English Discussion

Ambivalence in "Young Goodman Brown" Author(s): Walter J. Paulits Source: American Literature, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Jan., 1970), pp. 577-584 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2924207 Accessed: 27-05-2020 02:44 UTC

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578 merican Literature

ambiguity but, I think, in the service of a more pervasive theme of ambivalence.' In his fine book, Allegory: The Theory of a Symbolic Mode,

Angus Fletcher writes: "Allegorical literature always displays to- ward its polar antagonisms a certain ambivalence. This much-used term does not mean 'mixed feelings,' unless we are willing to amend the phrase to a 'mixture of diametrically opposed feelings.' "2 The generic names in Hawthorne's tale and the biblically allusive nature of the temptations Goodman is subjected to seem sufficient proof of Hawthorne's allegorical intent, and Hawthorne's awareness of radical ambivalence seems evident from sentences in "Rappac- cini's Daughter": "It was not love . . . nor horror . . . but a wild offspring of both love and horror that had each parent in it, and burned like one and shivered like the other"; and "Blessed are all simple emotions, be they dark or bright! It is the lurid intermixture of the two that produces the illuminating blaze of the infernal regions."3 I believe that "Young Goodman Brown" is an allegorical presentation of ambivalence.

The precise ambivalence in Brown at the beginning of the tale is an attraction for the Devil conjoined with a regret at leaving Faith. Neither has Brown given himself to the Devil nor is he leaving Faith definitively: "Well, she's a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night I'll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven."4 Whether this dalliance with evil makes sense theolog- ically or socially or not seems to me to be peripheral; what is im- portant is that Brown deserts Faith and goes into the forest to meet the Devil in a highly tentative venture. He has not firmly decided. This tentativeness is important because it springs from his emotive ambivalence-he wants two things strongly enough to be unwilling to give up either. The Devil's role is to lead him to complete evil by temptation and fall. The tale becomes in great

1 Cf. Richard Harter Fogle, "Ambiguity and Clarity in Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown,'" New England Quarterly, XVIII, 448-465 (Dec., 1945), or his Hawthorne's Fiction: The Light and the Dark (Norman, Okla., I952), which incorporates the pre- vious article. Fogle successfully illustrates how Hawthorne maintains manifold meanings in a controlled structure, but he does not distinguish between ambiguity and am- bivalence.

2 Ithaca, N. Y., I964, p. 224. ' In Hawthorne's Works, Mosses from an Old Manse (Cambridge, Mass., I882), II, 123.

All future references to the tale will be taken from this source and will be incorporated into the text.

' Ibid., p. go.

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Notes 579

part, thus, a record of the temptation. As Fletcher says: "The heart of moralizing actions becomes temptation, which asserts the desirability of evil."5

Once in the forest and after having met the Devil, Brown almost immediately questions the emotive attraction that has drawn him there: "I have scruples touching the matter thou wot'st of" (p. 9I). That he then "unconsciously" (p. 92) resumes his walk evi- dences the presence of the two feelings battling within him. From the time Brown shows hesitation Hawthorne casts the story into the framework of a temptation leading toward decision. The Devil's easy assumption of his role as tempter is consonant with his knowledge that the pact is not yet complete. He knows he must convince Brown of the goodness of the decision to be made. When Brown is convinced, the conflicting feelings will presumably cease, and he will become the dedicated votary a witch or warlock traditionally is.

Hawthorne, after detailing an unavailing conversation in which the Devil uses an "everybody-has-done-it" argument, constructs a major tripartite segment which has affinities with the biblical ac- count of the triple temptation of Christ in the desert. Hawthorne's allusive use of the biblical scene is consistent with the theme of am- bivalence he is working out. That Christ underwent everything that man suffered, sin excluded, is a biblical truism that Brown should have been aware of. And perhaps he is presumed to have been, because his reactions are remarkably like Christ's-up to a point. Brown is almost as stubborn as Christ. After Goody Cloyse's apparition, he says: "my mind is made up. Not another step will I budge on this errand" (p. 95). After he hears the Minister's and the Deacon's "voices" he cries: "With heaven above and Faith be- low, I will yet stand firm against the devil" (p. 98). But after Faith's seeming defection he appears to yield. The yielding should be understood in its relationship to Christ's third reaction. Christ committed himself to the service of his Father: "It is the Lord your God whom you will adore" (Matt. 4:IO). His decision was firm, and any feelings he might have had to the opposite of the service of the Lord (which, in terms of the biblical story, could only have been service of the Devil) dissipate, and he is at oneness

5 P. 225.

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580 American Literature

with himself, and his peace is symbolized by the angels who come to minister to him. Brown should have imitated Christ. But he is deceived by the spectral evidence of the ribbon, just as he had been by the earlier apparitions,6 and so for a while Brown does not follow the biblical pattern. But at the initiation scene Hawthorne reverts to this important Christ-temptation scheme, and Brown will ulti- mately imitate Christ. Much, though, will have happened by then.

Brown's yielding should also be understood in its relationship to the ambivalence he suffers when he enters the forest. The Devil has not succeeded in fixing the vacillating Brown with any of the previous temptations, and until he does succeed, Brown's am- bivalence will continue. It would be a mistake to read Brown's mad flight through the forest, however, as a definitive success for the Devil. After all, Brown is hurrying toward the Witches' Meeting where the initiation can actually occur, and until he arrives he is simply not an initiate. What impels him is more frenzy than ra- tional, unimpassioned choice, and it is a standard moral dictum that passion alleviates the gravity of moral fault. Brown is "mad- dened with despair" (p. 99), he is "still rushing onward with the

instinct that guides mortal men to evil" (p. 99), he is "the demoniac" (p. ioo). Significantly, after Brown arrives and ex- amines the assembly, his latent revulsion against the initiation stirs again when he does not see Faith: "'But where is Faith?' thought Goodman Brown; and, as hope came into his heart, he trembled" (p. ioi). It seems to me that all Hawthorne can legitimately be made to say between the ribbon and the new hope is that Faith seems to have defected; but that Brown sees now the goodness of the Devil's proposal is far from evident. Thus, the great purpose of the Witches' Sabbath will be precisely to show the desirability of rationally accepting the initiation.

6 This issue is discussed in David Levin, "Shadows of Doubt: Specter Evidence in Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown,'" American Literature, XXXIV, 344-352 (Nov., I962); this article is attacked by Paul J. Hurley, "Young Goodman Brown's 'Heart of Darkness,'" American Literature, XXXVII, 410-4I9 (Jan., I966). I agree more with Levin than with Hurley. As Fletcher indicates, deception is almost inherent in the presentation of Christian allegory: "The Christian allegory that deals with the hero's search for holiness, which is a state of mind as well as of being, displays rhot only the tortures of the lover of God, but equally the tortures of self-knowledge. The hero is never, until final redemption saves him, sure of himself; appearances may be deceptive" (p. 227). Necessary modifications made, the sentence applies to Brown.

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Notes 58I

Therefore, Brown's state at the time of the calling-forth of the candidates is not radically different from his state when he first entered the forest: he is torn between conflicting desires. Never- theless the flight has apparently shown him something of himself. He now knows how related he is to the entire grim group, "with whom he felt a loathful brotherhood by the sympathy of all that was wicked in his heart" (p. 102). He knows the instinct within him that can drive him toward evil, and he senses this same instinct in others. But the important qualification to be made here is that the brotherhood he has with the others is experienced as "loathful." The feeling is one of revulsion, and yet he does step forward for full initiation, the consequence of which will presumably be that he will become a full member of the coven. But the sense of loathing is significant, because its presence indicates that Satan's work is still unfinished. All the speeches Satan speaks prior to the aborted bap- tism will be directed toward one of two purposes: either Brown's final self-convincing or Brown's self-delusion. In either case the Devil's purpose will have been gained. Hawthorne's presentation of Satan's final argument is delicate.

Satan tempts the couple (really, Brown; Faith is not important in herself in the intent of the tale) with two promises, not one. The first is: "Welcome . . . to the communion of your race" (p. I03); "By all the sympathy of your human hearts for sin" (p. I03), "It shall be yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the deep mystery of sin" (p. I04). This is an invitation to knowledge, to recognition ,of sin, first in oneself and then in others. I would suggest that, in itself, nothing is wrong with possessing this knowledge; for ex- ample, Minister Hooper's awareness of sin, while it does isolate him, paradoxically also brings him closer to his parishioners in their most critical hours, especially death. The second invitation is very different: "ye . . . shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot" (pp. I03-I04); "Evil must be your only happiness" (p. I04). These invitations are not directed only toward knowledge; rather they refer to values pursued and attained and to the joy one experiences in their possession. For Brown to accede to the first invitation would have been no victory for Satan. But if Brown makes evil his only good, all other goods cease to have value for him, and his ambivalence is replaced by

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582 American Literature

"univalence." He will be the Devil's and a fully participating mem- ber of the coven. But the Devil's clever intermingling of the two invitations also leaves open the possibility that an uninformed "no" could still be "yes" to issues unsuspected by the simple Good- man.

Hawthorne does not allow Brown to opt for or against initiation. on the terms of the second invitation. At the exactly climactic point in the tale, Brown suffuses elements of the first invitation with elements of the second. The climax does not come in terms of value and happiness but in terms of knowledge: "Herein did the shape of evil dip his hand and prepare to lay the mark of baptism upon their foreheads, that they might be partakers of the mystery of sin, more conscious of the secret guilt of others, both in deed and thought, than they could now be of their own" (p. I04). The entire significance of the baptism for Brown will be, then, that the two will know the sins of each other: "The husband cast one look at his pale wife, and Faith at him. What polluted wretches would the next glance show them to each other" (pp. I04-I05). On these terms Brown refuses the baptism violently.

The refusal is tremendously significant. In his not listening carefully to the Devil's words Brown has conflated the two promises into one meaning and has allowed the horror of the second to flow over onto the first. Value suffuses meaning in the one place in the tale where it is most necessary for Brown to recognize ambiguity, an ambiguity he more than the Devil has created because he has taken two frankly presented meanings as one and filled it with one of the feelings contending within him. Ambivalence has led Brown to the point where ambiguity can confuse him. In a revulsion against the evil, he refuses the baptism. But by this time the evil is not only evil; it is also a good-knowledge. So that when Brown rebels he rebels against knowledge of sin and does so with all the violence of his revulsion against evil. The paradox results that an act of virtue-repelling temptation-throws him into as inhuman a state as his yielding would have done.

The definition of Brown's final state in Salem Village seems to be of critical importance for a valid reading of the tale. I cannot believe he has become "Badman Brown" on his return.7 After all,

7 Cf. Thomas E. Connolly, "How Young Goodman Brown Became Old Badman Brown," College English, XXIV, 153 (Nov., I962).

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Notes 583

he has done an act of virtue, even though he does not recognize the error he had allowed to enter and never will. His stance be- comes, therefore, that of the man who opts for the wrong by seeing the wrong as right. And the decision does not remove ambivalence, because all the rest of his life is spent in pursuing the knowledge he has denied himself. He habitually ascribes to others what he suspects they are guilty of (here is his evil: he does not forgive nor sympathize, but then how could he?-he is not sure). His state becomes one of doubt, a concomitant of ambivalence.8

But the elements of the ambivalence have changed. In the be- ginning Brown was torn between Faith and the Devil. Now the ambivalence is rarefied and psychologized. Its object is Faith and all the other human beings in the village. He can never know their evil, and yet he is drawn toward them; he judges, but always on doubt. Fletcher describes the state:

This "chronic coexistence of love and hatred, both directed towards the same person," becomes something more subtle when it is transferred to the sphere of doubt and certainty. Along with the emotions that are ambivalent, when this coexistence is in full force, there are likely to be intellectual equivalents in the form of extreme doubt as to the good and/or evil of the loved object.9

The terrible thing about Brown is that his customary spirit is that of the "hanging-judge," but never with assurance; he vacillates and in his vacillation suffers. Drawn toward wife and fellowmen, he can be only a begetter of children rather than real husband and father, and he is never a companionable fellow among fellows. He is always searching, scrutinizing, judging, condemning. The "loath- ful brotherhood" can never become a loving brotherhood, either in evil or in charity, because his suspicion isolates him. He had re- fused knowledge of sin because he had thought its possession was evil, and his lifelong imperception then casts him into a second am- bivalence more harrowing than the first, because he lives in it in a state of righteousness concerning himself and of condemnation of others-but always agonizing because never complete.

Hawthorne's allegory presents a common human situation which occurs when a man is in possession of only partial knowledge and is

' "Doubt, the intellectual concomitant of 'ambivalence' " (Fletcher, p. 227). 9 Ibid.

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584 American Literature

torn between opposing goods and feelings. He can-and in "Young Goodman Brown" does-choose wrongly, either knowingly or not. In either case he must pay the price. If the choice was a mistake, the price can cause the spectator to complain: "But it really wasn't his fault! He was trying to do right." No matter. The intolerance of the whole rests on the shoulders of each. That is why I do not read Hawthorne as completely condemning Brown or completely ap- proving him. Brown is Everyman on his uncertain pilgrimage, wanting both good and evil at the same time and not being alert enough to keep them from getting confused. He pays the price in his own unhappy life. In other words, "Young Goodman Brown" is an artistic presentation of an ambivalence all human hearts and heads may be subject to and that some, probably many, fall prey to.

Three Melville Reviews in the London

Weekly Chronicle

HERSHEL PARKER

University of Southern California

R EVIEWS of Mardi and The Whale have been found in the Lon- don Morning Chronicle,' but three Melville reviews in the Lon-

don Weekly Chronicle have not been noticed before.2 The first is a remarkably thoughtful review of Mardi on April I, I849. The second is an equally fine review of The Whale on November 29, I85I (while the title of the newspaper was temporarily changed to the Weekly News and Chronicle). The third is a less favorable but perhaps no less thoughtful review of Israel Potter on June 2, I855-the only British newspaper review of the book yet discovered. The texts of these reviews are reprinted here in full, but quotations from Melville have been condensed to opening and closing sen- tences, with the extent of the quotations indicated in brackets.

1 Hugh W. Hetherington, Melville's Reviewers (Chapel Hill, N. C., I96I), pp. I08-109, I 99-200.

2 I found the review of Mardi in the fragmentary file of the Weekly Chronicle at the New-York Historical Society. I am deeply obligated to Lee Bennett (Mrs. David Bennett), who examined for me the full file of the Weekly Chronicle in the British Museum and discovered the reviews of The Whale and Israel Potter.

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