Goodman Brown

Young Goodman Brown is set in the middle of Puritan rigidity to show the audience the consequences of such a system of belief. The Young Goodman Brown is obviously going through what the Puritan’s called a “conversion,” and he is seeing all of these people who he thought were truly converted themselves, and who seem to be good Puritan men and women, showing their true colors. Goodman Brown himself is literally walking with the devil toward his own spiritual crisis, passing through trials of the devil until the betrayal of his faith, symbolized by his new wife of the same name, crushes his will to turn the devil away. His faith has, until this critical point, been straightforward, innocent and untested. His young wife’s pink ribbons are a symbol of innocence, and they are discarded just before Brown’s reluctant acceptance of the darkness within himself. Where does Brown’s sin lie? According to the Puritans all men are born with sin. Brown obviously judges everyone that he meets along his journey, whether correctly or not we do not know. But rather than focusing on his own personal sins and problems he focuses on those of others.

When I read this story for the second time I questioned why then his wife Faith is involved in helping him TO sin. This is where I could be stretching it a bit.  The only answer based on what I know of Puritan values is that perhaps Goodman Brown, as a newlywed, was feeling guilty for enjoying the new sexual relationship he had with his wife. I see Faith having a double meaning, as being Brown’s wife, and symbolizing this new relationship to sin and marriage, AND as being used to symbolize his loss of faith and his giving in to this sin. His journey through the woods then symbolizes his fight against these feelings. He finds, then, that he is not the only one to face these troubles. Goody Cloyse seems to a good relationship with the devil herself, and I find it a bit odd that she taught Goodman Brown his “catechism,” as I thought that women were not allowed to teach such things as pertained to the church. And after all, Hawthorne does say, “there was a world of meaning in this simple comment.” Could this mean that Goody Cloyse was adulterous? As well as the other women mentioned in the story?