Symbolism of Sin in Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter and Young Goodman Brown

Introduction: Hawthorne's Puritan Heritage and Symbolism

Nathaniel Hawthorne was one of the great nineteenth-century masters of American fiction. The Scarlet Letter and Young Goodman Brown are two works that contain heavy symbolism of sin and immorality. Hawthorne, being of Puritan heritage, sets The Scarlet Letter in the seventeenth-century Puritan settlement of Boston.

Hawthorne had a direct connection to the infamous Salem witch trials. As he writes in the introduction to The Scarlet Letter, his ancestor John Hawthorne had presided over the Salem trials of 1692, linking him through bloodline to the persecution of the "supposedly demonic forces" (Maus). Hawthorne writes that his family is stained by the blood from this "martyrdom of the witches" and expresses hope that his literary works can serve as a form of repentance (Maus). This biographical context is essential to understanding the symbolism that runs through both works.

As Nathaniel Hawthorne's entry at Britannica notes, his fiction persistently grappled with the legacy of Puritanism and the psychology of sin — themes that were anything but abstract for a writer whose own family bore a share of responsibility for one of colonial America's darkest episodes. Italo Calvino observes that Hawthorne's best works are always grounded in the presence of sin in the human heart (Maus), a claim fully supported by both works examined here.

The Scarlet Letter: Sin, Guilt, and Banishment

The protagonist of The Scarlet Letter, Hester, is forced to wear the scarlet letter "A" on her breast to symbolize her sin of infidelity, which resulted in a daughter named Pearl. When town officials attempt to take the child away, a young minister comes to the aid of mother and child, enabling them to remain together. In this story, humankind is portrayed as sinful, and human suffering is essentially understood as punishment from God.

Although Hawthorne portrays the young minister as compassionate and just, he also depicts him with physical and psychological symptoms taken to represent an unhealthy mind and spirit — symptoms that are essentially the result of guilt. Hawthorne writes: "Most of the spectators testified to having seen, on the breast of the unhappy minister, a SCARLET LETTER — the very semblance of that worn by Hester Prynne — imprinted in the flesh" (Scarlet). While The Scarlet Letter represents the story of Adam and Eve and the original sin resulting in banishment from the community of God, Young Goodman Brown represents the hysteria of the witch trials.

Young Goodman Brown: Witchcraft, the Devil, and Moral Complexity

The protagonist, Goodman Brown, sets out on an errand at sunset, traveling through the woods in darkness. Hawthorne establishes a pattern for evil and devil worship by placing Brown in the nighttime forest, where witches were believed to gather — "a regular locale for demonic activity in his works," one also found in The Scarlet Letter (Maus). Hawthorne uses "the image of the devil to allegorize the moral conflict within his own soul and, by extension, those of all people" (Maus). In this story, Hawthorne creates the "most direct, unabstracted depiction of a devil" found in any of his fiction (Maus). He offers hints of what is to come when Brown remarks that "There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree," and later cries, "With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil" (Hawthorne).

Joseph Modugno writes that Hawthorne probes the psychology of the witchcraft frenzy era in order to offer "insights into the moral complexity of human nature" (Modugno). According to Herman Melville, Young Goodman Brown reveals Hawthorne at his best — a "skillful writer of symbolic allegory and astute interpreter of Puritan history" (Modugno). Not only does the story engage the issue of the witch trials, but several characters bear the names of Salem residents who had been charged with witchcraft, such as Goody Cloyse (Modugno).

Hawthorne weaves family facts into the plot and theme, and as Edward Wagenknecht points out, he is "perfectly clear-cut on witchcraft, as perhaps he had to be to purge himself in his own mind of the sins of his ancestors" (Modugno). In this story, an entire habit of the Puritan mind is on trial, and Brown is an "unwitting yet not quite unwilling victim" — a circumstance that adds recognition to the problem that detecting a witch is similar to discovering a saint (Modugno). Hawthorne uses the story to point out that witchcraft ultimately ended the Puritan world: "its logic of evidence could not stand the Devil's own test of faith" (Modugno). More background on the Salem witch trials helps illuminate the historical stakes Hawthorne was engaging in this allegory.

Conclusion: Sin as the Heart of Hawthorne's Fiction

Italo Calvino writes that Hawthorne's best works are always based on the presence of sin in the human heart (Maus). This is evident in both Young Goodman Brown and The Scarlet Letter, for both stories reflect humankind's capacity for sin — and the psychological, social, and spiritual consequences that follow from it.