Bad Women in Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown Essay -- Young Goodman Br

Few, if any, women in Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown are truly good. Even the seemingly opera hat ones are involved in devil-worship at least, and maybe untold more. This essay intends to explore this subject of bad women in the tale. Randall Stewart in Hawthornes Female Characters states that there are three faces of female characters in Hawthornes writings (1) the wholesome New England girl, bright, sensible and self-reliant (2) the frail, sylph-like creature, easily swayed by a stronger personality and (3) the woman with an exotic richness in her temperament (98), and that Young Goodman Brown has in Faith cheerfulness, prettiness, and a simple-minded domesticity (99). So this categorizes her under type (1). Goody Cloyse may be a type (2). In Young Goodman Brown the references to abortion and euthanasia refer to types (1) and (2) in my judgment. In Salem village that fateful night when the young puritan husband was departing home for the night, he exchanged a parting cod dle with his young wife. From this we can conclude that he had a basic look on for her feelings(?) The wind was playing with the bug ribbons of her cap. Literary critic Wagenknecht surveys some of the searing interpretation relative to these ribbons Mathews finds the pastel of infancy in pink, but since pink is a color intermediate between red and white, William V. Davis prefers to take it as suggesting neither total depravity nor innocence but the tainted innocence, the uncanny imperfection of mankind, a view shared, up to a point, by Robinson. . . . (62). So the critics would have us believe that the author is making a rehearsal here that seemingly good Faith is not all that good, found on... ... BIBLIOGRAPHY Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Complete Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York Doubleday and Co., Inc.,1959. 247-56. Lang, H.J.. How Ambiguous is Hawthorne? In Hawthorne A accrual of Critical Essays, edited by A.N. Kaul. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, Inc. , 1966. Leavis, Q.D. Hawthorne as Poet. In Hawthorne A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by A.N. Kaul. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1966. Martin, Terence Six Tales. In Nathaniel Hawthorne. New York Twayne Publishers Inc., 1965. Stewart, Randall. Hawthornes Female Characters. In Readings on Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by Clarice Swisher. San Diego, CA Greenhaven Press, 1996. Wagenknecht, Edward. Nathaniel Hawthorne The Man, His Tales and Romances. New York Continuum Publishing Co., 1989.