What, if anything, do Hawthorne’s protagonists have in common when it comes to their seemingly strange states of mind? How do they see the world? How do others in the stories see them?
6 thoughts on “Hawthorne”
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Somewhat off topic, but things to consider:
I love The Minister’s Black Veil because it confronts one of our greatest fears: the fear of the unknown. There is a hyperobsession and speculation among the town residents regarding Hooper’s veil — what is its purpose? will he keep it on forever? This obsession and surveillance is deeply rooted in the fear of the unknown, in which we emphatically attempt to ascribe meaning to everything as we want to understand ourselves and the world around us. What if things are left not to be understood, not to be known? Can things merely exist?
I like Atticus’ point about Hawthorne’s protagonists all finding ways of physically isolating themselves from society and its rigid expectations. This is particularly true of Mr. Hooper’s veil and Wakefield’s vacation, but also in a sense describes the gloom that follows Goodman Brown throughout the rest of his life. These physical barriers are (presumably) established by the characters in order to account for the intense mental/spiritual isolation with which they are dealing. Interestingly, however, none of these barriers seem to be choices made actively by any of the three protagonists. They all appeared to have been compelled to condemn themselves to isolation by an inexplicable, unpleasant force. Wakefield knows he should return to his wife – he plans to do so every day – and yet some aspect of his psyche won’t allow him to. Mr. Hooper does not keep his veil on by rational choice; he is lonely and saddened by the townspeople’s reactions, and yet he cannot remove it, he must wear it. Finally, Goodman Brown has encountered the devil, perhaps in a dream, and thus is no longer able to live a happy life.
I think the force driving these “strange” behaviors is endogenous; it comes from somewhere deep within each character. I think, perhaps, this place exists in everyone, though we are usually able to repress it. Hawthorne’s characters could not repress their inner “difference.” What made society see these characters as odd, therefore, was simply the tangible way in which this isolation was manifested.
I’d echo Susanna’s idea that the “strangeness” of each of Hawthorne’s characters is not entirely unfamiliar to a “normal” person. Indeed, Hawthorne writes of Wakefield that “we know, each for himself, that none of us would perpetrate such a folly, yet feel as if some other might.” This acknowledges the subtle feeling of kinship with Wakefield’s “singularity” that each reader can feel, even as we are unsettled by his behavior. Hawthorne is forcing us to consider the way we all might understand, in a deep and singular way, the desire to cleave ourselves off from society. Hawthorne seems to connect this impulse with the utter individuality (singularity) of each human being. Because others are always unknowable to us, and us to them, we can on some level expect to understand a person who decides that living in isolated proximity to ‘life’. To be sure, Wakefield is still a human, social being–he just does not participate in social society. He is, instead, driven by the singular internal part of himself that can operate in solitude. When Susanna pointed out that the strange behaviors in the stories are endogenous, I found that an apt word to identify the common experience of being entirely singular. If singularity, then, means madness, Hawthorne seeks to press against that definition and reveal how it might qualify everyone as ‘mad’.
Bouncing off of Emory’s point, Goodman, Wakefield, and Hooper all seem to desire some sort of isolation. Whether it is Wakefield living on his own, Goodman processing each sermon (post-dream) in pain, or Hooper and his veil, each character lives within a state of isolation. Within each characters’ isolation they all had to live through or experience suffering that they were unable to overcome. One could argue that Hawthorne is using his characters to show, similar to Nina’s idea, that social expectations were so high during the period in which Hawthorne was writing any abnormality could be seen as ‘madness.’ Additionally, based on the era of Hawthorne’s writing, he could be attesting to the absurdity of these social constructs by using characters who drift from what society wants them to be.
Emory’s point reminds me of the collective social anxieties I noticed while reading, mostly in Mr. Hooper’s and Goodman Brown’s worlds. It seemed like much of the energy spent on worrying about the “projects,” as Emory aptly called them, related to a shared sense of worry about image and what others are saying about each character. In Goodman, I felt a sense of panicked energy that came with his unstable sense of others’ spiritual or moral goodness. Hooper’s veil seemed to cause a similar kind of panic, leading people to worry over what horrible sin or darkness he must be hiding. The obsession with sin and public perception suggests to me that religion or spirituality was more an external, socially-constructed idea, rather than an internal experience or sense of self.
Mr. Hooper, Mr. Wakefield, and Goodman Brown seem relatively soft spoken and conservative (read: stuck inside their own heads). The commitment of the three characters to their respective “projects” is striking, whether it be Mr. Hooper’s veil, Mr. Wakefield’s “vacation”, or Goodman Brown’s lifelong skepticism of the town’s patrons. The projects, as well as the attitudes of the characters seem to show Hawthorne’s exposure to spiritual life. Certainly, all of the characters are labeled as mad at some point in the story, though mental illness (as we think about it today) may not be have been the root-cause. Perhaps the eagerness of the outsiders to call the protagonists as “mad” reflects their values and expectations for society, suggesting that our modern definitions of mental illness is also socially constructed.