Free YGB Essay: Historical and Biographical Impact of Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown

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Young Goodman Brown: Historical and Biographical Impact

So much for textual matters, paraphrasable content, and genre. What kind of historical or biographical information do we need in order to get the full impact of this story aesthetically and intellectually? Obviously, some knowledge of Puritan New England is necessary. We can place the story in time easily, because Hawthorne mentions that it takes place in the days of King William (that is, William III, who reigned from 1688 to 1702). Other evidences of the time of the story are the references to persecution of the Quakers by Brown's grandfather (the 1660s) and King Philip's War [primarily a massacre of Indians by colonists [1675-1676]), in which Brown's father participated. Specific locales like Salem, Boston, Connecticut, and Rhode Island are mentioned, as are terms used in Puritan ecclesiasticism and government, such as ministers, elders, meetinghouses, communion tables, saints fin the Protestant sense of any Christian), selectmen, and lecture days.

But it is not enough for us to visualize a sort of "First Thanksgiving" picture of Pilgrims with steeple-crowned hats, Bibles, and blunderbusses. For one thing, we need to know something of Puritan religion and theology. This means at least a slight knowledge of Calvinism, a main source of Puritan religious doctrine. A theology as extensive and complex as Calvinism and one that has been the subject of so many misconceptions cannot be described adequately in a handbook of this type. But at the risk of perpetuating some of these misconceptions, let us mention three or four tenets of Calvinism that will illuminate to some degree the story of Goodman Brown. Calvinism stresses the sovereignty of God --- in goodness, power, and knowledge. Correspondingly, it emphasizes the helplessness and sinfulness of man. Man has been, since the Fall of Adam, innately and totally depraved. His only hope is in the grace of God, for God alone is powerful enough (sovereign enough) to save him. And the most notorious, if not the chief, doctrine is predestination, which includes the belief that God has, before their creation, selected certain people for eternal salvation, others for eternal damnation. Appearances are therefore misleading; an outwardly godly man might not be one of the elect. Thus it is paradoxical that Goodman Brown is so shocked to learn that there is evil among the apparently righteous for this was one of the most strongly implied teachings of his church.

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