Young+Goodman+Brown+Historical+Context

media type="custom" key="12842082"The short story, “Young Goodman Brown”, like many of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s works, is heavily influenced by both his family history, as well as the rich historical foundation inherent in the New England region. Mankind’s inborn evil and penchant for sin are recurring themes in Hawthorne’s writing. As such, “Young Goodman Brown” contains subtle allusions to not only his ancestral past, but also the shameful history of misguided religious zeal of the Salem, Massachusetts area. 

media type="custom" key="12879254"Nathaniel’s great-great grandfather, John Hathorne, was one of a number of judges who oversaw the Salem witch trials. John’s own father, William, was also a magistrate. This is reflected in the father of Goodman Brown, who is a projection of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s own descendants. The dark stranger says of these two men “I helped your grandfather, the constable, when he lashed the Quaker woman so smartly through the streets of Salem; and it was I that brought your father a pitch-pine knot, kindled at my own hearth, to set fire to an Indian village” (Hawthorne 5). Being of Puritan descent in Massachusetts Bay Colony, William Hathorne “persecuted both Indians and Quakers, leading two hundred of the former into slavery after killing another eight and ordering Anne Coleman and four of her Quaker friends whipped through Salem, Boston, and Dedham” (Walsh Jr. 335).

media type="custom" key="12879264"Like Goodman Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne believed the sins of the past remained with us. In his preface to //The House of the Seven Gables// he explains this feeling by writing “the author has provided himself with a moral – the truth, namely, that the wrongdoing of one generation lives into the successive ones”(Sylvan).

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