 28wiLliacn Bysshe Stein, Hawthorne's Faust, A Study of the Devil Archetype (Gainesville, Florida, 19^3), P« 6. 34 symbolic baptism.jn the act of seeking out the witch for forbidden knowledge, she is giving her soul to the Devil's representative. The young woman is rewarded with three visions through the witch's spells. Each vision reveals a distinct result of sin~-grief (for her parents), madness (for her deserted husband), and death (for the abandoned child as well as herself.) The three hills, the three irreparable wrongs committed by the young sinner, and the three visions are all counter symbols of the Trinity which is renounced by those making a pact with evil. Death (and presumably damnation) are the results of this unholy baptism, for with the last vision the Devil claims his due and the witch, having accomplished her part in the ceremony, remarks with pleasure, "Here has been a sweet hour's sport!" The Witches' Sabbath was believed to be the Devil's unholy version of Christian communion,3-*- One minister of early New England described the Sabbath as an occasion when witches were known "to hold and administer diabolical sacra- ments; 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 . . , ."32 Hawthorne follows the traditional

29Ibid., p. 56. ^Clinton S. Burhams, Jr., "Hawthorne's Mind and Art in 'The Hollow of the Three Hills,'" Journal of English and German Philology, LX (April, 1961)7^51". ' 32 S^Kittredge, p. 243. Upham, p. 533. 35 description of the Black Sabbath in "Young Goodman Brown." All the elements of a church service are imitated by the participants of the DevilTs worship service, including music, attendance by believers, and an address by a "minister" (who is the Devil). At the commencement of the service a hymn is sung to a familiar tune, but as Brown listens the verse is "lengthened by a chorus, not of human voices, but of all the sounds of the benighted wilderness pealing in awful harmony together." The words of the hymn are "those to be trembled at in the very rehearsing" for the melody is "joined to words which expressed all that our nature can conceive of sin, and darkly hinted at far more." The congregation is composed not only of "grave, reputable, and pious people" of New England, but also of "men of dissolute lives and woman of spotted fame . . . „«33 The community of Fiend-worshippers, in dark imitation of the righteous, take part in the Sabbath activities with decorum and enthusiasm, responding appropriately to the Minister-DevilT s address with a united "cry of despair and triumph. Converts were traditionally inducted by the Devil and his society of evil at Witches' Sabbaths.In "Young Goodman Brown," Brown and his wife, Faith, are the "proselytes beneath the canopy of fire" who are to be received into an unholy fellowship with the Devil and his congregation. Satan

33Works, II, 101-102 34Ibid., p, 101. 3~*Kittredge, p. 243. 36 traditionally makes his followers "fair (though false)"3^ promises of "riches arid pleasures as long as they live and happiness in the world to come."37 Hawthorne's Devil makes less prosaic bribes. He promises the proselytes another re- ward for their transfer of allegiance from God. He guarantees them supernatural gifts--the ability to know one's fellow sinners, to recognize the guilt which all share, and to under- stand the ability of the human soul to supply "more evil impulses than human power—than Q:he Devil's powerj at its upmost—can make manifest in deeds."3® Although Brown does not finish the ceremony, the. Devil's promise is fulfilled. After his Black Sabbath experience, Brown believes he can

"penetrate, in every bosom, the mystery of sin."39 Jt was believed that witches used broomsticks to trans- port themselves to and from Witches' Sabbaths J*® The flight of witches on broomsticks was a traditional belief which Hawthorne introduces in witch tales and historical sketches. In "Main Street," for example, Hawthorne suggests that John and Elizabeth Proctor must have shared a broomstick when attending "a witch communion, far into the depths of the chill, dark forest , , . . Away they went; and the laughter of their decayed, cackling voices has been heard at midnight, aloft in the air.Mistress Hibbins, the witch of The

36Ibid. 37Upham, p. 535. 38Works, II, 10**. 39Ibid. ^°Kittredge, p. 243. ^Works, III, 468. 37 Scarlet Letter, is also an attendant of Black Sabbaths. Hawthorne describes her as she appears after a late-night escapade, "with some twigs of the forest clinging to her skirts, and looking sourer than ever, as having hardly got • } f- o a wink of sleep after her night ride." *Phe traditional broomstick element of witchcraft (and the traditional theory of the practice of infanticide by those dealing in witchcraft) is a part of "Young Goodman Brown." Goody Gloyse complains to the Devil that her broomstick has been stolen, making it necessary for her to walk to the Sabbath site. As she confides in her master, she tells him of her preparations for the Sabbath by listing her recipe for a magic ointment composed of herbs and "the fat of the new-born babe."^3 Hawthorne sets the scene of Brown's later disillusioning experiences quite effectively with this combination of the ludicrous (the stolen broomstick) and the grotesque (the dead baby). Broomsticks, magic ointments or preparations, and cackling old hags are ancient aspects of witch tradition.^ Witch beliefs in the New World deviated from Old World beliefs by adding original elements to the old paraphernalia of witchcraft. Indians as Devil-worshippers and the folk- tale of the Black Man in the forest are two such original

Zf2Works, V, 18k. k3lb±d., II, 94. ^Kittredge, p. 2k3. 38 elements. New Englanders as well as other seventeenth century Christians considered pagans to be followers of the Fiend, and the Indian population was believed to be the core of Satanism in the New World.^ Cotton Mather wrote in his introduction to Memorable Providences about the "Wigwams of the. Indians . . . j^wherej the pagan Powaws J^sicTj often raise their masters |~the devilsjl in the shapes of Bears and Snakes and Fires ... Hawthorne often introduces the Indian element into his witch tales and novels for atmospheric qualities and to add historical authenticity. In "Young Goodman Brown," Brown thinks that he has overheard a conversation between his minister and Deacon Gookin. The Deacon comments that not only Puritans are joining the Devil's forces, but also "several of the Indian powwows, who, after their fashion, know as much deviltry as the best of us. Among the congregation at the Witches' Sabbath, Brown observes "scattered also among their palefaced enemies ... the Indian priests, or powwows, who had often scared their native forest with more hideous incantations than any known to English witchcraft."^® In the demonic procession scene of "My Kinsman, Major Molineux," Hawthorne mentions "wild figures in the Indian dress" who follow the devilish figure

^Kittredge, p. 363. ^Burr, p. 99. 47Works, II, 97. 48Ibid., p. 101. 39 on horseback leading the march.^ In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne suggests that Roger Chillingworth, "Satan's emissary," had learned new medical skills from the Indians and had joined, "in the incantations of the savage priests, who were universally acknowledged to be powerful enchanters, often performing seemingly miraculous cures by their skill in the black art."5®

Along with the Indians, seventeenth century New England folklore contributed the Black Man in the forest with his pen, ink, and book to witchcraft tradition. The Black Man became the Devil-type in American witchcraft doctrine. The pen, ink, and book were all necessary items for signing a compact with the Devil--an idea which was quite ancient.

The description of the Devil as the Black Mans however, was a New World invention, created during the Salem witch examinations by an accused witch. The "afflicted children" adopted the fiction of the Black Man, describing him as a gentleman from Boston, dressed all in black, who offered luxuries and pleasure to all who would write their names in his book.52 He customarily carried with him an iron pen and an inkstand of blood along with his massive book in the hopes that someone would be persuaded to give up his soul in exchange for worldly pleasure. The Black Man (or the Devil)

49Ibid., ill, 468. 50Ibid., V, 156. ^Robbins, pp. 370-373. 52Hansen, p. 63. i+o made frequent appearances to the "afflicted children" of Salem Village. Hawthorne refers to this crude concept of the Devil in The Scarlet Letter, and then he identifies it as a "common superstition of the period."^3

Pearl renders Hawthorne's version of the Puritan folk tale.as she tells her mother of the evil figure who "haunts this forest and carries a book with him—-a big, heavy book, with iron clasps; and ... this ugly Black Man offers his book and an iron pen to everybody that meets him here among the trees, and they are to write their names with their own blood." Furthermore the Black Man "sets his mark on their Ch bosoms" to seal the bargain. Hawthorne added the idea of writing with one's own blood when contracting with the Devil quite independently of the New England witch-tradition. The traditional Black Man was never niggardly with his inkwell of blood--he was too anxious to get signatures, ikawthorne's version emphasizes the commitment one makes in contracting with the Devil. To seal a bargain with one's, own blood is to seal it eternally and unalterably^ Hawthorne modifies a traditional witch belief when ha introduces the idea of an artificial mark (like the scarlet letter) as a sign of a sealed bargain with Satan. Tra- ditionally, the Devil marked his followers with a natural mark Qa. blemish somewhere on the body) known as a "witch's

53Works, V, 222. 54Ibid. 41 55 mark" or "Devil's teat." In The Scarlet Letter, the Devil's mark is an artificial rather than natural symbol of sin which (according to the rumors of Hester's neighbors) marks those who have sold themselves to the Devil. Dimmesdale conceals his "Devil's mark" while Hester's is quite conspicuous. In both cases, however, the mark is on the bosom so that the painful emblem of sin continually sears the heart and reminds the sinners of what they have lost by making an alliance with evil. Hester wears a flaming mark on her bosom in the form of the scarlet letter. When Pearl insistently questions her mother about the Black Man in the forest Hester admits that, "Once in my life I met the Black Man! . . . This scarlet 56 letter is his mark." Although speaking in terms of witchcraft doctrine, Hester recognizes the Black Man folklore as "superstition" which appeals to chiluren and deranged old women like Mistress Hibbins. A more subtle temptation than those offered by the Black Man has resulted in Hester's scarlet letter. Perhaps when she refers to her one encounter with the Devil, the tempter, she is thinking of Arthur Dimmesdale in the black garb of the minister with whom she formed an emotional, physical, and immoral compact resulting in the mark of sin--the scarlet letter. ^Hansen, pp. 77, 85. 56Works, V, 222. 42 Arthur Dimmesdale, too, acknowledges that he has been tempted and is tempted again to yield to evil. He wonders whether, perhaps unconsciously, he has transferred his allegiance from God to the Devil. When tempted to run away with Hester, he finds himself beset with wicked impulses which he resists only with difficulty. Horrified at his impious and improper thoughts, Dimmesdale asks himself, "Am I mad, or am I given over utterly to the fiend? Did I make a contract with him in the forest, and sign it with my blood? And does he now summon me to its fulfillment, by suggesting the per- formance of every wickedness which his most foul imagination can conceive?""^ Mistress Hibbins interprets the minister's perplexity and. torment in witch tradition. She assures him that he has, indeed, worshipped a "potentate," not during the 58 daylight hours, but "at midnight, in the forest." Hawthorne rejects for the reader the contract-with-the-Devil theory which Dimmesdale ponders. Dimmesdale has not participated in a Witches1 Sabbath, or Devil compact. Rather, he has "yielded with deliberate choice, as he had never done before, to what he knew was deadly sin."^^ Yielding tfo a sinful impulse, even for a moment, is a kind of instantaneous compact with the Eower of Evil. Robin in ""My Kinsman, Major Molineux" yields for a moment and unites in spirit with a demonic community. Young Goodman

o7 58 Ibid., p. 222. Xbid., pp. 263-264. 59Ibid., pp. 264-265. 43 Brown, in promising to meet the Devil in the forest, has entered a type of pact with the Fiend (he says himself that he has "kept covenant" by showing up.)60 Furthermore, he voluntarily joins che witch congregation"in the forest. In making an inforaial corapact with evil and in joining (however briefly) a community of willing sinners, Robin, Young Goodman Brown, and Dimmesdale each undergo a feeling of brotherhood. Robin sees his disgraced kinsman and is tortured by the sight, yet he feels the "contagion" of the crowd and joins in its laughter.^ Young Goodman Brown stands before the Devil- worshippers and experiences "a loathful brotherhood by the sympathy of all that was wicked in his heart.Dimmesdale, after yielding to the temptation to run away from his guilt, is beset by "scorn, bitterness, unprovoked malignity, and gratuitous desire of ill," Sin educates him. to his "fellowship with wicked mortals and the world of perverted spirits."^3 Hester, too, because of her sin feels a kinship with evil in. others. "Sometimes the red infamy upon her breast would give a sympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable minister or magistrate, the model of piety and justice ... ."64

The Devil not only had great powers of temptation which he employed in compacts to gain men's souls, but he also was accredited with the ability to make miraculous transformations.

60Ibid., p. 265. 6lIbid., II, 91. 62Ibid., p. 102. 63Ibid., V, 265. 6**Ibid. kk The Devil could, for example, give animals supernatural abilities.^ in "The May-Pole of Merry Mount" Endicott orders the destruction of a dancing because its un- m natural behavior is probably an indication of witchcraft.^ With the power to change the shapes of things the Devil could create "familiar spirits" (or simply "familiars"). "Familiars" were evil spirits in the forms of animals who served their masters, witches or wizards, in the Devil's interests.^ The snake-like walking stick of Young Goodman. Brown's Devil might be considered a familiar spirit. The Devil's, staff "bore the likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent."^® The serpentine stick appears to share the emotions of its owner; when the Devil laughs with "a fit of irrepress- ible mirth" the walking stick "actually seemed to wriggle in sympathy.it serves the Devil well, aiding him in making a remarkably short trip fr-om Boston to the forest near Salem Village (at a rate of at least fifteen or twenty miles in, as the Devil tells Brown, fifteen minutes.)'7® When given to Goody Cloyse to speed her journey to the Witches' Sabbath,

^Kittredge, p. 174. ^^Works, I, 81. ^Robbins, pp„ 190-191. ^%7orks, II, 91. 69ibid., p. 231» ^David Levin, "Shadows of Doubt: Specter Evidence in Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown,'" American Literature, XXXIV (November, 1962), 347, . " ! 45 the stick "perhaps . , - assumed life, being one of the rods which its owner had formerly lent to the Egyptian magi." At any rate it disappears to do the Devil's bidding and Goody Cloyse disappears with it.^1 Nore significant than the Devil's ability to transform animals by endowing them with supernatural spiritual life was the Devil's ability (firmly believed in the seventeenth century) to release the souls of his followers from their bodies to afflict pious people.72 The disembodied souls or spirits were known as "specters" or "shapes." During the Salem witchcraft trials, testimony about specters and their diabolic activities composed a great deal of evidence against accused witches. Specters often appeared to invisibly torment the "afflicted children."7^ Some seventeenth century New England theologians maintained (as did Increase and Cotton Mather) that the Devil could impersonate innocent people against their will and without their knowledgeOthers, like Deodat Lawson, maintained that it was the Devil's habit with his witches to use "their bodies and minds, shapes and representations, to affright and afflict others" with the witches' full consent and cooperation.75 The problem was whether specters and spectral evidence were merely the Devil's tools for- incriminating the innocent, or whether (if

71Works, II, 95. 72Robbins, p. 190.

7 74 ^Hansen, pp. 140-144. k Levin, p. 364 75Upham, p. 79. 46 only the guilty could become specters) spectral evidence was

*7 c true proof of the practice of witchcraft by individuals. Spectral evidence and shapes are elements of the witchcraft tradition which Hawthorne uses. He was aware of the importance of spectral evidence in the Salem witch trials from his reading of New England histories, and he incorpo- rates specters into his writings about the witchcraft period. ^-n 'Jhe Scarlet Letter, for example, Dimmesdale is troubled by a kind of spectral evidence; in this case evidence given by shapes against the impurity of his own soul. Unlike the traditional spectral appearances, created at the Devil's instigation, Dimmesdale himself creates the shapes which haunt him. Through self-torture, fasting, denial of sleep, and relentless introspection he attempts to do penance for his guilt and sin. Visions appear to him in his weakened state, and the shapes he sees condemn him relentlessly. He sees "a herd of diabolic shapes, that grinned and mocked;" then "a group of shining angels;" a group of deceased friends; his father "with a saint-like frown;" his mother, "turning her face away;" and, finally, Hester Pyrnne and Pearl who also reproach him as they appear. All of these "spectral thoughts" haunt the minister, but he never accepts them as realities; "none of these visions ever quite deluded him."^7

76Levin, p. 346. 77Works, V, 147. 47 The spectral appearances which molest Dimmesdale are presented by Hawthorne as evidence of the minister's unhappy mental state. In "Alice Doane's Appeal" spectx^al evidence is not a psychological manifestation of guilt, but rather physical evidence of sin and its power to transform. Alice is accused of committing a sin of which she is innocent. She and her brother, Leonard, enlist the services of a wizard in order to prove her innocence. In the Salem cemetery the wizard raises the spirits of the damned (and the DevilTs fiends) to act as witnesses and jurists during Alice's "trial." A multitude of specters arise, both young and old, humble and great. While some are "souls accursed," others are evil spirits "counterfeiting the likeness of' departed saints."'7® The specters who have temporarily inhabited the bodies of "departed saints" transform the physical appearances of those whose aspects they employ. The imposters give the countenances of pious men contorted aspects of "intolerable pain or hellish passion, and now jand thenj. . . an unearthly and derisive merriment."79 Hoping to swell the Devil's ranks with another victim, the spectral multitude of "sinful souls and false specters of good men" listens to Alice's appeal for vindication. The specter of Alice's reputed partner in sin, Walter Brome,

78Ibid., XII, 290. 79Ibid. 48 testifies to her innocence and she triumphs over the Devil and his confederates.. Spectral evidence is a matter of plot and theme in another of Hawthorne's stories, "Young Goodman Brown." Brown finds himself inundated with evidence (mostly of a spectral nature) that evil is universal. Like inhabitants of Salem in 1692, Brown finds his faith in his fellow man severely shaken by the implications of spectral evidence. He judges mankind on the basis of a strange, dream-like forest experience. In the story Brown leaves Salem Village early one evening on a journey into the forest. Soon he is joined by a gentleman who, as the story progresses, turns out to be the Devil himself. The Devil's purpose in meeting Brown and conducting him through the forest is to persuade Brown to become a witch--a feat which requires diplomacy, verbal skill, and shock tactics,®*- The Devil's verbal facility lures Brown into the depths of the forest, and the Fiend has some success in "reasoning as we go" in order to convince Brown not to turn back. When, however, Brown calls upon his reserve strength against the power of temptation (his trust in his wife, Faith), the Devil uses the shock of spectral evidence to accomplish his purpose. The first "shape" or "specter" to appear is Goody Cloyse, She greets the Devil with appellations of "old friend" and

^Ibid., p. 292. ^Levin, p. 348, 49 "your worship" while Brown listens to their conversation. Goody Cloyse (or her spectral shape) comments on the Devil's successful physical imitation of "Goodman Brown, the grandfather of the silly fellow that now is."8^ The Devil has, in fact, become the "very- image" of Brown1 s ancestor. If the Devil can impersonate the dead, he can just as easily allow the living to be impersonated, but Brown does not reason that the old woman who looks like Goody Cloyse may be as false a specter as the Devil is in looking like the former Goodman Brown.83 Although he had previously acknowledged her a "very pious and exemplary dame," Brown rejects a lifetime evaluation of Goody Cloyse1s character and judges her to be a witch. To the Devil he remarks that she is a "wretched old woman" who has chosen "to go to the devil when

I thought she was going to heaven ... wn84

Although his faith in Cloyse is gone, Brown refuses to accompany the Devil any longer and the Devil departs. Brown, resolves to go no further, lest he do something which ha would be ashamed to admit before those two keepers of his faith and conscience, his minister and Deacon Gookin. Immedi ately after he thinks of those two gentlemen, Brown hears their spectral voices-as they ride by him, hidden from view. Despite the fact that they pass within a few feet, "neither the travelers nor their steeds are visible." And although

82Works, XI, 94. "Levin, d. 3kS. 50 "their figures brushed the small boughs by the wayside,rv Brown cannot discern "so much as a shadow" where the 85 travelers are passing. Even though the riders are invisible, Brown is convinced that the voices he hears discussing the night1s Witches' Sabbath belong to the Salem minister and Deacon Gookin. Once again spectral evidence shakes his faith in his fellow men and cr-eates such a deep doubt that Brown, "overburdened with the heavy sickness of his heart," is quite ready to doubt "whether there was a heaven above him."8** Brown recovers himself sufficiently to declare, "With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against 87 the devil." No sooner does he mention Faith's name than he receives another shock. A "black mass of cloud" passes overhead from which spectral voices seem to emanate. As Brown listens he fancies that he can recognize not only the voices of the townspeople, both "pious and ungodly," but also the voice of Faith. "There was one voice, of a young woman, uttering lamentations, yet with an uncertain sorrow, and entreating for some favor . . . and all the unseen multitude, both saints and sinners, seemed to encourage her onward."®^ With this last spectral manifestation of unfaithful- ness and hypocrisy from the ones he trusted and deemed holy 85Ibid., pp. 96-97. 86Ibid., p. 97. 87Ibid., p. 98. 88Ibid. 51 (and the appearance of a pink ribbon like Faith's), Brown rushes off to the Black Sabbath in despair, , At the Sabbath, Brown's conception of universal evil— "There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name"—is further strengthened by the observation of an impressive congregation 89 of Devil-worshippers. Brown sees many familiar faces and shapes as he waits for the baptismal ceremony to begin, He thinks that he can recognise fellow Salem Church members, and he fancies that he can make out the shapes of the dead as well. "He could have well-nigh sworn that the shape of his own dead father beaconed him to advance, looking downward from a smoke wreath, while a woman, with dim features of despair, threw out her hand to warn him back. Was it his mother?"9® His last hope is that his wife, Faith, has re- sisted what apparently no one else had the strength to resist. The last hope is shattered when Faith appears as his fellow convert to the worship of Satan. Whether or not Faith and the others really are Devil- worshippers, or whether or not their shapes or specters are taken over by impersonating fiends, Brown believes that his forest experience means that his fellow "Christians" are merely Devil-worshippers in disguise. The Devil contends that all those whom Brown and Faith have "deemed . . , holier than yourselves" are. "all in my worshipping 89Ibid., p. 99. 90Ibid., p. 102. 52 assembly.Whether they are real or not, Brown accepts the shadows, shapes, and indistinct voices of his experience , as almost conclusive proof that "Evil is the nature of mankind. He comes to fear that there is no good in mankind and gives way to sternness, sadness, and dark distrust. His loss of faith which begins with the forest experience and spectral evidence continues until his gloomy, despairing death. Other elements of witch tradition such as image-magic can be found in Hawthorne's writings. Image-magic concerns the ancient belief that a doll or* figure made by a witch to represent an enemy could be mistreated in order to induce sympathetic torments in the person which the figure repre-

sents.^ Hawthorne refers to harmless image-magic when he introduces it as a witchcraft element in his works. In "Faathertop: A Moralized Legend" image-magic is practiced by Mother Rigby, a witch. She creates a figure from a scarecrow, old rags, and a magic pipe* The figure becomes life- like as she plies her magic art and praises her own creation, "Thou art so beautiful, that, by my troth, I love thee better than any witch's puppet in the world; and I've made them of all sorts—clay, wax, straw, sticks, night fog, morning mist, sea foam, and chimney smoke."9^ Pearl in The Scarlet Letter practices another sort of image-magic. Like Mother Rigby,

9I 92 Ibid., p. 103. Ibid.t p. 10k. 93Kittredge, p. 73. 9\rorlcs, II, 263. 53 she can alter and influence her environment in supernatural ways. Hawthorne alludes to the image-magic tradition in describing Pearl's strange personality: The spell of life went forth from her ever-creative spirit, and communicated itself to a thousand objects, as a torch kindles a flame wherever it may be applied. The unlikeliest materials--a stick, a bunch of rags, a flower--were the puppets of Pearl's witchcraft, and., without undergoing any outward change, became spirit- ually adapted to whatever drama occupied the stage of her inner worid.95 Both Mother Rigby and Pearl are creative in their use of image-magic. Mother Rigby creates a fantastic "gentleman" whose reality is really a figment of the imagination. Pearl's "witchcraft" is also imaginative. Hawthorne alters tradition by allowing image-magic to be concerned with the magic of mental creativity and imagination rather than the physical destruction of the seventeenth century witch doctrine. Pearl is described by Hawthorne (through his characters) in the traditional terms of the witch-devil doctrine. Mr. Wilson wonders if the little girl is "one of those naughty elfs or fairies" of old English tales, and he roundly declares that "the little baggage hath witchcraft in her ... she needs no old woman's broomstick to fly withall"^ SJsing the witch tradition Hawthorne introduces the old theory that the Devil could father half-human, half-demonic children to add a chilling note to his portrayal of Pearl, the unnaturaL

95I.bid., V, 120. 96Ibid., p. 136. 5k product and emblem of sin.^ Hester observes her daughter's peculiarities and remembers with "a smile and a shudder" the gossip of her neighbors over the possibility that Pearl "was a demon offspring."^ Mistress Hibbins assures the child that she is of the "lineage of the Prince of the Air" and Pearl revels in the idea.99 Pearl is a firm believer in the witch tradition; she is interested in the Black Man in the forest, Witches* Sabbaths, Devil's compacts and, like Cotton Mather, she believes that the Devil can raise storms to afflict his enemies.*-®® Hawthorne uses the traditional aspects of black witchcraft for a variety of purposes. »Historical authenticity, for example, is added to his works which have their settings in the Puritan era by the inclusion of common Puritan witch and Devil superstitions regarding specters, broomsticks, the Black Man in the forest, and so forth. Such superstition and folk myth also provide the atmosphere of horror and suspense which Hawthorne tries to achieve in witch tales like "Alice Doane's Appeal," and "The Hollow of the Three Hills." While he uses the witchcraft-devil doctrine of the seventeenth century for literary effects and for plot elements, Hawthorne always develops deeper concepts in his writings than are con- tained in crude witch tradition. Thus from the elements of

9^Ibid., p. 118. ^^Ibid., p. 124. "ibid., p. 288. I00Ibid. , p. 291. 55 witchcraft--BLack Sabbaths, Devil's compacts, demonic dances, and unholy baptisms--Hawthorne derives material which deals with the nature of temptation, the consequences of sin, the community of evil, and the result of doubt or lack of faith in others. CHAPTER III

HAWTHORNE'S CHARACTERIZATION OF THE DEVIL AND DEMONICS

The Devil (or a figure representing the Devil) is a character in a number of Hawthorne's stories. Hawthorne's interest in early New England history and folklore influenced his use of the Puritan conception of the Devil. In developing the Puritan Devil in his witch tales and The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne was attempting to present accurately his ancestors' intense belief in the reality of Satan, thereby clarifying the character and beliefs of the early New Englanders. In all of his works which mention the Archfiend, even those which do not deal primarily with the Puritan era, Hawthorne

k> uses the character of Satan to represent evil, sin, and temptation.1 Many of his characters, while not really devils, possess demonic qualities, thus revealing the partially Sa- tanic nature of all mankind. Hawthorne's familiarity with tne Puritan mind allowed him to combine three conceptions of the Devil--the Miltonic concept of Satan as a magnificent fallen angel, the Calvinistic concept of the Devil as a "depraved, vicious, malignant, and mischievous" enemy of God and man,1 and the New England folklore

^John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated by John Allen, I (Philadelphia, 1936), 192.

56 57 concept of the Black Man. As Marion Starkey says, the Black Man was commonly regarded as a sort of "poltergeist ... or ^ comic devil of the early miracle plays . . . ubiquitious, and as such damnably dangerous and eternally a nuisance, but as little dignified as the worm that eats the garden.All three Puritan conceptions of the Devil are interrelated and interdependent. Hawthorne accepted or rejected elements of the three on the basis of whether or not they were suitable for the development of the psychological and moral significance of the satanic figure in each work. Both the Miltonic and Galvinistic treatments of Satan describe him as a fallen angel. In !!Young Goodman Brown," Hawthorne follows Puritan tradition as he mentions the "once angelic nature" of Brown's Devil.^ Milton wrote about Satan more sympathetically than Calvin, and Hawthorne's treatment of the Devil in "Young Goodman Brown" bears some similarity to Milton's concept of Satan in Paradise Lost. In Milton's epic poem, Satan observes the activities of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and pities the pair as he thinks of the unhappiness in store for mankind.^ The Devil in "Young Goodman Brown," appearing with the dark majesty and dignity of Milton's Satan, addresses his human followers "in a deep

^Starkey, pp. 241-242. ^Works, III, 104. ^John Milton, The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton, edited by George Bush (Boston, 1965), pp. 283-284. ~ 58 and solemn tone, almost sad with its despairing awfulness, as if he . . . could yet mourn for our miserable race."^ Another similarity between Milton's Paradise Lost and Hawthorne's treatment of the satanic can be found in the graveyard scene of "Alice Doane's Appeal." Like the fallen angels of Paradise Lost, the "sinful souls and false spectres of good men" called to witness Alice's "trial," mourn the loss of Heaven. Hawthorne's damned spirits "groaned horribly and gnashed their teeth, as they looked upward to the calm loveliness of the midnight sky, and beheld those homes of bliss where they might never dwell."0

The Devil in "Young Goodman Brown" possesses characteristics of both the Miltonic and Calvinistic Devil. The. powerful persuasiveness of his personality, his strength of will, and his leadership of a hellish group of followers are Miltonic. But like Calvin's Satan, Brown's Devil "opposes Divine truth with lies; obscures the light with shades of darkness; and involves the minds of men in errors," all for the purpose of "plunging mankind with himself into eternal destruction."7 In Hawthorne's story, Young Goodman Brown seems to have a pre- disposition to sin and doubt which paves the way for the Devil's endeavors to achieve Brown's spiritual corruption. Brown is

5Works, II, 10k. 6Ibid., XII, 291. ^Calvin, p. 192. 59 already disposed to believe that the nature of mankind is evil, for he accepts unsupported statements as fact, half- truths .in the place of the complete truth, and spectral evidence for substantial proof. Brown's Devil, in the best Puritan tradition, has a powerful gift for distorting truth. "When Brown begins his journey into the forest near Salem, he feels some trepi- dation about the perils of his undertaking. The Devil appears, and Brown tries to revoke his promise to accompany his companion by protesting that his ancestors never made such a journey. The Devil's smooth rejoinder that both Brown's father and grandfather were "my good friends" is accepted by the young man with hardly a murmur of dissent. The Devil suggests that the persecution of the Quakers and Indians by earlier Browns is evidence of their total corruption, and Brown acquiesces to such partial and unproven "fact" with surprising ease, saying mildly, "If it be as thou sayest ... I marvel they never spoke of these matters . , . When Brown contends that "we are a people of prayer, and good works to boot, and abide no such wickedness," the Devil introduces another amazing bit of "evidence" to prove that, in David Levin's words, even "the best men are wholly evil."-1-0 Brown is

8Works, II, 92. 9Ibid. "'"•^Levin, p. 3*4-8. 60 informed that the most prominent citizens of New England— deacons, selectmen, jurists, the governor and even (by inference) Brown's own minister—are the Devil's followers. This statement amazes Brown somewhat, bat he recovers quickly with the rationalization that he is too simple to comprehend the complex activities of governors, councils, and so forth. The young man is stunned by the Devil's implication of Devil worsh5.p on the part of the minister. The hint that the village minister is totally evil also "nettles" Brown, bat mostly because the devil laughs at his naivete rather than because Brown resents an insult to his spiritual leader. ^Deceit is one of the Devil's tools' in "Young Goodman

Brown" as he provides Brown with spectral voices,thalf-truths, and rhetoric which Brown accepts. After calling the members of the human race his "children," the Devil claims that the nature of man is totally and irredeemably evil. Speaking mournfully, the Devil urges his followers to accept the sad "truth" of human existence—happiness is found in sinning, the human heart supplies more evil impulses than the Devil can effect, and mankind reaches its only true communion in the brotherhood of evil.^ Brown's Devil, however, is speaking as the Father of Lies. In saying that evil is the nature, destiny, and happiness of mankind, he lies while speaking a partial, truth. "For virtue is not, to Hawthorne," as Curtis

11-Works, IX, 92. 12Ibid., p. 10*+. 61 Dah.1 says, "merely a dream, and happiness is not (as 'The Maypole of Merry Mount' explicitly urges) to be found only in evil. Yet, though we are not wholly the children of Satan, it is the destiny of mankind to sin, and that which distin- guishes man from the angels and makes him. what he is, is the admixture of evil in his nature.Since the Devil in "Young Goodman Brown" is a corrupted spirit, he cannot voice any doctrine but one of doubt, sin, and lack of faith. The Devil declares that he has "undeceived" the human race, but in truth he has only led his followers (as he has Brown) into negation of the good in man by total acceptance and appro- bation of the evil.

In "Earth's Holocaust" another type of Devil makes an appearance and philosophizes on the nature of man.. This Devil, darkly conspicuous among a group of human sinners, acts as an unsavory oracle of truth instead of a perpetrator of lies. In the story, the citizens of the world attempt to destroy all objects of vice, temptation, and human error in a gigantic bonfire. While watching the blaze, a few grieving sinners are joined by a malicious and mischievous Devil with fiery eyes and a dark complexion. Rather than being saddened by man's imperfect nature like Brown's Devil, this Fiend regards the foolish attempt to create a world without evil as quite entertaining. He remarks that the whole concept of destroying evil

•^Curtis Dahl, "The Devil Is A Wise One," Ci.th.ara, VI (1967), 52, 62 is a joke, for he has "stood by this livelong night and laughed in my sleeve at the whole business." Joyously he proclaims that after the holocaust, "it will be the old world yet."^ Voicing Hawthorne's attitude toward attempts to reform human nature, the Devil declares, There's one thing that these wiseacres have forgotten to throw into the fire, and without which all the rest of the conflagration is just nothing at all; .... What but the human heart itself? ... and, unless they hit upon some method of purifying that foul cavern, forth from it will reissue all the shapes of wrong and misery--which they have taken such a vast deal of trouble to consume to ashes 11-5 This Devil's common sense approach to evil, his undignified and colloquial language, his rough humor and fierce appearance are all elements of the New England folklore tradition of Satan. His conception of sin and human nature (while trans- muted and redeveloped by Hawthorne) is quite Calvinistic. The Devil tradition in the form of the Puritan Black Man also has its place in Hawthorne's fiction. The Black Man is mentioned by Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter as a sort of regional myth which frightened or entertained children like Pearl and fascinated slightly demented old ladies like Mistress Hibbins. Since the Puritans of the seventeenth century New England commonly referred to Satan as "the Black Man," Hester and Dimmesdale often employ the term, too, but in a much more serious context than the folk tradition which Pearl and Mistress

l4Works, II, 455. 15 Ibid. 63 Hibbins enjoy. For example, after meeting Hester in the forest and planning to leave New England, Dimmesdale goes through a series of moral crises. He considers natural and supernatural explanations fox- the sudden desire to behave wickedly. He first considers a natural reason for his ir- rational impulses and asks himself, "Am I mad?" Then he considers the supernatural, "Am I given over utterly to the fiend? Did I make a contract with him in the forest? - - . ,"16 Of course he did not, but the myth of the Black Man provides the terminology of sin and temptation for Dimmesdale in his perplexity. Similarly, Hester speaks to Chillingworth in prison shortly before she is released. His sinister language and behavior disturbs her, and she asks him, "Art thou like the Black Man that haunts the forest round about us?" Her conception of evil is also expressed in terms of Puritan folk tradition.*-7 Another Devil in the folklore tradition is the German Jew in "Ethan Brand." From the Middle Ages the figure of the demonic, dark Jew who is portrayed as being less than human or anti-human has dominated folklore.1 The Jew has long been identified with the Devil.Although Hawthorne does not refer

I6Ibid., V, 263. I7Ibid., p. 100. l®James J. Lynch, "The Devil in the Writings of Irving, Hawthorne, and Poe," New York Folklore Quarterly, VIII (Summer, 1952), 120. . 64 to the German in his story as the Devil, there are several clues to his identity. The Jew, like the Wandering Jew who denied Christ and was doomed to roam the earth eternally, is a continual traveler. He displays a diorama containing scenes of Napoleon's battles and Nelson's sea fights to village people in order to make, a living. The Jew invites Brand to look in the diorama. Brand takes one startled look and mutters, "I remember you now ... JJ- 3*s x>evil whora he finally recognizes in the assumed form of an itinerant showman. Brand thought that he had left the Devil behind him in his quest for the Unpardonable Sin, but he is confronted again by the Evil One. The Jew tells Brand, with a dark smile, "I find it to be a heavy matter in my showbox,--this Unpardonable Sin! By my faith, Captain, it has wearied my shoulders, this long day, to carry it over the mountain."2® The Devil's claim that he, too, finds the Unpardonable Sin a heavy burden meets a scornful x-eply from Brandy who considers himself the most extraordinary sinner of all. He threatens the Jew, saying "Peace ... or get thee into the furnace yonderIThe furnace is the place where Brand originally evoked the Devil and it is also the most comfortable habitat for the Fiend. Brand treats the folk Devil with appropriate contempt and lack of respect. Hawthorne uses some elements of conventional Christian doctrine in works in which the Devil or characters who resemble

L9Works, III, 491. 20Ibid. 21Ibid. 65 the Devil appear. The serpent, for example, is traditionally associated with evil in general and with Satan in particular,, In some of Hawthorne's fiction the serpent motif merely identifies the Devil or a devilish character whom Hawthorne wants the reader to associate with the Arch-fiend. In "Young Goodman Brown," the grave gentleman whom Brown meets and accompanies through the forest has a remarkable walking stick which is carved like a snake and wriggles like a living creature. Hawthorne refers to the stranger as "he of the serpent^" thus suggesting Satan in Eden and identifying the personage as the Devil. In The Blithedale Romance, "Westervelt, the novel's mesmerist-villain, is associated with the Devil by his darkly sinister appearance and his use of a "stick with a wooden head, carved in vivid imitation of that of a serpent."22 Westervelt is not the Puritan Devil, but he has traits which reveal a devilish personality. CPhe serpent is often associated with temptation, for Biblical tradition recounts the temptation of Eve by Satan in the form of a serpent in the Garden of Eden* Hawthorne, too, equates the serpent with the Tempter. In The Scarlet Letter, it is the "tempter of souls" who tantalizes Hester Prynne with the thought that she might someday be united with Dimmesdale. The very thought of her past relationship with Dimmesdale struggles "from her heart, like a serpent from its hole" to

22Ibid., V, 424. 66 tempt her anew as she strives to renounce her sins.23 Roger ChilLingworth adopts Satan's old role as tempter by laboring to lure Arthur Dimmesdale into damnation. Even before he takes up his diabolic scheme against the minister's soul, Chillingworth' s satanic natux*e is revealed by the use of snake imagery. When the physician sees his wife, Hester, after a long separation, she is wearing a scarlet letter—the stigma of adultery. His shock and fury are mirrored on his face by "a writhing horror which twisted itself across his features, like a snake gliding swiftly over them, and making one little 24 pause, with all its wreathed involutions in open sight." In another novel, The Marble Faun, Miriam's model is a Devil- figure who endeavors to tempt his victims into mortal sin. Haunting Miriam and Donatello, who hate hint with equal amotion, the model finally succeeds in accomplishing his own death and their downfall. The sin they share in murdering the model binds them together "for time and eternity, like the coil of a serpent."25 -temptation results in sin according to Christian tradition, and original sin was committed at the Devil's instigation while he lurked in the Garden in serpentine disguise* Sin and satanism are associated with snake imagery in "Egotism; or the Bosom Serpent." In the story, Roderick Elliston, like the puritan Devil, transforms himself into a serpent* Elliston has indulged 23Ibid., p. 103. 2IfIbid., p. 82. 25Ibid., VI, 205. 67 in unlicensed self-love or egotism. The sin of this misplaced pride and self-devotion is embodied in a diabolic snalce which grows inside Ell is ton's body. Unable to forget himself for a moment, Elliston nurtures the growth of his inner fiend- Soon the snalce in his bosom usurps Elliston1 s human properties until he walks with the undulating motion of a snake, his eyes glitter, and he speaks with a hiss in his voice.In another story, "Feathertop; a Moralized Legend," Mother Rigby appears to be a harmless old crone. Anger, however, arouses her diabolic nature which is displayed "like a snake's head, peeping with a hiss out of her bosom . . . ."27 Elliston and Rigby are both devoted Devil-worshippers, as their reptilian characteristics suggest.

fhe serpent in the Garden of Eden is credited with having used guile, subtlety, and falsity to fascinate Eve ana tempt

her4 The satanic-types in Hawthorne's fiction often exercise a strong serpentine fascination over their intended victims. In The House of the Seven Gables, the villainous and diabolic Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon creates a deceptive and overpowering atmosphere of benevolence "very much like a serpent, which, as a preliminary to fascination, is said to fill the air with his peculiar odor" in order to victimize the weak or innocent. Similarly, in The Marble Faun, Miriam is entranced by the model,

26Ibid., II, 30k. 27Ibid., p. 260.

28Ibid., III, 103. 68 a demonic individual who exerts a "sadly mysterious fascination" much like that which "beasts and evil natures sometimes exercise on their victims."^9 Taking his analogy of sin, the serpent, and the Devil to further lengths, Hawthorne draws a comparison between the "sting" or bite of a snake, and the infusion of sin into man's soul. Thus when Roger Chillingworth, "Satan's emissary," offers to ease the pain which Dimmesdale suffers, Dimmesdale's agony is described as the "secret sting of remorse" which has a kind of "painful efficacy" in it. Chillingworth's role as fiend and physician allows him to infuse a "deadlier venom" as he attempts to snare Dimmesdale into dying with his sins unforgiven and unatoned.^® Roderick Elliston's bosom serpent (which is egotism metamorphosed into a living creature) stings him relentlessly. Nor does Elliston suffer the pangs of un- repentant sin alone. His serpent has an affinity for all the other bosom serpents in fellow sinners. Elliston greets the brotherhood of evil in his community by recognizing and making public the inner demons of others, "thus making his own actual serpent--if serpent there actually was in his bosom—the type of each man's fatal error, or hoarded sin, or unquiet conscience, and striking his sting so unremorsefully into the

29 30 Ibid., VI, 115. lbid.t V, 201. 69 sorest spot, we may well imagine that Roderick became the pest of the city."^ Ihe Devil in Puritan tradition and folklore is character- istically described as a dark and fearsome figure. The Puritan

• I" Satan is dark because he has lost the celestial radiance of Heaven1s angels. The blackness or darkness of the traditional Devil also suggests hidden danger, gloom, and mystery. In the Black Man folk myth of Puritan New England, superstitious citizens assumed that the dark forest was the appropriate haunt of the sinister black Tempter* Hawthorne uses color symbolism when charactei-izing the Devil and those demonic characters who are imitative of the Prince of Darkness. The Devils in "Young Goodman Brown" and "Earth's Holocaust" are both dark in complexion as well as in thought, ^he darkness of the spirit inhabiting the physical shell of the body pervades not only the Devils themselves, but also the thoughts and actions of those humans they encounteri Thus, in The Blithedale Romance, Professor Westervelt looks like the prototype of Satan with black hair, eyes, clothes, serpentine staff, and a glimmering gem, a "living tip of fire" set in'a stick pin and suggestive of the flames of Hell.32 Westervelt has the dark personality of Satan, too, which pervades men's thoughts with gloom, despair, and cynicism. Coverdale finds that a brief discussion 3LIbid., II, 314. 32Ibid., V, k2k. 70 with the Professor creates "the skeptical and sneering view which, just now had filled my vision, in regard to all life's better purposes," for Westervelt's speech and attitude "smothers what it can of our spiritual aspirations, and makes the rest ridiculous." Westervelt, as a kind of modern Lucifer, squelches faith in mankind and hope for the improvement of man's nature through his "cold skepticism" and his ability to o o make evil attractive. J Westervelt1s dusky splendor resembles that of Milton's Satan, but Roger Ghillingworth is presented by Hawthorne as the counterpart of the Puritan Black Man. Pearl continually calls Ghillingworth "the old Black Man," referring not only to his somber dress but also to his dark and evil countenance

Oh which corresponds to the familiar devil legend. Hester Prynne makes an analogy between Ghillingworth and the Devil when she asks him whether the promise he has extorted from her not to reveal his identity is a Devil^s pact, a "bond that will prove the ruin of my soul."3~* As his countenance and expression become murkier, Ghillingworth's superstitious ac- quaintances suspect that the "fire in his laboratory had been brought from the lower regions, and was fed with infernal fuel; and so, as might be expected, his visage was getting sooty from the smoke.For Ghillingworth, like the traditional Satan, 33Ibid., p. *+35. 34lbid., p- 164. 3^Ibid., p. 100. 3^Ibid., pp. 155-156. 71 sin effects a discoloration of both the physical appearance and the spirit. In much of Hawthorne's writing, the Devil and sin are almost synonymous concepts., and black is the hue which Hawthorne uses to suggest deviltry, evil, and sin.- Another color which represents satanism or demonism in Hawthorne's fiction is red, the traditional color of passion. The product of HesterTs passionate and unsanctified love affair is a demonic little creature named Pearl, who is the physical counterpart of the scarlet letter. Hawthorne characterizes her as "an imp of evil, emblem and product of sin."^ She has an unearthly way of running so that her toes scarcely touch the ground, giving an illusion of flight. Even as an infant her eyes seem to hold an expression of evil, mirth, and mischief befitting a small fiend rather than a normal child. Pearl often mumbles strange words or makes "shrill, incoherent exclamations" which sound like "a witch's anathema in some unknown tongue."38 ^.11 of these peculiar characteristics of the child are the result of vivid passion and somber sin: "The mother's impassioned state had been the medium through which were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of its moral life; and, however white and clear originally, they had taken the deep stains of crimson and gold, the fiery lustre; the black shadow."39

37Ibid. , p.. 118. 38Ibid., p. 119.

39Ibid. 72 Pearl's pure nature has been corrupted because her parents succumbed to the Tempter in the form of illicit love. Another demon in Hawthorne's writing is a composite fiend of scarlet passion and dark sin. The Devil-figure in "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" displays a "fierce and varie- gated countenance," for "one side of the face blazed an intense red, while the other was black as midnight, the di- vision line being in the broad bridge of the nose; and a mouth which seemed to extend from ear to ear was black or red, in contrast to the color of the cheek." The monstrous creature seems to be composed of "two individual devils, a fiend of fire and a fiend of darkness . . . . According to Calvin, Satan continually "stirs up animosities, and kindles contentions and wars ... . Appropriately, the demonic figure in this story appears "like war personified; the red of one cheek was an emblem of fire and sword; the blackness of the other betokened the mourning that attend them.'*2 Passion thus results in destruction and death, while indulgence in black sin ends with pain and grief. Fiery passion is, according to Puritan tradition, punished by the fires of Hell. Hawthbrne often describes the torments of the damned souls of his demonic characters by using fire symbolism. The Devil marks his own by transforming their features and by allowing their kinship with him to be seen

Z+0Ibid., III, 629. ^Calvin, p. 192. 42Works, III, 637. 73 or painfully felt. Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter is a victim of passionate remorse and consuming guilt. The pain in his heart is searing, but Chillingworth (the Devil's counterpart) analyzes the minister's emotional and spiritual condition and increases the torment by "adding fuel to those

j | A 0 0 0 fiery tortures." The demonic nature of the physician is revealed by "a glare of red light out of his eyes; as if the old man's soul were on fire, and kept on smouldering duskily within his breast, until, by some casual puff of passion, it was blown into a momentary flame." Hester's letter, the "red ignominyj" burns its possessor by "scorching" her brain and "searing" her heart.*4"** The eyes, the windows to the soul, reveal the flames of Hell burning and blackening the spirits of a number of Hawthorne's devilish characters. Even Judge Pyncheon of The House of the Seven Gables, who is identified with Satan less than most of the villains in Hawthorne's novels, exhibits "a red fire kindled in his eyes" when thwarted from his "fiendish" scheme of tormenting Clifford.*4^ Ethan Brand is one of the most notable of Hawthorne's satanic types. Brand experiences a kinship between his own passionate nature (which has destroyed his soul and a young woman's), and the destructive element of fire. It was from a blazing lime-kiln that he

43 Ibid., V, 205. ^Ibid. , pp. no, 127, 205. ^5Ibid., Ill, 158. 7k originally evoked the Devil's aid for a fiendish, quest. Fire complements Brand's inhuman nature and its flickering light imparts "the wild and ghastly light which alone could have suited his expression; it was that of a fiend on the verge of plunging into his gulf of intensest torment. Brand has outgrown his native earth by the end of the story. Since fire has become his true element, he finally surrenders wholly to it and to his eternal torment by allowing his body to be destroyed by the blaze of a lime-kiln. The fires of satanic passion also create as well as destroy, but what is constructed is designed for endless torment. Hawthorne suggests that a passionate sin forms the bond between Miriam and her model in The Marble Faun. "That iron chain, . . . which, perhaps, bound the pair together by a bond equally torturing to each,--must have been forged in some such unhallowed furnace as is only kindled by evil passions and fed by evil deeas."^ The evil committed in the past which links them together cannot be escaped by either one, and after the model's death Miriam is still confined by sin, although fettered to a new partner, Donatello. In his writings in which satanism appears in one form or another, Hawthorne often introduces a figure who, while not Satan, is a representative or agent of the Devil.J Witches and wizards are the traditional agents of the Devil. Like their

46Ibid., p. 496. 47Ibid., VI, 115. 75 Master they are wholly devoted to evil pursuits* Hawthorne suggests in the portrayal and description of Satan's servants that the worship and creation of evil results in certain physical traits or deformities- As Ghillingworth maintains, MA sickness ... in the spirit, hath immediately its appropriate

ll O manifestation in the bodily frame." Demonics like Ghilling- worth and Brand are transformed by spiritual diseases into human replicas of Satan. Witches and wizards, too, betray their devotion to evil through their physical appearances. The wizard in "Alice Doane's Appeal" is a "small, gray, withered man, with a fiendish ingenuity in devising evil, and superhuman power to execute it, but senseless as an idiot to all better purposes."^ The witch in "The Hollow of the Three Hills" has a similar appearance. She is "so withered, shrunken, and decrepit, that even the space since she began to decay ex- 50 ceeded the ordinary term of human existence." Ancient and degenerate as they are, they have extraordinary powers of longevity and, like all of Hawthorne's fiends, grotesque notions of humor. The hag in "The Hollow of the Three Hills" finds "sweet sport" in a woman's death, >and the wizard of "Alice Doane's Appeal" listens with "pleasurable interest" and "grisly smiles" to a confession of murder. 48Ibid., V, 167. 49Ibid., XII, 28k.

5QIbid., I, 228. 5IIbid., I, 233; XII, 286. 76 Professor Westervelt in The Blithedale Romance and Roger Chillingworth of The Scarlet Letter are purported to be wizards by their superstitious neighbors. Although both villains are specifically associated with the Devil, Hawthorne emphasizes that neither one is Satan. Each is a representative of evil, acting as a fiend or" demon in pursuing devilish schemes. By giving them roles as "wizards" Hawthorne estab- lishes that'they are humans who reject human roles in favor of

i supernatural power and knowledge. Like the Devil's agents in the witch tales, Westervelt and Ghillingworth physically display the characteristics of their apprenticeship to the Devili Westervelt looks magnificent, but a gold band around his false teeth suggests (to Coverdale) that Westervelt has sold his soul to the Devil.Furthermore, Westervelt gives the impression of being a "moral and physical humbug; . . . he was perhaps but a wizened little elf, gray and decrepit ... ."53 Roger Chillingworth, too, is old and deformed. The diseased souls of Satan's agents derive life-sustaining energy by preying on victims like the remorseful young woman in "The Hollow of the Three Hills," half-mad Leonard Doane in "Alice Doane's Appeal," childlike Priscilla in The Blithedale Romance, or guilt-ridden Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter. Ghillingworth sustains his existence completely on his goal of obtaining revenge and torturing Dimmesdale. The

52Ibid., V, 500. 53Ibid., pp. 427-^28. 77 minister escapes, however, and the failure to damn his soul is almost fatal to the old man. With the physician's loss of his one demonic goal in life, "all his strength and energy- all his vital and intellectual forces—seemed at once to desert him; insomuch that he positively withered up, shrivelled away, and almost vanished from mortal sight." Chillingworth cannot exist without the evil pursuits which support his life, and when "there was no more Devil's work on earth for him to doT it only remained for the unhumanized mortal to betake himself whither his Master would find him tasks enough, and pay him Sit his wages daily." In some of his writings Hawthorne uses a sort of Manichean philosophy in which two contending principles of good and evil struggle for the mastery of man's soul. Satan, when used in such a context, is not the externalized Devil of Puritan tra- 55 dition, but rather a symbol of an individual's sin. Hawthorne's demonic characters allow the evil portion of human nature to overwhelm the good, thus transforming themselves into fiends. Each man has an inner devil; the weak or the wicked fail to subdue their inner devils. In "Alice Doane's Appeal," man's divided nature is explored through the device of the split personality. Leonard Doane and Walter Brcme are, unknown to each other, twin brothers. Each has an unnaturally strong affection - for his sister, Alice. Walter and Leonard not only have a ** "Ibid., p. 307. °^Lynch, p. 116. 78 physical similarity, but more, importantly "the similarity of their dispositions made them joint possessors of an individual nature, which could not become wholly the property of one, unless by the extinction of the other." Walter hints that he has seduced Alice, and the possibility drives Leonard alraost insane with jealousy and hatred. The two men meet on a lonely road "with the same devil in each bosom," and Leonard succeeds in killing his brother. Leonard is now the full possessor of "all the fierce and deep passions and of all the many varieties of wickedness" which he had previously shared with Walter.^

Although he refers to his slain brother as "the accursed one," a synonym for Satan, it is his own inner devil which has driven him to murder. The dark and evil portion of Leonard has complete ascendency over any good in his soul. After Brome's death Leonard is tortured by the feeling that he has committed "some unutterable crime, perpetrated, as he imagined, in madness or a dream.His identification with Walter is complete; he half-believes that he has committed incest with his sister. The same "fiend" which urged him to kill Walter now urges him to take Alice's life. Leonard seeks out a wizard to find out whether he and Alice are guilty. The wizard cannot deny Leonard such information if Leonard agrees to "certain conditions." In terms of witch tradition the certain conditions

56Works, XII, 286. 57Ibid., p. 285. 58Ibid», p. 287. Ostein, p. 55. 79 consist of Leonard's participation in a compact with the Devil, offering his soul in exchange for a supernatural revelation. The making of a pact with the Devil, when interpreted psycho- logically instead, of traditionally, means that Leonard makes a final and fatal surrender to the evil of his own nature in his bargain with the wizard. By seeking the truth which frees Alice of blame, Leonard is further enlightened about his own sinful and damned nature. Young Goodman Brown's forest adventure may be interpreted as Brown's encounter, not with an external Devil of the Puritan mold, but rather with the Devil which resides inside sinful man. At the onset of his walk through the forest, Brown alarms himself with the thought, "What if the Devil himself should be at my very elbow," and suddenly a Devil does appear. Brown's Devil may be merely a representation of the dark portion of the young man's nature which has, until this moment, been suppressed. In the dark and mysterious labrinth of the forest it appears when evoked by Brown's thoughts. Significantly, Brown's Devil does not have the glowing red eyes or horrendous laugh of Haw- thorne's other Devils. Instead, as James Lynch explains, Brown's satanic figure "has the appearance of a normal human being--an indication that Hawthorne thought of the Devil as a mental phe- nomenon symbolic of the individual's sin."^® The Devil not only looks like an ordinary man, but he also has a strong

^Lynch, p. 60. 80 physical resemblance to Brown, being only older and behaving with more sophistication. When the Devil tries to persuade Brown to continue his journey, he discourses "so aptly that his arguments seemed to spring up in the bosom of his auditor than to be suggested by himself."^ Whether Brown meets and converses with an external Devil or an inner psychological Devil, he falls into the sin of doubt. By succumbing to a lack of faith in God and man, the dark obscures the light portion of his nature and he becomes a fiend or devil. He rushes through the forest "with the instinct that guides mortal man to evil." Brown becomes a more terrible figure of evil than Satan, for "the fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of uian."^ After his experience Brown is unable to ever regain faith to balance or cancel the gloom of doubt and suspicion which pervades his nature.

When the evil in the human soul triumphs over the good, individuals like Roger Chillingworth, Ethan Brand, and Young Goodman Brown willingly become fiends who have lost their humanity, at least for a while. Other characters in Hawthorne's works struggle to suppress the inner devil. Prudence Inglefield in "John Inglefield's Thanksgiving," for example, is the victim, of evil passions which have degraded her mind and body. She

61Works, I, 95. 62Ibid., p. 99. 63Ibid., p. 100. 81 attempts to escape, her demon by returning to her father's home for a holiday hoping "the guilty soul will . , , stray back to its innocence.Unfortunately she cannot retain mastery of her passions for long, and when she leaves her old home "her countenance wore almost the expression as if vshe were struggling with a fiend, who had power to seize his victims even within the hallowed precincts of her father's hearth.She returns to her dissolute life when the "fiend" prevails. Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter also contends with an inner demon or devil which, in moments of passion, almost usurps his soul. When Hester confesses that she is Chilling- worth's wife and has willfully withheld the information from the minister, he is convulsed with wrath. "The minister looked at her for an instant, with all that violence of passion, which--intermixed, in more shapes than one, with higher, purer, softer qualities--was, in fact, the portion of him which the Devil claimed, and through which he sought the fifi rest." Dimmesdale manages to control his inner devil and thwart his external one--Chillingworth.--.just before dying. Still another character falls victim to a satanic inner enemy. Roderick Elliston ("Egotism; or The Bosom Serpent") . has a diabolic snake in his stomach. Elliston's egotism is so great that it extends even to his admiration of the devilish 6^Ibid., III, 590. 65Ibid. 66Ibid., V, 232. 82 creature. He prides himself on "being marked out from the ordinary experience of mankind by the possession of a double- nature, and a life within a life."^7 Elliston comes to believe that "the snake was a divinity,--not celestial, it is true, but darkly infernal,--and that hence he derived an eminence and a sanctity, ... -1168 Elliston consults his inner devil in all matters, pampering it "night and day, with 69 a continual and exclusive sacrifice of Devil worship." He is in danger of becoming completely demonic in his inability to think of anything or anyone but himself. Elliston is saved, however, from his "Devil" when at last he thinks of his wife. The inner Devil in many of Hawthorne's writings is willfully evoked by characters who are too proud. Lady Eleanore of "Lady Eleanor's Mantle," for example, is ex- cessively proud of her beauty and social status. The common people claim that her pride has "evoked a fiend, and thatf between them both this monstrous evil smallpox epidemicj had been born."7® Although Lady Eleanore inadvertently introduces a deadly physical disease to a community, the real indication of her relationship with satanism is her diseased soul. She refuses to acknowledge her kinship with the rest of the human race until she is properly punished by "the curse of Heaven"--smallpox*

67Ibid., II, 310. 68Ibid., p. 309. 69Ibid. 70Ibid., I, 321-322. 83 Pride motivates Roger Chillingworth in his plan to seek revenge. Roderick Elliston and Leonard Doa.ne are both, victims of pride in the form of jealously. Elliston nourishes his pride and self-love by being jealous of his wife and re- jecting all which does not reflect his own image and interests. When his egotism is manifested in the unnatural form of a. serpent, he spends hours with his mouth open before a mirror waiting for it to appear (which is a grotesque way of evoking 71 the fiend.)' Leonard Doane's jealous and unnatural love for his sister Alice calls up the demonic in himself, and it is reflected in his double, Walter Brome. Perhaps, too, it is pride which causes Miriam in The Marble Faun to test her powers of attraction and call forth the model from the dark past. When she draws him out into the modern world from the depths of the catacombs, he warns, "Inquire not what I am, nor wherefore I abide in darkness .... Henceforth, I am nothing but a shadow behind her footsteps. She came to me when I sought her not. She has called me forth, and must 72 abide the consequences of my reappearance in the world." Both Miriam and Donatello suffer the consequences of Miriam* s evocation of a Devil. j$ot only the sin of pride, but also overdevelopment of the intellect results in the calling forth of the Devil in Hawthorne's fiction. Many of the author's villains have lost 7IIbid., II, 316. 72Ibid., VI, 46. 8 4- the necessary balance between the head and heart, or the intellect and passions. The demonic intellectual becomes devilish as he raises the mind to an undue position of eminence, neglects his ties with humanity, and puts all his energy into the pursuit of one unhallowed goal. Chillingworth -*-n The Scarlet Letter is an example of the intellectual who, in seeking revenge and supernatural knowledge, evokes the evil in himself. Although he plans to plumb the mysteries of Dimmesdale's soul like an impartial, scientific investigator who is "desirous only of truth," the nature of his undertaking is beyond human power and human propriety. He must call forth the most diabolic elements of his own nature and gradually relinquish his human and natural traits. The inner demon which is formed creates in him "a terrible fascination, a kind of fierce, though still calm necessity which seized the old man within its gripe, and never set him free again until he had done its bidding.The one-time humanitarian and physician has become a Devil.

Another humanitarian-intellectual transformed into a fiend is Ethan Brand. As a demonic, Brand looks back on his former reverence for his fellow man remembering "with what tenderness, with what love and sympathy for mankind, and what pity for human guilt and woe, he had first begun to contemplate those ideas which afterward became the inspiration of his life

73Ibid*, V, 158. 85 n74 • * • The concept of an Unpardonable Sin replaces his former humanitarian longings, disturbing the "counter-poise between his mind and heart,"7"* As the devilish'idea grows and flourishes, Brand becomes a fiend; "he began to be so from the moment that his moral nature had ceased to keep the pace of improvement with his intellect."7^ Although it is rumored that Bx*and has evoked a fiend from a lime-kiln in order to "frame the image of some mode of guilt which could be neither atoned for nor forgiven," Brand cannot be bothered with a conventional devil. Brand leaves the Devil to labor for the souls of "halfway sinners" and creates in himself a 77 . worse fiend. Only Brand's Titanic pride and inner devil can forge the Unpardonable Sin. Brand finally succeeds in creating it, and he boasts, "It is a sin which grew within my own breast .... A sin that grew nowhere else! The sin of an intellect that triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence for God, and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims."'7® After he has created the Sin, however, Brand cannot exist on earth or in human company so he seeks the element of fire which alone suits his demonic nature. Hollingsworth, the humanitarian of The Blithedale Romance, although hardly a sinister or satanic figure, is an individual 74Ibid., III, 494. 75Ibid. 76Ibid., p. 495. 77Ibid., p.484. 78Ibid., p. 485. 86 whose over-developed intellect has given him some of the characteristics of a demonic. Pride motivates Hollingsworth*s pose as a reformer and philanthropist in the opinion of Zenobia and Coverdale. Zenobia confronts Hollingswox-th saying, "Are you a man? No, but a monsterl A cold, heartless, self-beginning and self-ending piece of mechanismI" Hollingsworth defends himself by challenging, "Show me one selfish end in all I ever have aimed at „ . . ." He is answered bitterly, "It is all self! .... Nothing else; nothing but self! self! self I The fiend, I doubt not, has made his choicest mirth of you these seven years past . . . Coverdale, too, accuses Hollingsworth of being "that steel engine.of the Devil's contrivance, a philantropist.In choosing to plot and scheme for reform rather than employ human sympathy and personal participation in the mainstream of life to help his fellow men, Hollingsworth has envisioned himself as a kind of divinity who can create new, reformed men and has rejected his brotherhood with humanity. Hawthorne attacks Hollingsworth (and all reformers) as a variety of demonic: This is always true of those men who have sur- rendered themselves to an overriding purpose. It does not so much impel them from without, not even operate as a motive power within, but grows incor- porate with all they think and feel, and finally converts them into little else save that one principle .... They have no heart, no sympathy, no reason, no conscience .... They have an ideal to which they consecrate themselves high-priest,

79Ibid., V, 566-567. 80Ibid., p. 401. 87 and deem it holy work to offer sacrifices of whatever is most precious; and never once seem to suspect—so cunning has the Devil been with them--that this false deity, in whose iron features, immitigable to all the rest of mankind, they see only benignity and love, is but a spectrum of the very priest himself, projected upon the surrounding darkness.81 Reformers demonically worship the ideal of refornij and they are willing to make any sacrifice to achieve it. Dr. Rappaccini and his rival, Dr. Baglioni, are Devil- figures in "Rappaccini1s Daughter." Neither one is explicitly compared to or mentioned in connection with the Devil, but each one has some diabolic characteristics. Rappaccini, for example, has the demonic intellectual obsession of Hawthorne's demonic characters. The doctor has invented a new Garden of Eden which is a deadly, unn atural, and unholy imitation of the original Garden. It is filled with poisonous vegetation and a flower of death rathe r than the traditional tree of life. Beatrice, RappacciniTs daughter, has a role similar to that of the serpent, although she iJs an unwilling and unknowing tempt- ress. She has been made poisonous by continual association with the plants in her father's garden and by her father's scientific skill. Her beauty lures a young man, Giovanni, into the garden where he gradually becomes poisonous, too. Rappaccini intends to create a new species of man from the offspring of Beatrice and Giovanni.

8IIbid., pp. 399-400. 88 Rappaccini dresses in black and like Hawthorne's other devilish individuals, his physical appearance--"tall, emaci- ated, sallow, and sickly looking"--denotes his relationship with evil. Rappaccini suffers from the "inward disease" of the corrupted soul. The scientist's pride in his intellectual powers has induced him to attempt to become a creator of human life as well As plant life, thus taking on a godlike role. In his poisonous daughter, the scientist sees the result of "my pride and triumph." His triumph is unnatural and shortlived, for Beatrice swallows an antidote for the poison in her system and destroys herself. The evil which Rappaccini has infused into his daughter, however, touches only her physical portion of being; her soul is untainted by his diabolic science.8^ Baglioni is another demonic type. Hawthorne suggests that he is motivated to thwart Rappacini's experiment with Beatrice because of professional jealously, hatred, and fear. Baglioni poses, as does Judge Pyncheon, as a benevolent man "apparently of genial nature" and possessing habits "that might almost be called jovial." Baglioni is not genial, how-

* ever, in his relationship with Rappaccini and Beatrice. He plays a devilish role as a "manipulator and calumniator, destroyer of faith and implanter of doubts . . .," as Curtis Dahl points out.83 Baglioni suggests to Giovanni that Beatrice is evil, and the intimation shakes the young man's faith as

82Ibid. , II, 112, 147. 83Dahl, p. 57. 89 "a thousand dim suspicions" arise, grinning "at him like so many demons.It is Baglioni, too, who urges Giovanni to give Beatrice the antidote which destroys her physical being. Two other demonics misuse the powers of the intellect-- George Burroughs in "Main Street" and Professor Westervelt in The Blithedale Romance. In Hawthorne's historical sketch, Burroughs is rumored to have become a wizard because of his "high and searching intellect" which is not satisfied with prosaic learning, but desires knowledge of the supernatural. Similarly, Westervelt is a sinister "wizard" because of his use of the mind to gain wealth. Mesmerism allows the Pro- fessor to rifle Priscilla's mirid and profit materially. Hawthorne uses the figure of the Devil frequently and in a variety of ways in his fiction. "Jn the witch tales he attempts to present accurately the figure of the Devil with the intense reality and significance he had for seventeenth century Puritans* Although the Devil and his demonic counter- parts are used most frequently to represent abstraction of sin, evil, and temptation* Hawthorne also introduces a few comic Devils to his fiction (see Chapter IV)i Even when the character of the Devil is humorous, the author has a serious purpose behind his characterization of the Archfiend. The concept of the Devil to Hawthorne, as to the early New Englanders, has a serious meaning (symbolically, psycho- logically, and morally) in human life-*

8^Works, II, 137. CHAPTER IV

HAWTHORNE'S LIGHTER USE OF THE DIABOLIC

Although Hawthorne usually treats the diabolic seriously, irony and humor are elements which appear in his fiction eta- ploying witchcraft and Devil lore. He Sometimes uses witchcraft and Devil tradition to create an atmosphere of mystery, horror, and suspense, but it also, provides the illusion,* fantasy, whimsy, and half-seriousness which are characteristic of Hawthorne's lighter writings.1 Irony is evident in much of Hawthorne's fiction, and it adds a note of humor to even his most solemn and serious work. Irony is Hawthorne's tool when "accenting the divergence he found between the apparent and the real," according to Arlin Turner. The superstition and tradition of witch and Devil beliefs are used by Hawthorne as "extended figurative language" in Turner's interpretation.^ Reality is clothed in the figurative language of witch and Devil doctrine, arid Hawthorne uses irony and humor to reveal the submerged truth. Often, too, Hawthorne treats the diabolic humorously in order to present a moral while being entertaining, Hawthorne was well aware of the incongruities and ironies of daily life* Turner claims that "his way of seeing things

^"Arlin Turner, Nathaniel Hawthorne: An Introduction and Interpretation (New York, 1961), p. i09. ^Ibid.

90 91 was ironic, and irony was natural to his expression from the earliest of his boyhood „ . . ."3 His sensitivity to the humorous aspects of the incongruous and unexpected naturally extended into his interpretation of all aspects of life, and even into his reading. Through his reading of early New England history, Hawthorne became acquainted with the Puritan, frame of mind. TPhe Puritan habit of seizing supernatural explanations for lifeTs mysteries, great and small, was connected to the theory that the hand of God (or the Devil) is ever active in men's affairs# Such emphasis upon the activities of the supernatural and particularly the Devil in New England bordered on the ludicrous, as Hawthorne suggests in a few passages of The Scarlet Letter. rfhe. Devil was such an intense reality to the citizens of New England that the common people attri- buted all unpleasant occurrences to hixiu Thus, the sexton in The Scarlet Letter who finds Dimmesdale's glove upon a scaffold remarks to the minister with a grim smile that Satan probably stole it to be mischievous and that "your reverence must needs handle him without gloves, henceforward . . . Ironically, Dimmesdale has been wrestling with a devil, but under circumstances which the sexton could not imagine or comprehend. The citizens of Boston in The Scarlet Letter attribute a variety of ridiculous cause and effect relationships to the Devil, including Pearl's paternity. The townspeople maintain

3Ibid., p. 101. **Works, V, 192. 92 that Pearl is Satan's child, a theory which amuses Hester with its absurdity, while at the same it makes her shudder at its grotesque and horrible implications."* Hawthorne's irony is once again appar-ent, for although Pearl acts like a demon's child, she is in reality the daughter of the most loved and respected man in Boston, a minister. While discussing Pearl's reputed parentage, Hawthorne records playfully that other individuals in witch-times were given the dubious distinction of being children of Satan. Even Luther, "according to the scandal of his monkish enemies, was a brat of that hellish breed . . „ .

The Evil One and his agents manipulated the minutiae of life in order to discomfort or disconcert the righteous by causing such unp 1 easaintries as nightmares.^ Hawthorne treats the nightmare aspect of witchcraft tradition in an amusing manner in "Feathertop; A Moralized Legend." In this story Mother Rigby is a witch with great abilities. She creates an image of a fine gentleman from a scarecrow and forces it to come to life by making it inhale the smoke from a magic pipe. While observing the efforts of the scarecrow to breathe, she displays the bedside manner which is customary for a witch, when giving unfortunate wretches bad dreams. "Mother Rigby ... with one brown arm akimbo and the other stretched toward

5Ibid., p. 124. 6Ibid. ^Kittredge, p. 218. 93 the figure, loomed grimly among the obscurity [of the smoke from the pipe^| with such port and expression as when she was wont to heave a ponderous nightmare on her victims and stand at the bedside to enjoy their agony."® Hawthorne sardonically mocks the Puritan belief that nightmares are caused by witchcraft in a historical sketch, "Main Street." John and Elizabeth Proctor were put to death (according to Hawthorne's sketch) because of superstitious and insubstantial charges that the Proctors, those "hoary reprobates," spent their evenings devilishly showing "their withered faces at children's bedsides, mocking, making mouths, and affrighting the poor little innocents in the nighttime. According to Puritan witchcraft doctrine, witches or the Devil also stirred up storms at sea and tempests on land in order to enrich life with a little malicious fun and to punish their enemies#^® Thus in The Scarlet Letter, Pearl humorously threatens to evoke a storm at sea to punish a sailor that has called her a "witch-baby." With "a naughty smile" Pearl in- forms the seaman that "Mistress Hibbins says my father is the Prince of the Air .... If thou callest me that ill name, I shall tell him of thee, and he will chase thy ship with a tempest."^ Mother Rigby also has the ability to stir up storms at sea. After creating Feathertop she whimsically

8Works, II, 261. 9Ibid., III, 468. I0Kittredge, p. 152. I1¥orks, V, 291. 94 bequeaths him a fortune in useless items including "the cargo of a certain ship, laden with the salts of Cadiz, which she herself, by her necromantic arts, had caused to founder, ten years before, in the deepest part of mid-ocean. Other elements of the witchcraft tradition aroused Hawthorne's strong sense of irony. As Arlin Turner says, "He had an eye for incongruities and a relish for the unexpected."13 The tradition of old men and women enjoying wild rides on broomsticks is an element of witch belief which Hawthorne finds incongruous and amusing. He describes the rheumatic and dot- tering Proctors in ,fMain Street" as they "whisked up the chimney, both on one broomstick ... .Mistress Hibbins and Mother Rigby, too, are devotees of travel by broomstick and enjoy "many an airy gallop at midnight. Vhile seventeenth century Puritans found nothing humorous in the common belief that elderly persons could fly on broomsticks, attend, forest dances and orgies, and spectrally assault innocent victims, Hawthorne sometimes treats such matters lightly. In "Young Goodman Brown," for example, he finds a kind of grotesque humor in the theory that an ordinary old woman would adopt the extraordinary role of a witch. When Goody Gloyse is first introduced in the story, she is hobbling through the dark forest at night, alone, "with singular speed

12Ibid., II, 263. I3Turner, p. 101. I4Works, III, 468. L5Ibid., II, 254. 95 for so aged a woman, and mumbling some indistinct words--a prayer, doubtless--as she went."^ Since few unescorted women would be traveling in the forest near Salem at night, the reader is prepared to find that Gloyse is something other than the "pious and exemplary dame1' that she appears to be. Goodman Brown fears that his presence in the forest would shock the good old lady, so Brown's travelling companion, his serpentine staff in hand, volunteers to approach her. Coming from behind, "the traveller put forth his staff and touched her withered neck with what seemed the serpent's tail." Goody Cloyse is so startled that she screams, "the devilI" and turning around discovers it really is her "old friend," the Devil.^ Although she shrieks "the devil" as if meeting the Devil in the dark forest would be a cause for terror, her conversation soon reveals that she has met him often and willingly there.

There is a macabre humor in the discrepancy between Goody Gloyse's seemingly normal personality, physical traits, and interests on one hand, and her incongruous activities and conversation with the Devil on the other. Like many old women, Cloyse is garrulous. She begins a rapid and rambling conversation with the Devil within seconds of recognizing him. Her convei-sation reveals a tendency toward gossip and slander

I6Ibid., p. 94. L7Ibid. 96 which is not abnormal. The topics of her talk are, however, most unusual. It becomes apparent that Goody Cloyse is on her way to a Black Sabbath even though she speaks of~ it as if it were an ordinary social gathering. Gloyse accuses a neighbor of stealing her broomstick and refers to Goodwife Cory, the suspected thief, as "that unhanged witch."-L® Ironically, Gloyse has forgotten that she herself is a witch and that using the term "witch" derogatorily under those circumstances is quite hypocritical. The old woman slips into a brief reverie and reminisces about her old friendship with an ancestor of the present Goodman Brown. She contemptuously dismisses Young Brown (who overhears her conversation in shocked silence) as a "silly fellow.A little levity is displayed in the old woman's querrulous and humorous complaint that she had anointed herself with a special flying ointment for the Witches' Sabbath, only to be delayed by the loss of her broomstick.

The typical domestic interests of a woman of Gloyse's position and character are revealed when she lists the ingredi- ents for an unusual recipe. Ironically, the recipe is for a magic ointment and it includes a grisly ingredient--"the fat of a new-born babe."20 Furthermore, she is not reviewing favorite recipes with another housewife, but instead with Satan. All the ironies of Gloyse's conversation make it

I8Ibid, I9Ibid. 20 Ibid. 97 amusing, but Hawthorne was not atterapting to lighten his story with humor as much as he is trying to shock the reader (as Brown is shocked) by the difference between what Gloyse appears to be and what she really is. Brown comes to the rapid conclusion that Cloyse is a disciple of the Devil. Her mind and soul seem to be so totally corrupted that the unnatural becomes natural. Evil, as her nonchalant conversation reveals, has become the conventional, typical, and normal pattern of thought and behavior for Goody Cloyse. Mistress Hibbins of The Scarlet Letter is another humorous type of witch. Like Gloyse she accepts the principle of evil as the underlying concept in human relationships and activities. Hibbins worships evil as it is personified in the Puritan myth of the Black Man in the forest. Hawthorne calls her weird, eccentric, mad, and mentally infirm, because her behavior and thought are distorted and abnormal. Basically she is a ridiculous figure, somewhat humorous and rarely very sinister. She dresses with curious taste in her role as a witch in a "high head-dress, a rich gown of velvet, and ruff" and rumor says that it -is in this outfit that she mounts a broomstick, rides with "Satan through the air," and reappears the next morning "with twigs of the forest clinging to her skirts, arid looking sourer than ever, as having hardly got a wink of sleep after her night ride."22

2IIbid., V, 286, 287, 288. 22Ibid., p. 184. 98 Broomsticks, dances in the forest with the Devil playing the fiddle, signatures in an iron-bound book are all figments of Mistress Hibbins' unbalanced mind, but her sane neighbors, while behaving more circumspectly, believe the same fantasies. Mistress Hibbins spends much of her time extending invitations to Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimraesdale to join her arid her "potentate" in their forest revels. Hester smiles at the old lady's caprices while Dimraesdale is shocked and horrified. Despite her comic madness, Mistress Hibbins ironically has a deeper insight into a secret relationship between Hester and Dimmesdale, and their experience with sin, than most Bostonians. With her mental condition, however, Hibbins is at about the same intellectual level as Pearl, and the Black Man is their unsophisticated conception of evil and temptation.

Humorous witchcx*aft and a comic devil are elements of Hawthorne's "Feathertop: A Moralized Legend." Hawthorne meant "Feathertop" to be a light social satire. A serious presentation of witch lore would be unsuitable, for Hawthorne's usual approach as a satirist, as Arlin Turner comments, "is so mild and tolerantly genial that his satire all but obscures itself."23 Thus Mother Rigby and the Devil, image-magic, broomsticks, compacts with Satan, and so forth are all made harmless and amusing. The satire is adorned with the

23Turner, p. 100, 99 paraphernalia of witchcraft merely to achieve a fanciful effect and to make acceptable to the reader impossible elements of plot and character. Hawthorne alters witch lore by making Mother Rigby less sinister than the traditional witch. Image-magic, while traditionally a dangerous activity, becomes a harmless game for Mother Rigby, who resolves in a creative mood to make something useful. Since she needs a scarecrow, she produces one from a variety of materials, and after it is constructed, Rigby cannot resist the temptation to transform the scarecrow into a man. With the help of a little magic she creates Feathertop, a facsimile of the contemporary man of fashion. Feathertop is a symbol of the empty-headed fop, and as such he is a tool for Hawthorne's satire of men and society. The mechanism of witchcraft allows the author to comment on illusion and deceptive appearances through the language of witch tradition. Hawthorne proceeds to say that since "the miracles of witchcraft seem always to have had a very shallow subtlety," it is really rather doubtful whether "there was any real change ... in the sordid, wornout, worthless, and ill-pointed substance of the scarecrow ... ."2^ Feathertop can best be explained as a "spectral illusion, and cunning effect of light and shade so colored and contrived as to

2k-Works, II, 25k, 100 25 delude the eyes of most men." Furthermore, the illusion is not actual and physical, but rather mental, It is based on social values. The almost comic Devil of folk tradition is one playful element in Hawthorne's humorous treatment of witchcraft and the Devil. Mother Rigby associates with the Evil One, but he is not a regal fallen angel in the Miltonic tradition or Calvin's maleficently cunning enemy of God. The Devil whom Mother Rigby evokes is an invisible spirit, subservient to her every whim, and acting as more a minor devil than a Master of Hell. Mother Rigby practices her witchcraft with his aid, calling him "Dickon" (a favorite nickname for the Devil in folk tradition)^0 and ordering him to perform mun- dane duties like lighting her pipe with a coal from the fires of Hell. Dickon is assigned the task of keeping Feathertop's pipe lighted. The smoke from the magic pipe is the breath of life to the scarecrow. Feathertop has all the characteristics of the man of fashion. His brilliant exterior deceives those who cannot perceive the truth behind the illusion. The scarecrow, like other "gentlemen" of his ilk, cannot see himself in per- spective. The magic distortion of clothes, manners, and affectations of emotion deceive him as well as others. When 25Ibid., p. 259. 26Lynch, p. 120. 101 Feather-top promises to obey Mother Rigby's orders "with all my heart," the old woman roars with laughter, for his empty phraseology is that of the fashionable fop.27 He is oblivious to the humor of his own nature and situation. The scarecrow's appearance deceives everyone except a child and a dog who, as innocent and natural beings, observe the reality beneath the "witchcraft" of illusion and artifice. The citizens who encounter Feathertop are willing to accept his judgment of them as social inferiors. As a caricature of a gentleman, the scarecrow possesses no natural traits to make him human and individualistic; "a well-digested conventionalism had incoi'porated itself thoroughly with his substance and transformed him into a work of art."2® Yet Feathertop imparts a kind of "ghastliness and awe" because he is so "consummately artificial" that his human aspect only superficially masks his inhuman nature.^9

As an image of a man, empty-headed and artificial yet able to dupe other men, Feathertop is a comic figure. But since Hawthorne intended "Feathertop" to be a moralized legend, his characters and plot must also present serious matters in their humorous framework. The scarecrow is given a sinister errand by Mother Rigby. He is supposed to win the love of Polly Gookin, thereby punishing her father, Justice Gookin.

27Works, II, 263. 28Ibid., p. 21h, 29Ibid. 102 The Justice "at some earlier period of life, had given some pledge or other to the evil principle" and now has failed to meet the terms of his compact with the Devil.Since he has been assigned the role of an instrument of punishment, Feather- top poses a "supernatural peril" for Polly#31 The Justice's daughter, like her peers, is a suitable victim for the illusive dangers of witchcraft. She finds the dazzling appearance and affected manners of Feathertop to be so enhancing that within a short time she has acquired some of the artificial mannerisms of the scarecrow. Even more importantly, within fifteen minutes after meeting him she begins to fall in love with this "hollow semblance" of a man.32 The painted demons on the bowl of Feathertop's pipe, who symbol- ize his relationship with evil, dance wildly as a victory for their side seems assured. Polly saves herself from Feather- top's "spell" by gazing toward a mirror which reflects his image as well as her own. The mirror, "one of the truest plates in the world and incapable of flattery" reveals the real nature of Feathertop.33 His lack of true substance is reflected by the mirror to the horror of Polly and the scarecrow. Polly faints from the shock, and Feathertop, with a depth of emotion unexpected by Mother Rigby, destroys himself.

30Ibid. -^Ibid.

32 Ibid., p. 275. 33Ibid., p. 276. 103 The whole moral of the story is summed up by Mother Rigby as she mourns: My poor, dear, pretty FeathertopI There are thousands upon thousands of coxcombs and charlatans in the world, made up of just such a jumble of wornout, forgotten, and good-for-nothing trash as he was I Yet they live in fair repute, and never see themselves for what they are. And why should my poor puppet be the only one to know himself and perish for it?34 She briefly considers recreating her artificial man, but decides instead that he is much too tenderhearted for the cruelties of the human world. Furthermore, as a scarecrow he will serve a useful purpose, which is more than can be said for many of his "human brethren."3"* The comic-Devil makes an appearance in other stories in which Hawthorne treats the diabolic whimsically. The folk Devil usually is stereotyped as a dark figure with red eyes, horns, cloven-hoofs, and a tail. He is given a variety of familiar and semi-affectionate names, including Dickon, Old Nick, Old Scratch, and Beelzebub.3^ As a meddlesome and mischievous creator of bad luck and minor misfortunes, Hawthorne brings him into a few stories just to add a touch of folk humor. In "Mrs. Bullfrog," for example, the Devil is blamed for a woman's sudden transformation from youth and beauty to decrepit old age. Mr. Bullfrog marries a seemingly young woman and conducts her to his home after the wedding. During

34Ibid., p. 278. 35Ibid. 36Lynch, p. 114. 10^ the journey ari accident causes the carriage to be overturned, and the passengers are thrown out. Mrs. Bullfrog undergoes an unexpected change in appearance as she loses her wig, teeth, and good temper. Her husband, when confronted by this "ogre" imagines that "the Old Nick, at the moment of our overturn, had annihilated my wife and jumped into her petticoats."3? Since he married her mostly for her money, however, and she still retains that attraction, the new husband is soon pacified. As in "Feathertop," the Devil tradition is used by Hawthorne to emphasize the gap between the apparent and the real. The stereotyped folk Devil is an element of "Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure," a short story which is (in part) a humorous treatment of the diabolic. In legendary treatments of witchcraft and Devil lore, devils or demons were supposed to be guardians of treasure troves, a tradition which goes back to "the hoard-guarding dragon of Beowulf and Saxo Grammaticus and many a local legend," according to George Kittredge„3® jn order to find concealed riches, folk belief demanded the use of spells and incantations which are employed "first, to call up a spirit who shall disclose the right spot; and, second, to control the demon who keeps the hoard."^9 Hawthorne loosely observes the traditional paraphernalia of spells, spirits, devils, and treasure in "Peter Goldthwaitefs

^Works, II, 153. ^^Kittredge, p. 205. 39Ibid» 105 Treasure," but he modifies tradition to make the tale as entertaining as possible.

The hero of the story, Peter Goldthwaite, is an individual who has wasted years and squandered his resources on foolish schemes to become a wealthy man. Peter's latest plan to become rich is centered around discovering a hidden treasure which an ancestor deposited somewhere in the family home several generations ago. After deciding to tear down his ancestral home in order to discover the hoard of wealth, he systematically destroys the old house (his one remaining possession) by de- molishing the interior, room by room. He leaves only the fa- cade of the building to conceal his activities and renounces all communication with the outside world.

Peter has no seer to envision the location of the treasure, but a "spirit" lurks around, according to Peter. As Peter searches for the treasure, often he has the feeling that "the formex Peter Goldthwaite [the one who hid the moneyj had come back, either to assist or impede his search for the hidden wealth."40 Peter also has the companionship of an old house- keeper, Tabitha, wno customarily sits in a chimney corner, "like a witch in a dark cavern."41 Tabitha cannot disclose the right spot to hunt for the lost treasure, but she is Peter's source of information about the existence of a legendary treasure. According to Tabitha and legend, Peter's

40 4:1 Works, I, 437. -Ibid., p. 431. 106 ancestor got his wealth dishonestly and possibly with the Devil's help. The ancient Peter had to hide his money because he could not spend it. He had made a bargain with the Devil to deed his house and land to the Evil One for riches, but either the Devil or the former Peter failed to abide by the bargain. Every time old Peter went to unlock the treasure chest, "the Old Scratch came behind and. caught his arm."^

It takes an amusing encounter with the Devil to give Peter his first clue that a treasure does exist. While laboring at his work of destruction one day, Peter discovers a charcoal sketch on a wall of a "ragged man, partly sup- porting himself on a spade, and bending his lean body over a hole in the earth, with one hand extended to grasp something he had found. But close behind him, with a fiendish laugh on his features, appeared a figure with horns, a tufted tail, and a cloven hoof."^ Behaving as if the picture of the Devil were the demon controlling the hoard, Peter makes an attempt to exorcise it symbolically. He lifts his spade and strikes the figure of the Devil crying, "Avaunt SatanI .... The man shall have his gold."1'"*4' The spade goes through the wall and discloses a cavity where a piece of papex* (a record of the amount of the treasure) is concealed.

^2Ibid., p. kkO. ^3Ibid., p. 442.

^Ibid. 107 At last Peter discovers the hidden hoard which, ironically, consists of nothing more than worthless, pre-Revo- lutionary currency. Peter has destroyed his home, his only possession of value, in the futile search, but he has a good- hearted former business partner who buys the shell of a house. If the story has a moral, it is merely that dreamers like Peter Goldthwaite deny their ties with humanity and waste life in foolish pursuits that can only end in failure. In "The Celestial Railroad," a humorous adaptation of John Bunyan's Pilgrim* s Progress, Hawthorne also presents the Devil in a humorous manner. A narrator describes his journey on a railway which has replaced the old way of traversing by foot the road to the Celestial City. In the company of Mr. Smooth-it-away the narrator is assured that progress has made life's journey easy and pleasant. Satirizing current Uni- tarian liberalism and Transcendentalism, Hawthorne suggests that the trend toward "progress" has resulted in compromises with evil. Thus the Celestial Railroad has a board of di- rectors selected from Vanity Fair, devils are employed to work on the railroad, and the pilgrims associate freely with ruined souls and demons while making their journey. One of the comic devils whom the narrator encounters is Apollyon, the chief engineer of the train. Apollyon takes great pleasure in diabolically teasing old-fashioned pilgrims who still make the journey on foot. The pilgrims taking the 108 comfortable train ride mock and jibe the dusty foot travellers. Apollyon also enters "heartily into the fun; and contrived to flirt the smoke and flame of the engine, or of his own breath, into their faces, and envelop them in an atmosphere of scalding steam.Ironically, the old-fashioned pilgrims are the only ones who arrive at the Celestial City. Mr. Smooth-it-away conducts the trusting pilgrims by rail over the Slough of Despond, through the Valley of Death, and past the Hill Difficulty. Arriving in Vanity Fair they have the pleasure of seeing Prince Beelzebub "bargaining with a miser for his soul, which, after much ingenious skirmishing on both sides, his highness succeeded in obtaining at about

the value of sixpence. The prince remarked with a smile that

Lift he was a loser by the transaction." 1-0 Before leaving Vanity Pair the pilgrims are warned that riding the Celestial Rail- road is equivalent to selling one's soul to the Devil for the price of a ticket. The narrator and his companions, however, continue their blithe journey. They board a ferry boat for the last stage of the journey, and they discover when it is too late that the easy route is the way to Hell. Mr. Smooth-it-away, their guide, is a devil: And then did my excellent friend Mr. Smooth-it-away laugh outright, in the midst of which cachinnation a smoke-wreath issued from his mouth and nostrils,

45Ibid., II, 217. 46Ibid., p. 288. 109 while a twinkle of livid flame darted out of either eye, proving undubitably that his heart was all of a red blaze. The impudent fiendI^ To end the story with appropriate lightness, the narrator awakes at the critical moment to discover that he has been dreaming. Hawthorne treats witch and Devil lore in some of his fiction with a light touch. He uses humor and irony as tools to explore the deeper meanings of plot and character, which the fantasy and illusion of witchcraft partially obscure. Irony is an effective device for revealing the discrepancy between appearance and reality. Humor, when combined with witch and Devil doctrine, emphasizes the unreality and whimsy of superstition and folk tradition. Hawthorne combines both humor and irony with the diabolic in order to create light satire and to teach gentle moral lessons. Sometimes, too, a humorous treatment of the Devil or witchcraft (as in "Mrs. 3ullfrog") is just an example of a Hawthornian fling at broad humor.

Ibid., p 234. CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

In several short stories, historical sketches, and The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne exploits the beliefs, historical events, and the atmosphere of the witchcraft period of New England. The witchcraft trials in Salem influenced Hawthorne's choice of fictional material greatly. Even in works which do not deal primarily with the historical period of the witch trials, the author often uses the terminology of witch and Devil doctrine and common witchcraft phenomena to achieve certain literary effects. Hawthorne's pronounced interest in witch and Devil lore grew out of his personal family history. It was fostered by his early life in Salem and was supplemented by his reading in works about New England's Puritan era.

Hawthorne's ancestry greatly influenced his interest in witches, devils, and all the accompanying paraphernalia of supernaturalism. Two forebears in particular, Major William Hat ho me and Judge John Hat home impressed their descendent with their iron characters and resolute will. Major Hathorne Sternly persecuted those who threatened to undermine the Puri- tan religion and rule in New England* His son John was a zealous prosecutor of the Salem, "witches" who came before his

110 Ill court in 1682 on charges of being in league with the Devil. Hawthorne half-seriously conceived the idea that the guilt of his self-righteous ancestors who over-stepped their authoritative and judicial roles might be transmitted to later generations. Perhaps he wrote his witch tales, sketches, and The Scarlet Letter partly with the belief that he could confess the wrongs of the past, and thus expiate ancient wrongdoings. With the knowledge of the roles his ancestors played in the formation of the history of New England and with evidence of the past ever present in his Salem surroundings where he lived for several years, Hawthorne developed a fascination for New England history. This interest manifested itself in his reading. He read histories of New England with their accounts of the Salem trials. He exposed himself to Puritan thought about the presence and activities of the Devil in New England by perusing sermons, lectures, and works by the theological elite of seventeenth century New England. Cotton and Increase Mather were two prominent theologians with whose works Hawthorne became familiar, and whose theories and observances found their way, sometimes scarcely modified, into the writer's fiction. From histories of New England and their coverages of the witchcraft period, Hawthorne derived events, dates, and names about Salem trials and executions which he adapted to give his writings historical authenticity and background. From the 112 Mathers and other theologians Hawthorne achieved valuable insight into the fears and superstitions, myths and legends, which even educated minds accepted as fact during the witch pei~iod. The intense reality of the Devil- and his agents to the early Puritans, which is accurately presented by Hawthorne through subtle psychology and characterization, is a result of his historical reading. The paraphernalia of witchcraft doctrine—spectral evidence, Black Sabbaths, orgies and dances, demons, witches, wizards, the Black Man, demonic Indian sachems, image-magic, broomsticks, child-murder, spells, compacts with Satan^ and so forth, are all introduced into Hawthorne's work to achieve certain effects. At the most elementary level, the paraphernalia of witch and Devil lore adds atmospheric qualities of horror, suspense, and mystery. Element? of witch tradition also help the author develop his themes arid characterization. Young Goodman Brown, for example, loses his faith in mankind, but he does so after a shocking and horrible experience (either psychological or physical) with Satan, spectral evidence, a Black Sabbath, and an unholy baptismal rite. Brown thinks and reacts to his nightmare experience not only as a seventeenth century Puritan, but as the universal man--quick to judge, apt to doubt, inclined toward sin, and partly motivated to reject good and choose evil instead. The paraphernalia of witchcraft and Devil lore was so attractive and adaptable for Hawthorne that he employed it in 113 fiction which is far removed from the Puritan witch period. Thus in The Blithedale Romance, set in the 1800's, Hawthorne alludes to a Devil compact in connection with the novel's villain, and introduces a forest dance into the plot, linking it and the dancers with the witch era of the seventeenth century. Similarly, Hawthorne uses his own family history and a historical witch's curse to add a touch of the demonic to The House of the Seven Gables. Hawthorne used three interrelated conceptions of the Devil in characterizing Satan. The Miltonic, Galvinistic, and folk-devil interpretations are developed separately ov? in combination in individual works. Traditional Puritan Devil-beliefs based on the Bible are adapted to enhance fictional situations. For example, a serpent motif which is prominent in the author's fiction is based on the tradition of the serpent in the Garden of Eden# Hawthorne uses serpentine imagery and symbolism to suggest sin and temp- cation and to link villainous figures with Satan in the reader's mind * Traditional color symbolism is another device Hawthorne employs in characterizing the Devil and the demonic. Black represents sin and evil; red denotes passion and suggests eternal punishment in the fires of Hell. Hawthorne used the Devil as his archetypal figure of evil. Often the villainous or sinful nature of certain characters is revealed by the author's illustrative parallels between Satan and a Ilk diabolic character, Roger Chillingworth, Ethan. Brand, Professor Westervelt, the model (in The Mai'ble Faun) are all characters whom Hawthorne describes in terms of Devil tradition and whom he characterizes as demonics. Hawthorne's demonic characters are often developed ar-ound the theory that an inner battle rages in man between good and evil. When the evil portion of his nature is in ascendancy, man becomes a replica of Satan* Often Hawthorne's characters evoke their inner "devil" or "demon" because they nurture the sin of pride which calls forth the worst in human nature* Roger Chillingworth, for example, suffers a blow to his pride when he discovers his wife has been unfaithful. His determination to use revenge as a balm for his wounded pride results in his rejection of the good in his own nature. Chillingworth becomes a "fiend." Similarly, Lady Eleanor in "Lady Eleanor's Mantle," evokes a "fiend" through her ex- cessive pride in her beauty and social status. Often, too, overdevelopment of the intellect is the first step for the characters in Hawthorne's fiction becoming sub-human individuals possessed by demons. Chillingworth, Ethan Brand, Westervelt, Hollingsworth, and Dr. Rappaccini are all characters whose intellectual powers have betrayed them into the unpardonable sin of ignoring their ties with humanity and mis-' using the powers of the mind to manipulate (and even destroy) the souls of others. 115 Hawthorne's habit of using witch and Devil doctrine for symbolism, figurative language, and irony is evident in all his fiction dealing with witchcraft and the Devil. Often irony is the author's tool for emphasizing the discrepancy between appearance and reality. Irony occasionally introduces a note of humor which is unexpected in Hawthorne's usually serious treatment of witch and Devil lore. For example, Mistress Hibbins and Goody Cloyse, two of Hawthorne's most memorable witches, are ironic figures and humorous characters as well. In other works Hawthorne uses the whimsy, fantasy, and illusion of witchcraft and the humorous conception of the folk Devil to achieve a light tone and teach a moral. Witchcraft is used humorously in "Feathertop; A Moralized Legend," for example, in order to satirize certain elements of society. A comic folk devil adds humor and irony to "The Celestial Railroad" and "Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure."

Whether used seriously or humorously, witch and Devil^ beliefs were valuable tools as literary devices and sources for subject matter of Hawthorne's writings. The diabolic provided an unreal and unbelievable aura to complement the author's technique of using ambiguity as a tool. In Hawthorne's writing ambiguity obscures events, thus allowing for a myriad of interpretations of plot and character. The superstition of witchcraft and Devil doctrine adds the horror (and sometimes humor) which Hawthorne wanted to achieve. Hawthorne 116 often invests his fiction with, "romantic indefiniteness," as Arlin Turner says, which provides a "vague, atmosphere . . . just outside the precincts of real life."1- The introduction of historic names} events, and scenes connected with the witch period of Puritan New England often lends his works solidity and concreteness to balance the fantasies, ambiguities, and abstract concepts with which he deals.

^•Turner, p. 108, BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Burr, George Lincoln, editor, Narratives of_ the Witchcraft Gases 1.684-1706, New York, Charles" Scri'bner' s Sens, 19 Ik 7 ~~~

Calvin, John, Institutes of the Ohristian Religion, 7th ed., Translated by John Allen T2 voTiuo.es)", Philadelphia, Presbyterian Board of Christian Education, 1936.

Hansen, Chadwick> Witchcraft at Salem, New York, George Braziller, Incfl,, 1*971).

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, The Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by George Parsons LatKrop ( L5" volumes") , "Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 191^. Kesselring, Mar i o n Louise, Hawthorne ' s Reading_ 1828--1650, New York, New York Public LTorary, 1949 7 "

Kittredge, George Lyman, Witc^hcrjift in Old and Nw England, New Yox-k, Harvard UnivarsTty Press," 1929. Mather, Cotton, Wonders of the Invisible World, London, J. R. Smith, 186*2.

Milton, John, The Coo^lete Poetical Works of John MiJ-ton$ edited by "George "Bush, Boston," Houghton Mifflin Co., 1965.

Robbins, Rossel Hope, The Enc^^padia witchcraft and. Demonology, New York. Grown Publishers, 1959.

Starkey, Marion Lena, The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Inquiry Into Sal era Witch Trials, New York, A. A. Knopf Co., 1.

Stein, William Bysshe, Hawthorne' s_ Pausjfc: A Study of the. Devil Archetype, Ga.xneivfT.le., Florida, University of ' Florida Press, 1953.

Stewart, Randall, Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Biography, New Haven, Yale UnTvarsity Press7"l

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