NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE' S USE OF WITCH AND DEVIL LORE
APPROVED:
Major Professor
Consulting Professor
Iinor Professor
f, sr. auifUvi
Chairman of" the Department of English
Dean of the Graduate School
Robb, Kathleen A., Nathaniel Hawthorne;s Fictional Use
of Witch and Devil Lore. Master of Arts (English), December, - v
1970, 119 pp., bibliography, 19 titles.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's personal family history, his boy-
hood in the Salem area of New England, and his reading of
works about New England's Puritan era influenced his choice
of witch and Devil lore as fictional material. The witch-
ci"aft trials in Salem were evidence (in Hawthorne's inter-
pretation) of the errors of judgment and popular belief which
are ever-present in the human race. He considered the witch
and Devil doctrine of the seventeenth century to be indicative
of the superstition, fear, and hatred which governs the lives
of men even in later centuries. From the excesses of the
witch-hunt period of New England history Hawthorne felt moral
lessons could be derived.
The historical background of witch and Devil lore, while
helpful in illustrating moral lessons, is used by Hawthorne
to accomplish other purposes. The paraphernalia of witchcraft
with its emphasis on terrible and awesome ceremonies or
practices such as Black Sabbaths, Devil compacts, image-magic,
spells and curses, the Black Man in'the forest, spectral shapes,
and familiar spirits is used by Hawthorne to add atmospheric
qualities to his fiction. Use of the diabolic creates the
effects of horror, suspense, and mystery. Furthermore, such
2
elements of witch and Devil doctrine (when introduced in The
Scarlet Letter, short stories, and historical sketches) also
provide an aura of historical authenticity, thus adding a v
dimension of reality and concreteness to the author's fiction.
In developing fictional characters Hawthorne uses witch
and Devil lore, too. Self-idolatry, inner predilections to
evil, and the presence of psychological inner "devils" or
"demons" are matters which confront Hawthorne's characters
in the language or atmosphere of witch and Devil tradition.
The diabolic and all its accompanying paraphernalia
even lends itself to humor and irony. Hawthorne often uses
his Devil and witchcraft material to emphasize the discrepancy
between appearance and reality. Whimsy, fantasy, and illusion
are the forms which Devil and witch lore adopt in less serious
contexts. Hawthorne uses the terminology of witch and Devil
tradition to satirize, amuse, and comment ironically on man
and society.
Whether employed seriously, humorously, or ironically,
Hawthorne's frequent use of the language, imagery, symbolism,
and atmosphere of witch and Devil lore indicates that he found
it to be a valuable literary tool. Manipulated in various ways,
the lore of witches and the Devil either adds historical con-
creteness to' ambiguous and fantastic plots or characters, or
it provides the necessary illusion and whimsy to make a plot
3
acceptably light and fanciful. Characters, settings, psycho-
logical insights, and themes revolve around witch and Devil
lore in a number of Hawthorne's works. v
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE'S USE OF WITCH AND DEVIL LORE
THESIS
Presented to the Graduate Council of the
North Texas State University in Partial
Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the. Degx-ee of
MASTER OF ARTS
By
Kathleen A. Robb, B. S.
Denton, Texas
January, 1971
PREFACE
In The Scarlet Letber and several short stories such as v
"Young Goodman Brown," "Alice DoaneTs Appeal," "My Kinsman
Major Molineux," "The Hollow of the Three Hills," and
"Feathertop," Nathaniel Hawthorne uses his conception of the
Devil and the historical background of the Salem witch de-
lusion. Hawthorne's ancestry partly accounts for his inter-
est in Salem witchcraft. One of his ancestors (whom he
mentions in the introduction to The Scarlet Letter) partici-
pated wholeheartedly in the witchcraft period of New England's
history. During the twelve years after 1825 that Hawthorne
spent in Salem in secluded study, he immersed himself in a
study of the history and legends of New England.
From his readings in various sources Hawthorne drew
material for the historical background of his writings.
Milton and Bunyan provided a classic Puritan description of
the Devil and his activities. Histories of New England were
factual sources for material on the Salem trials and exe-
cutions. By reading the accounts of the Devil and his con-
federates in the works of Cotton and Increase Mather, Hawthorne
derived information about seventeenth century New England
doctrine and mythology concerning the diabolic wonders of the
invisible world.
111
The many aspects of New England witchcraft which
Hawthorne uses contribute historical authenticity to his
work. Spectral evidence, Black Sabbaths, witches, wizards,
Devil compacts, the Black Man, demonic Indian sachems, be-
witched children, and familiars were all part of the para-
phernalia of the witch panic of seventeenth century New
England. I'ictional use of the Devil and witches or wizards
provided Hawthorne with a realistic and vivid historical
background, and qualities of horror, suspense, and mystery
in the Gothic tradition.
Hawthorne uses the Devil and his associates, however,
as more than just historic backdrops or elements of sen-
sationalism. The diabolic element is used to develop themes
and characters. Using the terminology of witch and Devil
lore figuratively and symbolically, Hawthorne employs the
language and composite elements of diabolicism seriously,
humorously, or ironically to achieve literary effects.
Often the diabolic is Hawthorne's device for exploring such
abstract concepts as sin, evil, and temptation in terms of
demons, devils, and witches. Hawthorne found the elements
of witch and Devil doctrine to be so adaptable to various
fictional purposes that he includes them in many of his
short stories, sketches, and novels. The diabolic was a
valuable and frequent fictional tool for Nathaniel Hawthorne.
IV
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PREFACE . . * iii
Chapter Page
I. HAWTHORNE*S USE OF THE HISTORY OF NEW ENGLAND WITCHCRAFT 1
II, HAWTHORNE'S USE OF WITCHCRAFT PARAPHERNALIA . . 2k
III. HAWTHORNE1S CHARACTERIZATION OF THE
DEVIL AND DEMON!CS 56
IV. HAWTHORNE'S LIGHTER USE OF THE DIABOLIC . . . 90
V. CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
BIBLIOGRAPHY . . . . . . . . . 117
CHAPTER I
HAWTHORNE'S USE OF THE HISTORY .OF
NEW ENGLAND WITCHCRAFT
The Devil and witchcraft are topics which figure promi-
nently in Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories, sketches, and
in two of his novels. Hawthorne was able to draw on history
and his own personal background for materials about witch-
craft in seventeenth century New England. Often he used
actual historical events and personages to lend authenticity
and realism to his work. He selected some historical and
traditional materials, and then altered history for literary
effects. The witch and Devil beliefs of the seventeenth cen-
tury are some external aspects of Puritan DeviL and witch-
craft doctrine which Hawthorne employs. He uses these be-
liefs to probe the hidden psychological or moral implications
of his characters' actions.
A great deal of Hawthorne's interest in the Devil and
witchcraft stemmed from the author'-s awareness of his Puritan
ancestry. Hawthorne could trace his Puritan background
through five generations, starting with William Hathorne who
came, to Massachusetts from England in 1630. "William Hathorne
became a distinguished early citizen of Salem. He held the
office of speaker in the House of Delegates and became a
2
major in the Salem militia.Hawthorne describes this
illustrious ancestor in "The Custom House" as, "this grave,
bearded, sable-cloaked and steeple-crowned progenitor" who
was "soldier, legislator, judge . . . and ruler in the
Church." Hawthorne found the "dim and dusky grandeur" of
his first ancestor to be further darkened by the fact that
William Hathorne was a "bitter persecutor" in his position
as a judge.^ The Quakers, whose lively and unconventional
forms of worship shocked staid Puritans, found Major William
Hathorne to be a harsh foe. The Major ordered the chastise-
ment of one Quaker zealot, Ann Coleman. She was publicly
flogged through the streets of Salem--a fact to which
Hathorne refers several times in his writings.3
Another early ancestor whose career interested Hawthorne
and influenced his writings was Judge John Hathorne, son of
Major Hathorne. Like his father, John Hathorne was a promi-
nent citizen of New England. He was one of the two original
justices of the preliminary witch examinations in Salem in
1692. Many magistrates at the trials took part in the pro-
ceedings at various intervals. Hathorne acted as judge almost
^Randall Stewart, Nathaniel feawthorne, A Biography (New Haven, 1948), p* 1. Stewart says that Hawthorne changed" the family name,by adding a "w" shortly after leaving college.
^Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Works of_ Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by George Parsons Lathrop ("Boston, 1883), V,~2^TT Citations from Hawthorne in my text are to theL-athrop edition, hereafter cited, as Works.
3Ibid., II, 92; III, 462-463; V, 24.
continuously through the trial period from its beginning
to its end.*"1" Hathorne's steady attendance and zealous
participation indicated to Hawthorne (as well as early
colonial and modern historians) that Judge John Hathorne
was a deep believer in the presence of the Devil in New
England and in the diabolic work of witches and wizards.
Judges John Hathorne and Jonathan Gorwin were, first
sent to Salem Village to conduct preliminary examinations
of accused witches on March 1, 1692. Transcripts of the
trials indicate that Hathorne conducted the examinations
and trials almost singlehandedly, although he presumably
had Gorwin's consent and moral support.^ For the most part
the Judge's conduct of the trials was not a model of equi-
table jurisprudence. The guilt of the accused was not in
doubt; the trials were conducted mainly to force confessions.
Nathaniel Hawthorne and historians have consistently viewed
Hathorne's judicial conduct with strong disapproval. Ac-
cording to a modern historian, Chadwick Hansen:
John Hathorne asked most of the questions and established the judicial attitude that was to prevail throughout most of the examinations and trials. Rather than adopting the stance of an impartial investigator . . . he acted more like a prosecuting attorney than a
^Chadwick Hansen, Witchcraft at Salem (New York, 1970), p. 61.
^Marion Starkey, The Devil, in Massachusetts (New York. 1949), p. 38.
magistrate, assuming the guilt of the person under examination and trying to force a confession with bullying questions . . . .6
The great-great grandson of John Hathorne was deeply im-
pressed by his ancestor's participation in the witch trials.
In "The Custom House" Hawthorne describes the judge as one
who had "inherited the persecuting spirit, and had made him-
self so conspicuous in the martyrdom of the witches . . . .
Another of Hawthorne's ancestors, Philip English, was
also involved in. the Salem witch trials, but in a different
way. English was Salem's richest merchant and a leading
citizen. Despite his wealth and position, he and his wife
were accused of witchcraft and were forced to leave Salem
in order to save their lives.® Philip English is never -
mentioned by Hawthorne in any of the witch tales or novels.
Hawthorne's interest in early members of his family was
focused on those he considered guilty of crimes against
humanity, men capable of much evil as well as good.
Hawthorne expresses some concern about the sins his
misguided or over-zealous ancestors might have committed
and passed on to future generations of Hawthornes, for he
believed that the past reflects on and influences the present. *
Major HathorneTs persecution of the Quakers is regarded by
the writer as an almost indelible "stain" upon the age (as
^Hansen, pp. 58-59. 7Works, V, 2^. O "Hansen, p. 268.
5
well as the man) which would endure for generations. In
"Main Street" Hawthorne, implores, "Heaven grant that, as
the rain of many years has wept upon it [the trail of blood
0"
. . . . so there may have been a dew
of mercy to cleanse this cruel blood-stain out of the record Q
of the persecutor's life!"^ The remains of Judge Hathorne
also bear a "stain" from the blood of his victims, the exe-
cuted witches. "So deep a stain, indeed," writes Hawthorne,
"that his old dry bones . . . must still retain it, if they
have not crumbled, utterly to dusti""*"
Hawthorne believed that men must repent of their sins
in order to achieve salvation. In many stories and his
novels he advocates public confession as a means of "cleansing
the soul" of "stains" like those his ancestors had incurred.
The possibility of repentance by Major William Hathorne and
Judge John Hathorne for their sins is pondered by Hawthorne
in the introductory essay to The Scarlet- Letter. Hawthorne
probably doubted that Major Hathorne repented of his treat-
ment of religious dissenters since the author was aware of
Puritan intolerance of other faiths. There is no historical
record that Judge John Hathorne ever recanted or repented
publicly his part in the trials (although many of his fellow
justices and citizens did. In "The Custom House," there-
fore, Hawthorne claims the right as a representative of his 9Works, V, 24-25. ^Ibid. -^Hansen, pp. 265-268.
6
ancestors to "hereby take shame upon myself for their sakes,
and pray that any curse incurred by them . . . may now and
henceforth be removed."*-^ This passage and several of his
witch tales may be taken as evidence that-part of Hawthorne's
writings on seventeenth century New England is a form of
exculpation for a feeling of ancestral guilt.
Hawthorne playfully suggests that a family curse
directed at ancient members of the family might account for
the Hawthornes' degenei ate condition in modern times.^ The
influence of the past on the present has serious as well as
humorous implications for Hawthorne. The idea of a family
curse was taken from Hawthorne's family history. It was a
traditional belief among the Hawthornes that a witch about
to die on the scaffold had flung a curse at Judge John
Hathorne and his descendents.^ The only historical precedent
for such a belief was a prophetic i-emark made by Captain
Nathaniel Gary in 1692. Mrs. Gary was examined on charges of
witchcraft by Judge Hathorne and his associates. Hathorne
conducted most of the proceedings himself, with his customary
severity and bias. Captain Cary was angered by the court's
"inhuman dealings" and "uttered a hasty speech Cthat God
would take vengeance on them . . . )."^5 But whatever the
basis for the tradition of a family curse, Hawthorne found
•^Works, V, 25. -^Ibid, ^"Stewart, p. 2.
^George Lincoln Burr, editor, Narratives of the Witch-craft Gases 16A-8-1706 (New York, 191 +), p. 351.
7
the idea fruitful, and he uses it in The House of the Seven
Gables.
•I-n The House of the Seven Gables the tradition of a
family curse is a central plot element, and Hawthorne adds
actual historical details to provide the substance of the
curse. Matthew Maule's imprecation is hurled from, the
scaffold at Colonel Pyncheon just as the convicted witch's
legendary curse was directed at Judge John Hathorne. The
actual words of Maule's curse are adapted from the execution
of a seventeenth century New England witch, Sarah Good. She
was executed for witchcraft with five other women on July 19,
1692. As she stood on the scaffold, the Reverend. Nicholas
Noyes reproached her once again with being a witch and urged
her to repent. She replied, "'You're a liar! I am no more
a witch than you are a wizard I If you take my life away,
1 fi
God will give you blood to drink:'" Hawthorne shortened
the form of the curse to a brief, "God will give you blood
to drink!" He also used the traditional story of Nicholas
Noyes1 death as a pattern for Colonel Pyncheon's death in
the novel. Noyes supposedly suffered an internal hemorrhage
and died while bleeding profusely at the mouth, thus physi-
cally fulfilling Sarah Good's prophesy.^ In The House of
Seven Gables, Colonel Pyncheon dies from undetermined causes,
^Starkey, p. 181. ^Hansen, p. 167.
8
but as with Noyes the curse is fulfilled with his death.
The Colonel and his descendent, Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon, die
seated, stained with blood about the mouth and throat, in
their habitual poses of stern judgment and unrelenting
severity toward others.
Hawthorne's ancestry undoubtedly influenced his choice
and treatment of the content of his writings concerning the
Devil and witchcraft. His familiarity with the historic
Salem area reinforced his interest in the past. Hawthorne
was born in. Salem and lived there until he was twelve. In
1816 he moved with his family to Raymond, Maine, but he
returned to Salem to attend school in 1819. After attending
Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, for four years, Hawthorne
again established his residence in Salem. From 1825 to 1837
he lived and, wrote under the social and historical influence
of S a l e m . H i s awareness of Salem's history and his strong
identification with his ancestors gave him "a sort of home
feeling with the past . . and the period of the witch-
craft trials was one of the most vivid aspects of the past
for Hawthorne.^ He often found the social atmosphere of
Salem to be stifling and oppressive, and yet its history was
so prominent and visible that his writings clearly reflect
the influence of the historic and picturesque area. As
Hawthorne remarks, his feelings toward Salem, though
I8Stewart, pp. 16, 26. I9Works. V, 24,
9
ambivalent, were always strong. He writes, "Though in-
variably happiest elsewhere, there, is within me a feeling
for old Salem, which, in lack of a better phrase, I must be
content to call affection,"2®
The landmarks and traditions of old Salem were aspects
of the ancient New England village which Hawthorne incorpo-
rated into his stories and novels. In "Main Street," for
example, he describes the tj>pical architectural design of
Salem houses with their huge central chimneys and "flues so
vast that it must have been easy for the witches to fly out
of them," and their gables, lattice windows, and overhanging
second stories.21 Gallows Hill is a favorite landmark.for
Hawthorne's witch tales and a novel. It is a part of the
setting of "Alice Doane's Appeal," "Main Street," and the
introduction to The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne found land-
marks like Gallows Hill to be so stimulating that (as he
remarks in "Alice Doane's Appeal"), "For my own part, I have
often courted the historic influence of the spot."22
Hawthorne's interest in the past and in the Puritan
Devil is evident in his choice of reading materials. He read
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress as a boy and was familiar with
Milton's work. The historical American witch and Devil
tradition, however, is the element most strongly reflected
in his writings. Most of Hawthorne's devils, witches, and
20Ibid., p. 23. 2IIbid. 22Ibid., XII, 280.
10
wizards are shrewd, powerful, malignant and, occasionally,
almost sympathetic characters. He introduces into his work
the theories of Devil-worship and satanic temptation which ^
ministers like John Hale, Deodat Lawson, John Higginson, and
Cotton and Increase Mather accepted as proven f a c t .
Hawthorne, however, shades his tales with skepticism, inserts
psychological motivations for mankind's beliefs and actions
in the place of seventeenth century superstition and cre-
dulity, and moralizes about the results of blame and suspicion
during the witchcraft period of New England history.
Hawthorne's knowledge of the Puritan era was derived
from his readings in histories, sermons, and diaries of New
Olx
Englanders.During the twelve years after 1325 which
Hawthorne spent in Salem, he devoted much of his time to
reading about the history and legends of New England. Early
histori.es which Hawthorne read included Samuel Sewall's Diary,
Joseph B. Felt's Annals of Salem, John Winthrop's Journal,
and Thomas Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts.^^ Most in-
fluential in terms of sources of witchcraft and Devil materials
were the works of Increase and Cotton Mather, for their writings
provided studies of "afflicted children," details of witch
23Burr, pp. 145-162, 395-425, 389-402.
^Marion Kesselring, Hawthorne's Reading 1828-1850 (New York, 1949), passim.
? 5 ~ Arlin Turner, "A Study of Hawthorne's Origins," un-
published doctoral dissertation, Department of English, Uni-versity of Texas, Austin, Texas, 1934, p. 32.
11
trials, theoi ies about the development of witchcraft, and
reasons for defection to the Devil.
Two of Cotton Mather's works, The Wonders of the In-
visible World (1692) and Magnalia Christi Americana; or The
Ecclesiastical History of New England (1702) were particularly
influential sources for Hawthorne. In The Wonders of the
Invisible World, Mather reports on five witch trials "not as
?6
an Advocate but as a Historian."- Mather chose five "witches"
as illustrative examples of the workings of the Devil in New
England. He records the events of the trials of Martha Carrier,
George Burroughs^ and three other accused persons with the zeal
and scientific observation that matters pertaining to the
supernatural aroused in him.27 Occasionally he recorded his
observations and theories like an advocate rather than as a
historian. Mather's record of Martha Carrier's trial, for
example, is concluded with a subjective note: "Memorandum.
This rampant Hag, Martha Carrier, was the person, of whom the
rest, agreed, 'That the Devil had promised her, she should be OO
Queen of Hell.'" Hawthorne lifted Mather's words from The
Wonders of the Invisible World and used them almost verbatim
in "Young Goodman Brown." As Brown observes the witches1
induction ceremony in the forest he sees Martha Carrier "who
had received the devil's promise to be queen of hell." 26cotton Mather, The Wonders of the Invisible World,
(London, 1862), p. 110.
27Hansen, pp. 221, 226. 28Mather, p. 159.
12
Hawthorne further characterizes Carrier by saying, "A rampant
hag was she."29 Hawthorne utilizes Mather's characterization-
of Martha Carrier in "Young Goodman Brown" in order to empha- m
size Brown's conception of evil.
In another story, however, Hawthorne revises the charac-
terization of Carrier to achieve a different effect. Mather's
suggestion of Carrier's ambition as the basis for her bargain
with the Devil is further developed by Hawthorne in "Main
Street." Pride becomes Martha Carrier's motivation for Devil
worship and her character and appearance are elevated to fit
the role. Thus in "Main Street" Hawthorne describes Carrier
as a woman "with a dark, proud face that has been beautiful,
and a figure that is still majestic." Hawthorne's witch is
a woman "whom the Devil found in a humble cottage, and looked
into her discontented heart, and saw pride there, and tempted
30
her with his promise that she should be Queen of Hell."
Martha Carrier undergoes an imaginative treatment as Hawthorne's
witch, but the idea behind her characterization can be traced
to Mather.
Reverend George Burroughs was-the subject of another of
Mather's illustrative examples. Burrough's trial is recorded
with fascinated horror by Mather who regarded a minister's
transfer of allegiance from God to the Devil as significant
29Works, II, 103. 30Ibid., III, 469.
13
evidence of the Fiend's progress in New England. Burroughs
was considered by many to be the leader of Satan's New England
conspiracy.3^- In The Wonders of the Invisible World Mather
reports that Burroughs was "one who had the promise of being
a King in Satan's Kingdom, now going to be erected . . . jt32
As in the case of Martha Carrier, Mather interprets Burroughs'
motive for becoming the disciple of the Devil to be a desire
for power. Hawthorne's sketch of the minister-wizard in
"Main Street" develops a different characterization of
Burroughs. In this story, pride of intellect rather than
desire for power makes Burroughs a victim of "the very
strength of his high and searching intellect."33 Reverend
George Burroughs of "Main Street" is an individual who yearns
for knowledge: "He went groping onward into a world of '
mystery; at first, as the witnesses have sworn, he summoned
up the ghosts of his two dead wives, and talked with them of
matters beyond the grave; and then . . . he called on Satan
."
Hawthorne's treatment of George Burroughs is thoroughly
imaginative and only superficially based on historical fact.
To emphasize the sinfulness of questing for forbidden know-
ledge, Hawthorne gives his character the intellectual appetite
of a Faust. The real Burroughs was not an astute or pax'ticu-
larly intellectual man. He did not defend himself ably at
31Hansen, pp. 108-109. 32Mather, p. 120.
3%orks, III, 469. 3**Ibid., pp. 469-470.
Ik
his trial, perhaps because of the nature of the charges or
because of elements of his personality which impressed the
judges and jury unfavorably.-^ The transcripts of the trial
record that Burroughs was not accused of summoning the dead.
On the contrary, witnesses testified that the ghosts of the
minister's two wives (whom he. supposedly bewitched, to death)
had left their graves to seek retribution.^ Hawthorne does
observe historic fact in his description of the dignified
manner in which Burroughs met his death, appearing less like
a guilty man than "a Christian saint . . . now going to a
martyr's death."^7
To add historic authenticity to his stories and novels,
Hawthorne often uses the names of actual citizens of Salem.
Three women who were tried and sentenced to death in 1692 by
Judge John Hathorne were Martha Carrier, Sarah Cloyse, and
Martha C o r e y . I n "Young Goodman Brown" the novelist uses
Mather's epitaph for Carrier and refers to Goody Cory as
"that unhanged witch."39 Goodwife Cory was hanged on
September 22, 1692. Hawthorne's reference to Cory as an
^Hansen, p. 108.
^Charles W. Upham, Salem Witchcraft (New York, 1959), II, 160.
Works, III, k70,
SS'premaine McDowell, "Nathaniel Hawthorne and the "Witches of Colonial Salem," Notes and Queries, CLXVI (March 3, 193*+), 152. The woman's name was spelled either "Corey" or "Cory."
39 Works, II, 9U„
15
unhanged witch dates his story before 1692, but more im-
portantly it emphasizes the emotional estrangement that many
Salemites felt from their fellow men during the witchcraft
period. For instance, after seeing the forest witchcraft
ceremony, Brown regards all his neighbors as converts of
Satan, followers of evil. A witch who has not yet been
caught and executed can be identified simply, in Goody
Cloyse's words, as "that unhanged witch."
Sarah Cloyse has a fairly large role in Hawthorne's
"Young Goodman Brown." She is more than an historical prop-
she is a witch with a personality, like Mistress Hibbins in
The Scarlet Letter» The personality of Goody Cloyse in
Hawthorne's tale parallels what is known of the personality
of the real Sarah Cloyse. A woman of good reputation, piety,
and charity, her Salem neighbors were shocked in 1692 to
discover that one who appeared to be of the elect was in
reality (according to the "afflicted children") a foul
witch.^ In the short story, Hawthorne emphasizes that
Goody Cloyse was believed to be "a very pious and exemplary
woman, " •l Brown, however, realizes that she is in reality
an old friend of the Devil. Brown's words, "That old woman
taught me my cathechism," indicate his growing awareness of
evil and loss of faith in those he trusted with his very
soul.^
40Upham, II, 326. ^Works, II, 93. 42Ibid., p. 95.
16
Another historical witch is Mistress Anne Hibbins of
The Scarlet Letter. She was tried for witchcraft twice,
but was not executed until 1656. Her case was one of the
it
first prior to 1692. Hawthorne's Mistress Hibbins is
identified by the novelist as "Governor Bellingham1s bitter-
tempered sister, and the same one who, a few years later,
was executed as a witch. History records the. argumentative
or "bitter-tempered" nature of Mistress Hibbins--she was once
censured by her church for quarreling, and a quarrel with two
neighbors resulted in a charge of witchcraft and her death.
In calling her Governor Bellingham's sister, Hawthorne is
repeating a traditional belief. Hawthorne's Mistress Hibbins
is an old, sour, and somewhat humorous witch. She urges
Hester to take part in orgies in the forest with the Black
Man, but Hester cannot be tempted with the crude forbidden
pleasures of the witch tradition. Mistress Hibbins' Devil
is the mythological Black Man with his book; Hester,
Dimmesdale, and Roger Ghillingworth are lured by subtle temp-
tations and their Devil is the true master of evil.
Even in his most historical writings Hawthorne accepts
and rejects personages and events freely. Using seventeenth
century materials, he makes nineteenth century value judgments
and always observes the past in terms of the present. Re-
vising and rearranging historical facts (and sometimes
^Hansen, p. 35. ^Works, V, ^5Hansen, p. 35,
17
ignoring actual history) is a technique which Hawthorne fre-
quently uses to achieve the best effects in realism, interestt
pathos, and irony. Realism is a major objective of Hawthorne's
historical sketch of Salem in "Main Street." In giving a
panoramic view of the development of the town, he introduces
a variety of historical figures, especially when discussing
Salem witchcraft.
The names of those involved in the trials are mentioned
by Hawthorne to give the sketch authenticity, and he lists
accused witches like George Jacobs, Senior; John Willard;
John and Elizabeth Proctor; Martha Carrier; and George
Burroughs. Those involved in trying or accusing the witches
(Sheriff Curwen, Chief Justice Sewall, the "afflicted children")
are also brought to the reader's attention.^ Hawthorne ig-
nores historical fact when he mentions the tormented fit of
"Mercy Parris, the minister's daughter." At the time of the
trials, Parris had only one daughter, Elizabeth, who was sent
away from the town shortly after its witchcraft troubles
began. The only juvenile in his family to take part in making
accusations with the other "afflicted children" was Parris'
niece, Abigail Williams.^ More than one girl named Mercy
was a "bewitched" child.Perhaps Hawthorne chose to
emphasize the behavior of the minister's daughter and to
46Works, III, 466-468. 1+7Starkey, p. 47.
^Ibid. , pp. 20, 257.
18
name her "Mercy" in order to point out the irony of the
merciless accusations made by children, and to indicate the
spread of witchcraft madness into the homes of the most pious.
Hawthorne again changes history by picturing John Proctor
and his wife Elizabeth in "Main Street" as senile Salemites
who went to death together, hand-in-hand, with courageous
devotion to each other. John Proctor was a vigorous and in-
dependent individual, not a feeble old man when he was exe-
cuted for witchcraft. His wife Elizabeth was sentenced to
hang, but her execution was suspended and she was eventually
pardoned.^ Hawthorne pictures the Proctors "as they go
tottering to the gallows" as pathetic victims of "Universal
Madness." He emphasizes the falseness of the charges made
against the Proctors by sarcastically paraphrasing the charges
made against "the pair of hoary reprobates who have whisked
up the chimney, both on one broomstick" and who have pur-
portedly "shown their withered faces at children's bedsides,
mocking, making mouths, and affrighting the poor little f t C A
innocents in the nighttime. u
Pathos is also achieved in "Alice Doane's Appeal" by a
combined use of fiction and history. The narrator of the
story confesses that in picturing'the events on Gallows Hill
he is trying to evoke compassion and sorrow. He describes
five individuals who represent those who died in 1692 on
**9Ibid. , pp. 198-202. 5QWorks, III, 468.
19
charges of witchcraft. The first two individuals are com-
posite figures, for the qualities assigned to them were
typical characteristics of many persons accused of witch-
craft. The first is a woman "in her dotage, knowing neither
the crime imputed her, nor its punishment.Old age was
a common characteristic of many accused of witchcraft—their
physical infirmities made them less able to defend themselves
in trials, less aware of the import of legal proceedings, and
more apt to be the subject of blame and suspicion. Hawthorne's
second witch is a woman "distracted by universal madness, till
feverish dreams were remembered as realities, and she almost
believed her g u i l t . M a n y of those confronted by the wild
behavior of the "afflicted children" and the incontestable
"proof" of spectral evidence became almost convinced of being
unwillingly guilty and in desperation confessed to uncommitted
53 crimes.
The other three individuals who. climb Gallows Hill in
"Alice Doane's Appeal" are patterned more closely after actual
individuals. Hawthorne's description of "One, a proud man
once, who was so broken down by the intolerable hatred heaped
upon him, that he seemed to hasten his steps, eager to hide
himself in the grave hastily dug at the gallows" may be a
sketch of John Proctor, who was hanged on the same day as the
5IIbid., XII, 293. 52Ibid.
3^Hansen, pp. 147-150.
20
last two witches in the story, Martha Carrier and George
Burroughs.Hawthorne's description, of "a caother who
looked behind, and beheld her peaceful dwelling; she cast •
her eyes elsewhere, and groaned inwardly yet with the
bitterest anguish, for there was her little son among the
55
accusers" suggests Martha Carrier. Carrier's sons did
testify against her (they were tortured until they accused
their mother of being a witch).^ Hawthorne makes Martha
Carrier an object of pity in "Alice Doane's Appeal"--a
distinctly different treatment than she was given in "Main
Street" and "Young Goodman Brown." The last figure in the
procession to Gallows Hill is Reverend George Burroughs.
Hawthorne writes, "I watched the face of an ordained pastor,
who walked onward to . . . death; his lips moved in prayer;
no narrow petition for himself alone, but etnbracing all his r *7
fellow sufferers and the frenzied multitude . . . Again,
history is used as a means of achieving realism and pathos.
Hawthorne was interested in the writings of Cotton Mather,
for they provided excellent insight into the workings of the
seventeenth century New England mind in supernatural and
theological matters. As a nineteenth century thinker, however,
Hawthorne could not interpret the witchcraft period through
Mather's eyes. What Mather saw as necessary action to thwart
Satan's activities in New England, Hawthorne interprets as 5 -Works , XII, 293. 55];bid, 56Burr, p. 363. 57Works, XII, 293-294.
21
"the frenzy of that hideous epoch.Writing as an artist,
not as a historian, Hawthorne describes (in "Alice Doane's
Appeal") Mather's intervention in the execution of five *
witches (Carrier, Burroughs, Willard, Proctor, and Jacobs)
in 1692. Before the executions, Burroughs, who had mounted
the -scaffold, repeated the Lord's Prayer. It was a common
belief that a witch or wizard could not pray. Burroughs
said the prayer flawlessly and movingly. His deportment and
the calm dignity of the rest of the condemned was so im-
pressive that the crowd became restless. Mather was present,
and to prevent a mob attempt to release the accused, he rode
into the crowd, telling the citizens to proceed with the
necessary executions.
Hawthorne refers to this historical incident in "Main
Street." He summarizes the situation and Mather's impromptu
speech saying, "Listen to wise Cotton Mather, who, as he sits
there on his horse, speaks comfortably to the perplexed
multitude, and tells them that all has been religiously and
justly done, and that Satan's power shall this day receive
its death blow in New England."^® In "Alice Doane's Appeal,"
Hawthorne characterizes Mather as "a friend of the fiend"
who was the "representative of all the hateful features of
his time; the one blood-thirsty man, in whom were concentrated
58Works, III, 20. 59Starkey, pp. 207-208.
60Works, III, 470.
22
those vices of spirit and errors of opinion that sufficed
to madden the whole surrounding multitude.
Hawthorne uses the history of witchcraft in New England
in a variety of ways. Trials, executions", actual events, and
citizens give his writings an aura of historical authenticity.
From reading histories and from his awareness of his own
family background, Hawthorne was able to glean interesting
plot elements and materials for character development and
motivation. Themes which are prevalent in Hawthorne's
writings are supplemented by his knowledge of history. Thus
the theme of the influence of the past on the present is a
part of The House of the Seven Gables in which seventeenth
century witchcraft casts a shadow across other generations.
Hawthorne's concern about the sin of willful separation of
an individual from his fellow men is a theme of witch tales
like "Young Goodman Brown" and "Main Street." Lack of faith
in others or inability to share in the general condition of
human society is a frequent theme in Hawthorne's writings.
In the history of Salem witchcraft trials, Hawthorne sees
the corrosive effects of fear and suspicion, for then "friend
JjLookedJ askance at friend, and the husband at his wife, and
the wife at him, and even the mother at her little child.; as
if, in every creature that God has made, they suspected a
, fLO witch or dreaded an accuser."
6IIbid., XII, 29b. 62Ibid.
23
From the past Hawthorne believed mankind could shape
a better future. The witch trials could teach "that the
influential classes, and those who take upon themselves to
be leaders of the people, are fully liable to all the passion-
ate error that has ever characterized the maddest mob."^3
In men like John and William Hathorne and Cotton Mather,
Hawtho:cne detected the strength of will and character which
can be a fatal flaw, making a man liable to error. Hawthorne
advocates that men acknowledge the shared sins and errors of
mankind and set up a "monument" to the witchcraft period
which is "sadly commemorative of the errors of an earlier
race, and not to be cast down, while the human heart has one
infirmity that may result in crime.
63Ibid. 64Ibid., XII, 295.
CHAPTER II
HAWTHORNE1S USE OF WITCHCRAFT PARAPHERNALIA
The paraphernalia of witchcraft (compacts with the
Devil, Black Sabbaths, familiar spirits, enchanted animals,
broomsticks, sacrilegious baptisms, and so forth) are notice-
able elements in Hawthorne's writings involving witchcraft
•and the Devil. Occasionally Hawthorne uses elements of white
witchcraft (harmless or magical witchcraft without the malefic
design of black witchcraft) as the basis of his work. In
some of his most striking literature, however, he uses tra-
ditional aspects of black witchcraft to develop characters,
plots, and themes. The author also introduces some elements
of black witchcraft because of their atmospheric qualities;
thev .evoke..£eel-ing-s- of horror, mystery, and suspense.
Hawthorne derived his knowledge of witchcraft from the
historical and theological treatments of witchcraft by seven-
teenth century New England ministers. The clergy of New
England had a thorough background in traditional English folk
tales and superstitions having to"do with the supernatural.^
They were also familiar with such popular and well-known
works on witchcraft as William Perkin's Damned Art of Witch-
crafty (1608), Josepri Glanvil's Saducismus Triumph at us (1.681),
•'•George L. Kittredge, Witchcraft in Old and New England (New York, 1929), pp. 363, 3%ZZ
Oh.
25
and Richard Baxter's Certainty of the Worlds of Spirits
(1691), not to mention the treatment of the Devil in Milton,
Calvin, and the Bible.2 Increase and Cotton Mather incor-
porated many of the traditional beliefs of witchcraft in
their writings, and in some cases they recorded the oz^iginal
twists in witchcraft doctrine which were invented by the
residents of the New World. From reading the Mathers and
other early New England theologians, Hawthorne gained a
familiarity with the elements of witchcraft-devil doctrine
which are prominent in his writings.
Various aspects of witchcraft doctrine became system-
atized on the continent in the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, and in England somewhat later. Accepted beliefs
about the Devil and his confederates were transported to the
New World by immigrating religious dissenters.^ Thus in New
England as well as in Old England, people sincerely believed
that the Devil's activities followed certain patterns and
were conducted in established ceremonies% The Witches'
Sabbath, for example, was considered to be the Devil's
version of "a combined religious service and business meeting,"
attended by devotees and converts to Devil worship J* Hawthorne
uses certain elements of the New England version of a Witches*
Sabbath in "The Hollow of the Three Hills," "The May-Pole of
^Hansen, pp. 52, 204, 230. "^Kittredge, p. 375.
4Ibid., p, 234.
26
Merry Mount," "My Kinsman, Major Molineux," and The Scarlet
Letter. Only in "Young Goodman Brown," however, does Hawthorne
use nearly all the traditional elements of the Black Sabbath
in his story. In the others he separates elements from the
Witches' Sabbath tradition and develops each element (be it
wild dancing, unholy baptism., a diabolic compact with the
Devil, or whatever) apart from the full context of the tra-
ditional Witches® Sabbath.
iDancing and feasting were considered to be important
aspects of the Black Sabbath by those who believed in witch-
craft. Many "eye-witness" descriptions of the *Black Sabbath
include details of orgiastic dances.^ One "witness" at a
Salem witch trial testified that he had "many times been
transported to places, where the witches were gathered to~
gether, and that he saw feasting and d a n c i n g . I n Puritan
tradition, according to Norris Yates, dance represents "col-
lective evil, . . . pagan sensuality, and lack of restraint."
In the witch, tradition dance is an integral part 6t Devil-
worship. Hawthorne uses a dance motif in several of his
witch tales to emphasize a surrender of body and soul to a
frenzied worship of evil.^ Reflecting the traditional/
^Rossell Hope Robbins, The Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology (New York, 19597* p- <+21,
6Upham, II, 533.
^Norris Yates, "Ritual and Reality: Mask and Dance Motifs in Hawthorne's Fiction," Philological Quarterly, XXXIV (January, 1955), 70. .
27
Puritan thinking about dance and the Devil, Hawthorne re-
marks in "The May-Pole of Merry Mount" that the. "wild
revelry" of the Merry Mounters seemed to Puritan on-lookers
to be comparable to the masques and dances of "those devils
and ruined souls with whom pPuritanj, superstition peopled
the black wilderness."®
The Merry Mounters dance around the may-pole, a "flower-
decked abomination," using it as an'altar . . . of worship"
like "bestial pagans" worshipping an "idol" in the interpre-
tation of Puritan observers.^ The may-pole is symbolic of a
misplaced devotion to frivolity and unreality. Worshipping
gay and thoughtless pleasure, the Merry Mounters conduct a
kind of Devil-worship in their forest revels. Endicott, the
Puritan leader, destroys the may-pole and ends the pagan
antics of Merry Mount. In doing so he saves two individuals,
Edith and Edgar, from the "systematic gaiety," "wild mirth,"
and "vanities" which worship of the may-pole entailed. Edith
and Edgar renounce the carefree existence they had previously
known when they join the Puritan band, and in so doing they
also escape "the fiend, and his bond slaves, the crew of
Merry Mount."*-0
The devil-dance motif in "My Kinsman, Major Molineux"
is developed by Hawthorne as he describes a fantastic midnight
^orks, I, 72. 9Ibid., pp. 80-81.
10Ibid., p. 78.
28
processional. The hero of the story, Robin, searches for
his uncle the best part of an evening and is finally told
that if he waits in a certain location his uncle will make
an appearance. While waiting Robin hears "the sounds of a
trumpet. In New England witchcraft tradition "the. sound
of a diabolic trumpet" summoned the society of witches to a
Sabbath.^ Robin, as he waits, observes a kind of diabolic
dance (really a parade or procession) which is preceded by
shouts, "frequent bursts of music from many instruments of
discord," and "wild and confused laughter." The music be-
comes a "tuneless bray" of "fearful wind-instruments" which
adds to the turmoil and confusion in the street where Robin
stands waiting with citizens of the town.^-3 Spectators are
illuminated by the glaring red light of torches, and in these
hellish surroundings Robin catches a glimpse of a strange
parade.
A procession of wild figures comes into view. Seeing
his tarred and feathered uncle, Major Molineux, as the chief
spectacle of the procession, Robin joins in the mad, hys-
terical laughter about him. His shout "was the loudest
there" when he joins in the spirit of the wild scene. The
procession's leader, a devilish figure with a two-colored
countenance, an "infernal visage," resumes the forward march.
"On they went, like fiends that throng in mockery around some
•L1-Ibid. , III, 636. I2Upham, p. 535. 13Works, III, 637,
29
dead potentate, mighty no more, but majestic still in his
agony. On they went, in counterfeited pomp, in senseless
uproar, in frenzied merriment, trampling all on an old man's
heart. Robin is swept up by emotional- strain into a
temporary alliance with the wild, senseless surrender to
evil which engulfs his fellow men. Although tempted previ-
ously the same evening by evil (the desire to strike rude
citizens and. the urge to succumb to a prostitute's charms),
Robin:surrenders to an evil impulse "only in a period of
community frenzy and demonic activity. The moment of temp-
tation and surrender passes, leaving Robin pale and shaken
by hi^ experience, yet nevertheless wiser for it. He desires
to go home--to the place where only love and innocence were
known to him but, as a street companion tells him, he cannot
return, "not to-night at least . . . ." Robin's experience
with evil has shown him to be a "shrewd youth" and with his
new awareness he "may rise in the world without the help of
1 5 his kinsman, Major Molineux."
Even in his writings which do not deal primarily with
witchcraft, Hawthorne often equates dance with Devil-worship
or with the forces of evil.^ Thus, in The Blithedale Ro-
mance, the community's members stage a masquerade party in
which music is provided by an individual disguised as the
Devil. The "Devil" quips that his music lures those who are
l4Ibid., p. 640. I5Ibid, p. 641. l6Yates, p. 66.
30
1 7
"always ready to dance to the Devil's tune.I,J_/ In their
forest setting the dancers take on imaginary characteristics
of the seventeenth century period. Hollingsworth looks like
"a Puritan magistrate holding inquest of life and death in a
case of witchcraft," Zenobia becomes "the sorceress herself,
not aged, wrinkled and decrepit, but fair enough to tempt
Satan with a force reciprocal to his own," and Priscilla
seems to be "the pale victim, whose body and soul had .been 1 8
wasted by . . . spells."™
A dance comprises a portion of The Marble Faun, too.
Miriam and Donatello initiate a frenzied, paganistic, im-
promptu celebration of life in a dance which, gay as it
appears on the surface, conceals a deeper "doom and sorrow.
The model, the Devil-figure of The Marble Faun, interrupts
the festivities by suddenly appearing before Miriam, dancing
wildly.20 in Hawthorne's writings dance scenes display the
discord, frenzy, unnatural mirth, and uncontrolled emotion
which are all indications of the dark recesses of men's souls
where the Devil reigns and demands worshipThe brotherhood
of evil is recognized in communal activities like dance or
the Black Sabbath in Hawthorne's works. 'Dance is thus associ-
ated with Devil-worship both in the context of the Witches'
Sabbath and by itself: 17Works, V, 559. ISlbid., p. 562..
19Ibid., VI, 110. 20Ibid.
31
-An unholy baptismal ceremony is another element of witch-
craft common in seventeenth century witchcraft theology and
associated, with the Black Sabbath.Deodat Lawson, a Salem
minister, recounts a diabolic baptism in which the Devil,
<the great officer of Hell^ took his converts and, "putting
their heads into water, said over them, 'Thou art mine, I
have full power over thee' and there upon they engaged and
convenanted to renounce God, Christ, their sacred baptism;
and the whole way of Gospel salvation . . . As Lawson
states, the Devil's baptisms were always profane parodies of
the Christian ceremony of baptism, and. they mimicked go? re-
9 9
versed portions of the holy rites. ^
Hawthorne describes satanic baptismal ceremonies in two
of his short stories, "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Hollow
of the Three Hills." In "Young Goodman Brown" the baptism
is a portion of the theme of the story and also serves as a
prop in the. Witches' Sabbath setting. Brown and his wife,
Faith, stand before the Devil waiting to be baptized. The
Devil, in a parody of the Christian ceremony, looks and
behaves like "some grave divine of the New England churches.
Brown observes a natural baptismal font where "a basin was
hollowed . . . in the rock." He wonders, "Did it contain
water, reddened by the lurid light? or was it blood? or, 1h
perchance, a liquid flame?"
2^Kittredge, p. 243. "'2Uphani, p. 436.
23Works, II, 102. 24Ibid . , p. 104.
32
'In witch tradition both in the Old and New World, the
Devil's mock-religious ceremonies always employed blood as
the liquid substitute for communion wine or holy water„25
The possibility that blood or liquid flame is to be used in
Brown's baptism adds a note of horror and suspense to
Hawthorne's story. In his burlesque of true religion, Brown's
Devil imitates the Christian ceremony of baptism by dipping
his hand into the unholy fluid as he "prepared to lay the
mark of baptism upon their foreheads, that they might be
partakers of the Eiystery of sin . . . in a reversal
of the Christian ceremony, Brown and his wife will "partake
of the mystery of sin" rather than the mystery of salvation.
Brown calls upon Faith to resist the awful ceremony, and with
his words the society of witches disappears. Had Brown sub-
mitted to a baptism by "the shape of evil" he would have
delivered his soul entirely to evil. As it is, his faith in
others is so shaken by the Devil that he surrenders to the
sins of doubt and lack of faith thus giving himself informally
to Satan. To renounce faith in God and one's fellow man is
to submit to the Devil.
The baptism of a character by the Power of Evil is an
element of "The Hollow of the Three Hills," also. In this
story Hawthorne does not use the full paraphernalia of the
Witches' Sabbath--the Devil does not personally attend the
"^Robbins, p. 415. ]_QZ+,
33
rites, and no community of sinners observes the ceremony.
In the story a young woman seeks supernatural aid from a
witch who conducts her craft in a hollow basin formed at the
foot of three hills. A pool of water stands in the middle of
the hollow creating a scenic backdrop similar to that used by
"the Power of Evil and his plighted subjects" where, "at mid-
night, . . . they were said to stand round the mantling pool,
disturbing its putrid waters in the preformance of an impious
baptismal rite."27
The young woman desires knowledge of her parents, her
husband, and her child, all of whom she sinned against by
neglecting her natural duties in a pursuit of unnatural and
selfish desires. She has violated the roles of child, wife,
and parent by having "defiled a holy love with a profane
Love,"28 according to William Stein. Her visit to the old
hag in the hollow is symbolic of a final surrender to evil.
She desperately wishes to know what has happened to those
whom she deserted. The young woman is willing to bargain with
her soul for a vision which will ease her remorse and guilt.
Told to kneel at the old woman's feet, and to place her
head on the witch's knees, the young woman allows her cloak
to dip into the pool. The wetting of her garment is a
27Ibid., I, 228-229.
28wiLliacn Bysshe Stein, Hawthorne's Faust, A Study of the Devil Archetype (Gainesville, Florida, 19^3), P« 6.
34
symbolic b a p t i s m . j n the act of seeking out the witch
for forbidden knowledge, she is giving her soul to the
Devil's representative. The young woman is rewarded with
three visions through the witch's spells. Each vision re-
veals a distinct result of sin~-grief (for her parents),
madness (for her deserted husband), and death (for the
abandoned child as well as herself.) The three hills, the
three irreparable wrongs committed by the young sinner, and
the three visions are all counter symbols of the Trinity
which is renounced by those making a pact with evil. Death
(and presumably damnation) are the results of this unholy
baptism, for with the last vision the Devil claims his due
and the witch, having accomplished her part in the ceremony,
remarks with pleasure, "Here has been a sweet hour's sport!"
The Witches' Sabbath was believed to be the Devil's
unholy version of Christian communion,3-*- One minister of
early New England described the Sabbath as an occasion when
witches were known "to hold and administer diabolical sacra-
ments; viz., a mock-baptism and a Devil supper, at which
cursed imitations of the sacred institutions of our blessed
Lord they used forms of words to be trembled at in the very
rehearsing . . , ."32 Hawthorne follows the traditional
29Ibid., p. 56.
^Clinton S. Burhams, Jr., "Hawthorne's Mind and Art in 'The Hollow of the Three Hills,'" Journal of English and German Philology, LX (April, 1961)7^51". '
S^Kittredge, p. 243. 3 2 Upham, p. 533.
35
description of the Black Sabbath in "Young Goodman Brown."
All the elements of a church service are imitated by the
participants of the DevilTs worship service, including music,
attendance by believers, and an address by a "minister" (who
is the Devil). At the commencement of the service a hymn is
sung to a familiar tune, but as Brown listens the verse is
"lengthened by a chorus, not of human voices, but of all the
sounds of the benighted wilderness pealing in awful harmony
together." The words of the hymn are "those to be trembled
at in the very rehearsing" for the melody is "joined to words
which expressed all that our nature can conceive of sin, and
darkly hinted at far more." The congregation is composed
not only of "grave, reputable, and pious people" of New
England, but also of "men of dissolute lives and woman of
spotted fame . . . „«33 The community of Fiend-worshippers,
in dark imitation of the righteous, take part in the Sabbath
activities with decorum and enthusiasm, responding appropri-
ately to the Minister-DevilT s address with a united "cry of
despair and triumph.
Converts were traditionally inducted by the Devil and
his society of evil at Witches' Sabbaths.In "Young
Goodman Brown," Brown and his wife, Faith, are the "proselytes
beneath the canopy of fire" who are to be received into an
unholy fellowship with the Devil and his congregation. Satan
33Works, II, 101-102 34Ibid., p, 101.
3~*Kittredge, p. 243.
36
traditionally makes his followers "fair (though false)"3^
promises of "riches arid pleasures as long as they live and
happiness in the world to come."37 Hawthorne's Devil makes
less prosaic bribes. He promises the proselytes another re-
ward for their transfer of allegiance from God. He guarantees
them supernatural gifts--the ability to know one's fellow
sinners, to recognize the guilt which all share, and to under-
stand the ability of the human soul to supply "more evil
impulses than human power—than Q:he Devil's powerj at its
upmost—can make manifest in deeds."3® Although Brown does
not finish the ceremony, the. Devil's promise is fulfilled.
After his Black Sabbath experience, Brown believes he can
"penetrate, in every bosom, the mystery of s i n . " 3 9
Jt was believed that witches used broomsticks to trans-
port themselves to and from Witches' Sabbaths J*® The flight
of witches on broomsticks was a traditional belief which
Hawthorne introduces in witch tales and historical sketches.
In "Main Street," for example, Hawthorne suggests that John
and Elizabeth Proctor must have shared a broomstick when
attending "a witch communion, far into the depths of the
chill, dark forest , , . . Away they went; and the laughter
of their decayed, cackling voices has been heard at midnight,
aloft in the a i r . M i s t r e s s Hibbins, the witch of The
36Ibid. 37Upham, p. 535.
38Works, II, 10**. 39Ibid.
^°Kittredge, p. 243. ^Works, III, 468.
37
Scarlet Letter, is also an attendant of Black Sabbaths.
Hawthorne describes her as she appears after a late-night
escapade, "with some twigs of the forest clinging to her
skirts, and looking sourer than ever, as having hardly got
• } f- o a wink of sleep after her night ride."
*Phe traditional broomstick element of witchcraft (and
the traditional theory of the practice of infanticide by
those dealing in witchcraft) is a part of "Young Goodman
Brown." Goody Gloyse complains to the Devil that her broom-
stick has been stolen, making it necessary for her to walk
to the Sabbath site. As she confides in her master, she
tells him of her preparations for the Sabbath by listing
her recipe for a magic ointment composed of herbs and "the
fat of the new-born babe."^3 Hawthorne sets the scene of
Brown's later disillusioning experiences quite effectively
with this combination of the ludicrous (the stolen broom-
stick) and the grotesque (the dead baby).
Broomsticks, magic ointments or preparations, and
cackling old hags are ancient aspects of witch tradition.^
Witch beliefs in the New World deviated from Old World
beliefs by adding original elements to the old paraphernalia
of witchcraft. Indians as Devil-worshippers and the folk-
tale of the Black Man in the forest are two such original
Zf2Works, V, 18k. k3lb±d., II, 94.
^Kittredge, p. 2k3.
38
elements. New Englanders as well as other seventeenth
century Christians considered pagans to be followers of the
Fiend, and the Indian population was believed to be the core
of Satanism in the New World.^ Cotton Mather wrote in his
introduction to Memorable Providences about the "Wigwams of
the. Indians . . . j wherej the pagan Powaws J sicTj often raise
their masters |~the devilsjl in the shapes of Bears and Snakes
and Fires . . . Hawthorne often introduces the Indian
element into his witch tales and novels for atmospheric
qualities and to add historical authenticity. In "Young
Goodman Brown," Brown thinks that he has overheard a conver-
sation between his minister and Deacon Gookin. The Deacon
comments that not only Puritans are joining the Devil's
forces, but also "several of the Indian powwows, who, after
their fashion, know as much deviltry as the best of us.
Among the congregation at the Witches' Sabbath, Brown ob-
serves "scattered also among their palefaced enemies . . .
the Indian priests, or powwows, who had often scared their
native forest with more hideous incantations than any known
to English witchcraft."^® In the demonic procession scene
of "My Kinsman, Major Molineux," Hawthorne mentions "wild
figures in the Indian dress" who follow the devilish figure
^Kittredge, p. 363. ^Burr, p. 99.
47Works, II, 97. 48Ibid., p. 101.
39
on horseback leading the march.^ In The Scarlet Letter,
Hawthorne suggests that Roger Chillingworth, "Satan's
emissary," had learned new medical skills from the Indians
and had joined, "in the incantations of the savage priests,
who were universally acknowledged to be powerful enchanters,
often performing seemingly miraculous cures by their skill
in the black art."5®
Along with the Indians, seventeenth century New England
folklore contributed the Black Man in the forest with his
pen, ink, and book to witchcraft tradition. The Black Man
became the Devil-type in American witchcraft doctrine. The
pen, ink, and book were all necessary items for signing a
compact with the Devil--an idea which was quite ancient.
The description of the Devil as the Black Mans however, was
a New World invention, created during the Salem witch exami-
nations by an accused witch. The "afflicted children"
adopted the fiction of the Black Man, describing him as a
gentleman from Boston, dressed all in black, who offered
luxuries and pleasure to all who would write their names
in his book.52 He customarily carried with him an iron pen
and an inkstand of blood along with his massive book in the
hopes that someone would be persuaded to give up his soul in
exchange for worldly pleasure. The Black Man (or the Devil)
49Ibid., ill, 468. 50Ibid., V, 156.
^Robbins, pp. 370-373. 52Hansen, p. 63.
i+o
made frequent appearances to the "afflicted children" of
Salem Village. Hawthorne refers to this crude concept of
the Devil in The Scarlet Letter, and then he identifies it
as a "common superstition of the period."^3
Pearl renders Hawthorne's version of the Puritan folk
tale.as she tells her mother of the evil figure who "haunts
this forest and carries a book with him—-a big, heavy book,
with iron clasps; and . . . this ugly Black Man offers his
book and an iron pen to everybody that meets him here among
the trees, and they are to write their names with their own
blood." Furthermore the Black Man "sets his mark on their Ch
bosoms" to seal the bargain. Hawthorne added the idea of
writing with one's own blood when contracting with the Devil
quite independently of the New England witch-tradition. The
traditional Black Man was never niggardly with his inkwell
of blood--he was too anxious to get signatures, ikawthorne's
version emphasizes the commitment one makes in contracting
with the Devil. To seal a bargain with one's, own blood is
to seal it eternally and unalterably^
Hawthorne modifies a traditional witch belief when ha
introduces the idea of an artificial mark (like the scarlet
letter) as a sign of a sealed bargain with Satan. Tra-
ditionally, the Devil marked his followers with a natural
mark Qa. blemish somewhere on the body) known as a "witch's
53Works, V, 222. 54Ibid.
41
55 mark" or "Devil's teat." In The Scarlet Letter, the
Devil's mark is an artificial rather than natural symbol of
sin which (according to the rumors of Hester's neighbors)
marks those who have sold themselves to the Devil. Dimmesdale
conceals his "Devil's mark" while Hester's is quite conspicuous.
In both cases, however, the mark is on the bosom so that the
painful emblem of sin continually sears the heart and reminds
the sinners of what they have lost by making an alliance with
evil.
Hester wears a flaming mark on her bosom in the form of
the scarlet letter. When Pearl insistently questions her
mother about the Black Man in the forest Hester admits that,
"Once in my life I met the Black Man! . . . This scarlet
56
letter is his mark." Although speaking in terms of witch-
craft doctrine, Hester recognizes the Black Man folklore as
"superstition" which appeals to chiluren and deranged old
women like Mistress Hibbins. A more subtle temptation than
those offered by the Black Man has resulted in Hester's
scarlet letter. Perhaps when she refers to her one encounter
with the Devil, the tempter, she is thinking of Arthur
Dimmesdale in the black garb of the minister with whom she
formed an emotional, physical, and immoral compact resulting
in the mark of sin--the scarlet letter.
^Hansen, pp. 77, 85. 56Works, V, 222.
42
Arthur Dimmesdale, too, acknowledges that he has been
tempted and is tempted again to yield to evil. He wonders
whether, perhaps unconsciously, he has transferred his alle-
giance from God to the Devil. When tempted to run away with
Hester, he finds himself beset with wicked impulses which he
resists only with difficulty. Horrified at his impious and
improper thoughts, Dimmesdale asks himself, "Am I mad, or
am I given over utterly to the fiend? Did I make a contract
with him in the forest, and sign it with my blood? And does
he now summon me to its fulfillment, by suggesting the per-
formance of every wickedness which his most foul imagination
can conceive?""^ Mistress Hibbins interprets the minister's
perplexity and. torment in witch tradition. She assures him
that he has, indeed, worshipped a "potentate," not during the
58
daylight hours, but "at midnight, in the forest." Hawthorne
rejects for the reader the contract-with-the-Devil theory
which Dimmesdale ponders. Dimmesdale has not participated in
a Witches1 Sabbath, or Devil compact. Rather, he has "yielded
with deliberate choice, as he had never done before, to what
he knew was deadly sin."^^
Yielding tfo a sinful impulse, even for a moment, is a
kind of instantaneous compact with the Eower of Evil. Robin
in ""My Kinsman, Major Molineux" yields for a moment and
unites in spirit with a demonic community. Young Goodman
o7Ibid., p. 222. 58Xbid., p p. 263-264.
59Ibid., pp. 264-265.
43
Brown, in promising to meet the Devil in the forest, has
entered a type of pact with the Fiend (he says himself that
he has "kept covenant" by showing up.)60 Furthermore, he
voluntarily joins che witch congregation"in the forest. In
making an inforaial corapact with evil and in joining (however
briefly) a community of willing sinners, Robin, Young Goodman
Brown, and Dimmesdale each undergo a feeling of brotherhood.
Robin sees his disgraced kinsman and is tortured by the sight,
yet he feels the "contagion" of the crowd and joins in its
laughter.^ Young Goodman Brown stands before the Devil-
worshippers and experiences "a loathful brotherhood by the
sympathy of all that was wicked in his heart.Dimmesdale,
after yielding to the temptation to run away from his guilt,
is beset by "scorn, bitterness, unprovoked malignity, and
gratuitous desire of ill," Sin educates him. to his "fellow-
ship with wicked mortals and the world of perverted spirits."^3
Hester, too, because of her sin feels a kinship with evil in.
others. "Sometimes the red infamy upon her breast would give
a sympathetic throb, as she passed near a venerable minister
or magistrate, the model of piety and justice . . . ."64
The Devil not only had great powers of temptation which
he employed in compacts to gain men's souls, but he also was
accredited with the ability to make miraculous transformations.
60Ibid., p. 265. 6lIbid., II, 91. 62Ibid., p. 102.
63Ibid., V, 265. 6**Ibid.
kk
The Devil could, for example, give animals supernatural
abilities.^ in "The May-Pole of Merry Mount" Endicott
orders the destruction of a dancing because its un- m
natural behavior is probably an indication of witchcraft.^
With the power to change the shapes of things the Devil could
create "familiar spirits" (or simply "familiars"). "Familiars"
were evil spirits in the forms of animals who served their
masters, witches or wizards, in the Devil's interests.^ The
snake-like walking stick of Young Goodman. Brown's Devil might
be considered a familiar spirit. The Devil's, staff "bore the
likeness of a great black snake, so curiously wrought that it
might almost be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living
serpent."^® The serpentine stick appears to share the emotions
of its owner; when the Devil laughs with "a fit of irrepress-
ible mirth" the walking stick "actually seemed to wriggle in
s y m p a t h y . i t serves the Devil well, aiding him in making
a remarkably short trip fr-om Boston to the forest near Salem
Village (at a rate of at least fifteen or twenty miles in,
as the Devil tells Brown, fifteen minutes.)'7® When given to
Goody Cloyse to speed her journey to the Witches' Sabbath,
^Kittredge, p. 174. ^^Works, I, 81.
^Robbins, pp„ 190-191. ^%7orks, II, 91.
69ibid., p. 231»
^David Levin, "Shadows of Doubt: Specter Evidence in Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown,'" American Literature, XXXIV (November, 1962), 347, . " !
45
the stick "perhaps . , - assumed life, being one of the rods
which its owner had formerly lent to the Egyptian magi." At
any rate it disappears to do the Devil's bidding and Goody
Cloyse disappears with it.^1
Nore significant than the Devil's ability to transform
animals by endowing them with supernatural spiritual life
was the Devil's ability (firmly believed in the seventeenth
century) to release the souls of his followers from their
bodies to afflict pious people.72 The disembodied souls or
spirits were known as "specters" or "shapes." During the
Salem witchcraft trials, testimony about specters and their
diabolic activities composed a great deal of evidence against
accused witches. Specters often appeared to invisibly torment
the "afflicted children."7^ Some seventeenth century New
England theologians maintained (as did Increase and Cotton
Mather) that the Devil could impersonate innocent people
against their will and without their knowledgeOthers,
like Deodat Lawson, maintained that it was the Devil's habit
with his witches to use "their bodies and minds, shapes and
representations, to affright and afflict others" with the
witches' full consent and cooperation.75 The problem was
whether specters and spectral evidence were merely the
Devil's tools for- incriminating the innocent, or whether (if
71Works, II, 95. 72Robbins, p. 190.
7^Hansen, pp. 140-144. k 74Levin, p. 364
75Upham, p. 79.
46
only the guilty could become specters) spectral evidence was *7 c
true proof of the practice of witchcraft by individuals.
Spectral evidence and shapes are elements of the witch-
craft tradition which Hawthorne uses. He was aware of the
importance of spectral evidence in the Salem witch trials
from his reading of New England histories, and he incorpo-
rates specters into his writings about the witchcraft period.
-n 'Jhe Scarlet Letter, for example, Dimmesdale is troubled
by a kind of spectral evidence; in this case evidence given
by shapes against the impurity of his own soul. Unlike the
traditional spectral appearances, created at the Devil's
instigation, Dimmesdale himself creates the shapes which
haunt him. Through self-torture, fasting, denial of sleep,
and relentless introspection he attempts to do penance for
his guilt and sin. Visions appear to him in his weakened
state, and the shapes he sees condemn him relentlessly. He
sees "a herd of diabolic shapes, that grinned and mocked;"
then "a group of shining angels;" a group of deceased friends;
his father "with a saint-like frown;" his mother, "turning
her face away;" and, finally, Hester Pyrnne and Pearl who
also reproach him as they appear. All of these "spectral
thoughts" haunt the minister, but he never accepts them as
realities; "none of these visions ever quite deluded h i m . " ^ 7
76Levin, p. 346. 77Works, V, 147.
47
The spectral appearances which molest Dimmesdale are
presented by Hawthorne as evidence of the minister's unhappy
mental state. In "Alice Doane's Appeal" spectx al evidence
is not a psychological manifestation of guilt, but rather
physical evidence of sin and its power to transform. Alice
is accused of committing a sin of which she is innocent. She
and her brother, Leonard, enlist the services of a wizard in
order to prove her innocence. In the Salem cemetery the
wizard raises the spirits of the damned (and the DevilTs
fiends) to act as witnesses and jurists during Alice's
"trial." A multitude of specters arise, both young and
old, humble and great. While some are "souls accursed,"
others are evil spirits "counterfeiting the likeness of'
departed saints."'7® The specters who have temporarily
inhabited the bodies of "departed saints" transform the
physical appearances of those whose aspects they employ.
The imposters give the countenances of pious men contorted
aspects of "intolerable pain or hellish passion, and now
jand thenj. . . an unearthly and derisive merriment."79
Hoping to swell the Devil's ranks with another victim, the
spectral multitude of "sinful souls and false specters of
good men" listens to Alice's appeal for vindication. The
specter of Alice's reputed partner in sin, Walter Brome,
78Ibid., XII, 290. 79Ibid.
48
testifies to her innocence and she triumphs over the Devil
and his confederates..
Spectral evidence is a matter of plot and theme in
another of Hawthorne's stories, "Young Goodman Brown."
Brown finds himself inundated with evidence (mostly of a
spectral nature) that evil is universal. Like inhabitants
of Salem in 1692, Brown finds his faith in his fellow man
severely shaken by the implications of spectral evidence.
He judges mankind on the basis of a strange, dream-like
forest experience. In the story Brown leaves Salem Village
early one evening on a journey into the forest. Soon he is
joined by a gentleman who, as the story progresses, turns
out to be the Devil himself. The Devil's purpose in meeting
Brown and conducting him through the forest is to persuade
Brown to become a witch--a feat which requires diplomacy,
verbal skill, and shock tactics,®*- The Devil's verbal
facility lures Brown into the depths of the forest, and the
Fiend has some success in "reasoning as we go" in order to
convince Brown not to turn back. When, however, Brown calls
upon his reserve strength against the power of temptation
(his trust in his wife, Faith), the Devil uses the shock of
spectral evidence to accomplish his purpose.
The first "shape" or "specter" to appear is Goody Cloyse,
She greets the Devil with appellations of "old friend" and
^Ibid., p. 292. ^Levin, p. 348,
49
"your worship" while Brown listens to their conversation.
Goody Cloyse (or her spectral shape) comments on the Devil's
successful physical imitation of "Goodman Brown, the grand-
father of the silly fellow that now is."8^ The Devil has,
in fact, become the "very- image" of Brown1 s ancestor. If
the Devil can impersonate the dead, he can just as easily
allow the living to be impersonated, but Brown does not
reason that the old woman who looks like Goody Cloyse may
be as false a specter as the Devil is in looking like the
former Goodman Brown.83 Although he had previously acknow-
ledged her a "very pious and exemplary dame," Brown rejects
a lifetime evaluation of Goody Cloyse1s character and judges
her to be a witch. To the Devil he remarks that she is a
"wretched old woman" who has chosen "to go to the devil when
I thought she was going to heaven . . . wn84
Although his faith in Cloyse is gone, Brown refuses to
accompany the Devil any longer and the Devil departs. Brown,
resolves to go no further, lest he do something which ha
would be ashamed to admit before those two keepers of his
faith and conscience, his minister and Deacon Gookin. Immedi
ately after he thinks of those two gentlemen, Brown hears
their spectral voices-as they ride by him, hidden from view.
Despite the fact that they pass within a few feet, "neither
the travelers nor their steeds are visible." And although
82Works, XI, 94. "Levin, d. 3kS.
50
"their figures brushed the small boughs by the wayside,rv
Brown cannot discern "so much as a shadow" where the
85
travelers are passing. Even though the riders are in-
visible, Brown is convinced that the voices he hears dis-
cussing the night1s Witches' Sabbath belong to the Salem
minister and Deacon Gookin. Once again spectral evidence
shakes his faith in his fellow men and cr-eates such a deep
doubt that Brown, "overburdened with the heavy sickness of
his heart," is quite ready to doubt "whether there was a
heaven above him."8**
Brown recovers himself sufficiently to declare, "With
heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against
87
the devil." No sooner does he mention Faith's name than
he receives another shock. A "black mass of cloud" passes
overhead from which spectral voices seem to emanate. As
Brown listens he fancies that he can recognize not only the
voices of the townspeople, both "pious and ungodly," but
also the voice of Faith. "There was one voice, of a young
woman, uttering lamentations, yet with an uncertain sorrow,
and entreating for some favor . . . and all the unseen multi-
tude, both saints and sinners, seemed to encourage her on-
ward."®^ With this last spectral manifestation of unfaithful-
ness and hypocrisy from the ones he trusted and deemed holy 85Ibid., pp. 96-97. 86Ibid., p. 97.
87Ibid., p. 98. 88Ibid.
51
(and the appearance of a pink ribbon like Faith's), Brown
rushes off to the Black Sabbath in despair, ,
At the Sabbath, Brown's conception of universal evil—
"There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name"—is further
strengthened by the observation of an impressive congregation
89
of Devil-worshippers. Brown sees many familiar faces and
shapes as he waits for the baptismal ceremony to begin, He
thinks that he can recognise fellow Salem Church members,
and he fancies that he can make out the shapes of the dead
as well. "He could have well-nigh sworn that the shape of
his own dead father beaconed him to advance, looking downward
from a smoke wreath, while a woman, with dim features of
despair, threw out her hand to warn him back. Was it his
mother?"9® His last hope is that his wife, Faith, has re-
sisted what apparently no one else had the strength to resist.
The last hope is shattered when Faith appears as his fellow
convert to the worship of Satan.
Whether or not Faith and the others really are Devil-
worshippers, or whether or not their shapes or specters are
taken over by impersonating fiends, Brown believes that his
forest experience means that his fellow "Christians" are
merely Devil-worshippers in disguise. The Devil contends
that all those whom Brown and Faith have "deemed . . ,
holier than yourselves" are. "all in my worshipping
89Ibid., p. 99. 90Ibid., p. 102.
52
assembly.Whether they are real or not, Brown accepts
the shadows, shapes, and indistinct voices of his experience ,
as almost conclusive proof that "Evil is the nature of man-
kind. He comes to fear that there is no good in mankind
and gives way to sternness, sadness, and dark distrust. His
loss of faith which begins with the forest experience and
spectral evidence continues until his gloomy, despairing death.
Other elements of witch tradition such as image-magic
can be found in Hawthorne's writings. Image-magic concerns
the ancient belief that a doll or* figure made by a witch to
represent an enemy could be mistreated in order to induce
sympathetic torments in the person which the figure repre-
s e n t s . ^ Hawthorne refers to harmless image-magic when he
introduces it as a witchcraft element in his works. In
"Faathertop: A Moralized Legend" image-magic is practiced
by Mother Rigby, a witch. She creates a figure from a scare-
crow, old rags, and a magic pipe* The figure becomes life-
like as she plies her magic art and praises her own creation,
"Thou art so beautiful, that, by my troth, I love thee better
than any witch's puppet in the world; and I've made them of
all sorts—clay, wax, straw, sticks, night fog, morning mist,
sea foam, and chimney smoke."9^ Pearl in The Scarlet Letter
practices another sort of image-magic. Like Mother Rigby,
9IIbid., p. 103. 92Ibid.t p. 10k.
93Kittredge, p. 73. 9\rorlcs, II, 263.
53
she can alter and influence her environment in supernatural
ways. Hawthorne alludes to the image-magic tradition in
describing Pearl's strange personality:
The spell of life went forth from her ever-creative spirit, and communicated itself to a thousand objects, as a torch kindles a flame wherever it may be applied. The unlikeliest materials--a stick, a bunch of rags, a flower--were the puppets of Pearl's witchcraft, and., without undergoing any outward change, became spirit-ually adapted to whatever drama occupied the stage of her inner worid.95
Both Mother Rigby and Pearl are creative in their use of
image-magic. Mother Rigby creates a fantastic "gentleman"
whose reality is really a figment of the imagination.
Pearl's "witchcraft" is also imaginative. Hawthorne alters
tradition by allowing image-magic to be concerned with the
magic of mental creativity and imagination rather than the
physical destruction of the seventeenth century witch doctrine.
Pearl is described by Hawthorne (through his characters)
in the traditional terms of the witch-devil doctrine. Mr.
Wilson wonders if the little girl is "one of those naughty
elfs or fairies" of old English tales, and he roundly de-
clares that "the little baggage hath witchcraft in her . . .
she needs no old woman's broomstick to fly withall"^ SJsing
the witch tradition Hawthorne introduces the old theory that
the Devil could father half-human, half-demonic children to
add a chilling note to his portrayal of Pearl, the unnaturaL
95I.bid., V, 120. 96Ibid., p. 136.
5k
product and emblem of sin.^ Hester observes her daughter's
peculiarities and remembers with "a smile and a shudder" the
gossip of her neighbors over the possibility that Pearl "was
a demon offspring."^ Mistress Hibbins assures the child
that she is of the "lineage of the Prince of the Air" and
Pearl revels in the idea.99 Pearl is a firm believer in the
witch tradition; she is interested in the Black Man in the
forest, Witches* Sabbaths, Devil's compacts and, like Cotton
Mather, she believes that the Devil can raise storms to
afflict his enemies.*-®®
Hawthorne uses the traditional aspects of black witch-
craft for a variety of purposes. »Historical authenticity,
for example, is added to his works which have their settings
in the Puritan era by the inclusion of common Puritan witch
and Devil superstitions regarding specters, broomsticks, the
Black Man in the forest, and so forth. Such superstition and
folk myth also provide the atmosphere of horror and suspense
which Hawthorne tries to achieve in witch tales like "Alice
Doane's Appeal," and "The Hollow of the Three Hills." While
he uses the witchcraft-devil doctrine of the seventeenth
century for literary effects and for plot elements, Hawthorne
always develops deeper concepts in his writings than are con-
tained in crude witch tradition. Thus from the elements of
9^Ibid., p. 118. ^^Ibid., p. 124.
"ibid., p. 288. I00Ibid. , p. 291.
55
witchcraft--BLack Sabbaths, Devil's compacts, demonic dances,
and unholy baptisms--Hawthorne derives material which deals
with the nature of temptation, the consequences of sin, the
community of evil, and the result of doubt or lack of faith
in others.
CHAPTER III
HAWTHORNE'S CHARACTERIZATION OF THE
DEVIL AND DEMONICS
The Devil (or a figure representing the Devil) is a
character in a number of Hawthorne's stories. Hawthorne's
interest in early New England history and folklore influenced
his use of the Puritan conception of the Devil. In developing
the Puritan Devil in his witch tales and The Scarlet Letter,
Hawthorne was attempting to present accurately his ancestors'
intense belief in the reality of Satan, thereby clarifying
the character and beliefs of the early New Englanders. In
all of his works which mention the Archfiend, even those
which do not deal primarily with the Puritan era, Hawthorne k>
uses the character of Satan to represent evil, sin, and
temptation.1 Many of his characters, while not really devils,
possess demonic qualities, thus revealing the partially Sa-
tanic nature of all mankind.
Hawthorne's familiarity with tne Puritan mind allowed him
to combine three conceptions of the Devil--the Miltonic concept
of Satan as a magnificent fallen angel, the Calvinistic concept
of the Devil as a "depraved, vicious, malignant, and mis-
chievous" enemy of God and man,1 and the New England folklore
^John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans-lated by John Allen, I (Philadelphia, 1936), 192.
56
57
concept of the Black Man. As Marion Starkey says, the Black
Man was commonly regarded as a sort of "poltergeist . . . or ^
comic devil of the early miracle plays . . . ubiquitious,
and as such damnably dangerous and eternally a nuisance, but
as little dignified as the worm that eats the g a r d e n . A l l
three Puritan conceptions of the Devil are interrelated and
interdependent. Hawthorne accepted or rejected elements of
the three on the basis of whether or not they were suitable
for the development of the psychological and moral signifi-
cance of the satanic figure in each work.
Both the Miltonic and Galvinistic treatments of Satan
describe him as a fallen angel. In !!Young Goodman Brown,"
Hawthorne follows Puritan tradition as he mentions the "once
angelic nature" of Brown's Devil.^ Milton wrote about Satan
more sympathetically than Calvin, and Hawthorne's treatment
of the Devil in "Young Goodman Brown" bears some similarity
to Milton's concept of Satan in Paradise Lost. In Milton's
epic poem, Satan observes the activities of Adam and Eve in
the Garden of Eden and pities the pair as he thinks of the
unhappiness in store for mankind.^ The Devil in "Young
Goodman Brown," appearing with the dark majesty and dignity
of Milton's Satan, addresses his human followers "in a deep
^Starkey, pp. 241-242. ^Works, III, 104.
^John Milton, The Complete Poetical Works of John Milton, edited by George Bush (Boston, 1965), pp. 283-284. ~
58
and solemn tone, almost sad with its despairing awfulness,
as if he . . . could yet mourn for our miserable race."^
Another similarity between Milton's Paradise Lost and
Hawthorne's treatment of the satanic can be found in the
graveyard scene of "Alice Doane's Appeal." Like the fallen
angels of Paradise Lost, the "sinful souls and false spectres
of good men" called to witness Alice's "trial," mourn the
loss of Heaven. Hawthorne's damned spirits "groaned horribly
and gnashed their teeth, as they looked upward to the calm
loveliness of the midnight sky, and beheld those homes of
bliss where they might never dwell."0
The Devil in "Young Goodman Brown" possesses character-
istics of both the Miltonic and Calvinistic Devil. The. power-
ful persuasiveness of his personality, his strength of will,
and his leadership of a hellish group of followers are Miltonic.
But like Calvin's Satan, Brown's Devil "opposes Divine truth
with lies; obscures the light with shades of darkness; and
involves the minds of men in errors," all for the purpose of
"plunging mankind with himself into eternal destruction."7
In Hawthorne's story, Young Goodman Brown seems to have a pre-
disposition to sin and doubt which paves the way for the Devil's
endeavors to achieve Brown's spiritual corruption. Brown is
5Works, II, 10k. 6Ibid., XII, 291.
^Calvin, p. 192.
59
already disposed to believe that the nature of mankind is
evil, for he accepts unsupported statements as fact, half-
truths .in the place of the complete truth, and spectral
evidence for substantial proof.
Brown's Devil, in the best Puritan tradition, has a
powerful gift for distorting truth. "When Brown begins his
journey into the forest near Salem, he feels some trepi-
dation about the perils of his undertaking. The Devil
appears, and Brown tries to revoke his promise to accompany
his companion by protesting that his ancestors never made
such a journey. The Devil's smooth rejoinder that both
Brown's father and grandfather were "my good friends" is
accepted by the young man with hardly a murmur of dissent.
The Devil suggests that the persecution of the Quakers and
Indians by earlier Browns is evidence of their total cor-
ruption, and Brown acquiesces to such partial and unproven
"fact" with surprising ease, saying mildly, "If it be as thou
sayest . . . I marvel they never spoke of these matters . , .
When Brown contends that "we are a people of prayer, and good
works to boot, and abide no such wickedness," the Devil intro-
duces another amazing bit of "evidence" to prove that, in David
Levin's words, even "the best men are wholly evil."-1-0 Brown is
8Works, II, 92. 9Ibid.
"'"• Levin, p. 3*4-8.
60
informed that the most prominent citizens of New England—
deacons, selectmen, jurists, the governor and even (by
inference) Brown's own minister—are the Devil's followers.
This statement amazes Brown somewhat, bat he recovers quickly
with the rationalization that he is too simple to comprehend
the complex activities of governors, councils, and so forth.
The young man is stunned by the Devil's implication of Devil
worsh5.p on the part of the minister. The hint that the village
minister is totally evil also "nettles" Brown, bat mostly be-
cause the devil laughs at his naivete rather than because Brown
resents an insult to his spiritual leader.
Deceit is one of the Devil's tools' in "Young Goodman
Brown" as he provides Brown with spectral voices,thalf-truths,
and rhetoric which Brown accepts. After calling the members
of the human race his "children," the Devil claims that the
nature of man is totally and irredeemably evil. Speaking
mournfully, the Devil urges his followers to accept the sad
"truth" of human existence—happiness is found in sinning, the
human heart supplies more evil impulses than the Devil can
effect, and mankind reaches its only true communion in the
brotherhood of evil.^ Brown's Devil, however, is speaking
as the Father of Lies. In saying that evil is the nature,
destiny, and happiness of mankind, he lies while speaking a
partial, truth. "For virtue is not, to Hawthorne," as Curtis
11-Works, IX, 92. 12Ibid., p. 10*+.
61
Dah.1 says, "merely a dream, and happiness is not (as 'The
Maypole of Merry Mount' explicitly urges) to be found only
in evil. Yet, though we are not wholly the children of Satan,
it is the destiny of mankind to sin, and that which distin-
guishes man from the angels and makes him. what he is, is the
admixture of evil in his n a t u r e . S i n c e the Devil in
"Young Goodman Brown" is a corrupted spirit, he cannot voice
any doctrine but one of doubt, sin, and lack of faith. The
Devil declares that he has "undeceived" the human race, but
in truth he has only led his followers (as he has Brown) into
negation of the good in man by total acceptance and appro-
bation of the evil.
In "Earth's Holocaust" another type of Devil makes an
appearance and philosophizes on the nature of man.. This
Devil, darkly conspicuous among a group of human sinners, acts
as an unsavory oracle of truth instead of a perpetrator of lies.
In the story, the citizens of the world attempt to destroy all
objects of vice, temptation, and human error in a gigantic
bonfire. While watching the blaze, a few grieving sinners are
joined by a malicious and mischievous Devil with fiery eyes
and a dark complexion. Rather than being saddened by man's
imperfect nature like Brown's Devil, this Fiend regards the
foolish attempt to create a world without evil as quite enter-
taining. He remarks that the whole concept of destroying evil
• ^ C u r t i s Dahl, "The Devil Is A Wise One," Ci.th.ara, VI (1967), 52,
62
is a joke, for he has "stood by this livelong night and
laughed in my sleeve at the whole business." Joyously he
proclaims that after the holocaust, "it will be the old world
yet."^ Voicing Hawthorne's attitude toward attempts to re-
form human nature, the Devil declares,
There's one thing that these wiseacres have forgotten to throw into the fire, and without which all the rest of the conflagration is just nothing at all; . . . . What but the human heart itself? . . . and, unless they hit upon some method of purifying that foul cavern, forth from it will reissue all the shapes of wrong and misery--which they have taken such a vast deal of trouble to consume to a s h e s 11-5
This Devil's common sense approach to evil, his undignified
and colloquial language, his rough humor and fierce appearance
are all elements of the New England folklore tradition of
Satan. His conception of sin and human nature (while trans-
muted and redeveloped by Hawthorne) is quite Calvinistic.
The Devil tradition in the form of the Puritan Black Man
also has its place in Hawthorne's fiction. The Black Man is
mentioned by Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter as a sort of
regional myth which frightened or entertained children like
Pearl and fascinated slightly demented old ladies like Mistress
Hibbins. Since the Puritans of the seventeenth century New
England commonly referred to Satan as "the Black Man," Hester
and Dimmesdale often employ the term, too, but in a much more
serious context than the folk tradition which Pearl and Mistress
l4Works, II, 455. 1 5 Ibid.
63
Hibbins enjoy. For example, after meeting Hester in the
forest and planning to leave New England, Dimmesdale goes
through a series of moral crises. He considers natural and
supernatural explanations fox- the sudden desire to behave
wickedly. He first considers a natural reason for his ir-
rational impulses and asks himself, "Am I mad?" Then he
considers the supernatural, "Am I given over utterly to the
fiend? Did I make a contract with him in the forest?
- - . ,"16 Of course he did not, but the myth of the Black
Man provides the terminology of sin and temptation for
Dimmesdale in his perplexity. Similarly, Hester speaks to
Chillingworth in prison shortly before she is released. His
sinister language and behavior disturbs her, and she asks him,
"Art thou like the Black Man that haunts the forest round
about us?" Her conception of evil is also expressed in terms
of Puritan folk tradition.*-7
Another Devil in the folklore tradition is the German
Jew in "Ethan Brand." From the Middle Ages the figure of the
demonic, dark Jew who is portrayed as being less than human or
anti-human has dominated folklore.1 The Jew has long been
identified with the Devil.Although Hawthorne does not refer
I6Ibid., V, 263. I7Ibid., p. 100.
l®James J. Lynch, "The Devil in the Writings of Irving, Hawthorne, and Poe," New York Folklore Quarterly, VIII (Summer, 1952), 120. .
64
to the German in his story as the Devil, there are several
clues to his identity. The Jew, like the Wandering Jew who
denied Christ and was doomed to roam the earth eternally, is
a continual traveler. He displays a diorama containing scenes
of Napoleon's battles and Nelson's sea fights to village people
in order to make, a living. The Jew invites Brand to look in
the diorama. Brand takes one startled look and mutters, "I
remember you now . . . JJ- 3*s x>evil whora he finally
recognizes in the assumed form of an itinerant showman. Brand
thought that he had left the Devil behind him in his quest for
the Unpardonable Sin, but he is confronted again by the Evil
One. The Jew tells Brand, with a dark smile, "I find it to
be a heavy matter in my showbox,--this Unpardonable Sin! By
my faith, Captain, it has wearied my shoulders, this long day,
to carry it over the mountain."2® The Devil's claim that he,
too, finds the Unpardonable Sin a heavy burden meets a scornful
x-eply from Brandy who considers himself the most extraordinary
sinner of all. He threatens the Jew, saying "Peace . . . or
get thee into the furnace y o n d e r I T h e furnace is the place
where Brand originally evoked the Devil and it is also the
most comfortable habitat for the Fiend. Brand treats the folk
Devil with appropriate contempt and lack of respect.
Hawthorne uses some elements of conventional Christian
doctrine in works in which the Devil or characters who resemble
L9Works, III, 491. 20Ibid. 21Ibid.
65
the Devil appear. The serpent, for example, is traditionally
associated with evil in general and with Satan in particular,,
In some of Hawthorne's fiction the serpent motif merely identi-
fies the Devil or a devilish character whom Hawthorne wants
the reader to associate with the Arch-fiend. In "Young Goodman
Brown," the grave gentleman whom Brown meets and accompanies
through the forest has a remarkable walking stick which is
carved like a snake and wriggles like a living creature.
Hawthorne refers to the stranger as "he of the serpent " thus
suggesting Satan in Eden and identifying the personage as the
Devil. In The Blithedale Romance, "Westervelt, the novel's
mesmerist-villain, is associated with the Devil by his darkly
sinister appearance and his use of a "stick with a wooden
head, carved in vivid imitation of that of a serpent."22
Westervelt is not the Puritan Devil, but he has traits which
reveal a devilish personality.
CPhe serpent is often associated with temptation, for
Biblical tradition recounts the temptation of Eve by Satan in
the form of a serpent in the Garden of Eden* Hawthorne, too,
equates the serpent with the Tempter. In The Scarlet Letter,
it is the "tempter of souls" who tantalizes Hester Prynne with
the thought that she might someday be united with Dimmesdale.
The very thought of her past relationship with Dimmesdale
struggles "from her heart, like a serpent from its hole" to
22Ibid., V, 424.
66
tempt her anew as she strives to renounce her s i n s . 2 3 Roger
ChilLingworth adopts Satan's old role as tempter by laboring
to lure Arthur Dimmesdale into damnation. Even before he
takes up his diabolic scheme against the minister's soul,
Chillingworth' s satanic natux*e is revealed by the use of snake
imagery. When the physician sees his wife, Hester, after a
long separation, she is wearing a scarlet letter—the stigma
of adultery. His shock and fury are mirrored on his face by
"a writhing horror which twisted itself across his features,
like a snake gliding swiftly over them, and making one little
24
pause, with all its wreathed involutions in open sight."
In another novel, The Marble Faun, Miriam's model is a Devil-
figure who endeavors to tempt his victims into mortal sin.
Haunting Miriam and Donatello, who hate hint with equal amotion,
the model finally succeeds in accomplishing his own death and
their downfall. The sin they share in murdering the model binds
them together "for time and eternity, like the coil of a ser-
pent."25
-temptation results in sin according to Christian tradition,
and original sin was committed at the Devil's instigation while
he lurked in the Garden in serpentine disguise* Sin and satanism
are associated with snake imagery in "Egotism; or the Bosom
Serpent." In the story, Roderick Elliston, like the puritan
Devil, transforms himself into a serpent* Elliston has indulged
23Ibid., p. 103. 2IfIbid., p. 82. 25Ibid., VI, 205.
67
in unlicensed self-love or egotism. The sin of this mis-
placed pride and self-devotion is embodied in a diabolic
snalce which grows inside Ell is ton's body. Unable to forget
himself for a moment, Elliston nurtures the growth of his
inner fiend- Soon the snalce in his bosom usurps Elliston1 s
human properties until he walks with the undulating motion of
a snake, his eyes glitter, and he speaks with a hiss in his
v o i c e . I n another story, "Feathertop; a Moralized Legend,"
Mother Rigby appears to be a harmless old crone. Anger, how-
ever, arouses her diabolic nature which is displayed "like a
snake's head, peeping with a hiss out of her bosom . . . ."27
Elliston and Rigby are both devoted Devil-worshippers, as their
reptilian characteristics suggest.
fhe serpent in the Garden of Eden is credited with having
used guile, subtlety, and falsity to fascinate Eve ana tempt
her4 The satanic-types in Hawthorne's fiction often exercise
a strong serpentine fascination over their intended victims.
In The House of the Seven Gables, the villainous and diabolic
Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon creates a deceptive and overpowering
atmosphere of benevolence "very much like a serpent, which,
as a preliminary to fascination, is said to fill the air with
his peculiar odor" in order to victimize the weak or innocent.
Similarly, in The Marble Faun, Miriam is entranced by the model,
26Ibid., II, 30k. 27Ibid., p. 260.
28Ibid., III, 103.
68
a demonic individual who exerts a "sadly mysterious fasci-
nation" much like that which "beasts and evil natures some-
times exercise on their victims."^9
Taking his analogy of sin, the serpent, and the Devil
to further lengths, Hawthorne draws a comparison between the
"sting" or bite of a snake, and the infusion of sin into man's
soul. Thus when Roger Chillingworth, "Satan's emissary,"
offers to ease the pain which Dimmesdale suffers, Dimmesdale's
agony is described as the "secret sting of remorse" which has
a kind of "painful efficacy" in it. Chillingworth's role as
fiend and physician allows him to infuse a "deadlier venom"
as he attempts to snare Dimmesdale into dying with his sins
unforgiven and unatoned.^® Roderick Elliston's bosom serpent
(which is egotism metamorphosed into a living creature) stings
him relentlessly. Nor does Elliston suffer the pangs of un-
repentant sin alone. His serpent has an affinity for all the
other bosom serpents in fellow sinners. Elliston greets the
brotherhood of evil in his community by recognizing and making
public the inner demons of others, "thus making his own actual
serpent--if serpent there actually was in his bosom—the type
of each man's fatal error, or hoarded sin, or unquiet con-
science, and striking his sting so unremorsefully into the
29Ibid., VI, 115. 30lbid.t V, 201.
69
sorest spot, we may well imagine that Roderick became the
pest of the city."^
Ihe Devil in Puritan tradition and folklore is character-
istically described as a dark and fearsome figure. The Puritan • I"
Satan is dark because he has lost the celestial radiance of
Heaven1s angels. The blackness or darkness of the traditional
Devil also suggests hidden danger, gloom, and mystery. In the
Black Man folk myth of Puritan New England, superstitious
citizens assumed that the dark forest was the appropriate haunt
of the sinister black Tempter* Hawthorne uses color symbolism
when charactei-izing the Devil and those demonic characters who
are imitative of the Prince of Darkness. The Devils in "Young
Goodman Brown" and "Earth's Holocaust" are both dark in com-
plexion as well as in thought, ^he darkness of the spirit
inhabiting the physical shell of the body pervades not only
the Devils themselves, but also the thoughts and actions of
those humans they encounteri Thus, in The Blithedale Romance,
Professor Westervelt looks like the prototype of Satan with
black hair, eyes, clothes, serpentine staff, and a glimmering
gem, a "living tip of fire" set in'a stick pin and suggestive
of the flames of Hell.32 Westervelt has the dark personality
of Satan, too, which pervades men's thoughts with gloom, des-
pair, and cynicism. Coverdale finds that a brief discussion
3LIbid., II, 314. 32Ibid., V, k2k.
70
with the Professor creates "the skeptical and sneering view
which, just now had filled my vision, in regard to all life's
better purposes," for Westervelt's speech and attitude
"smothers what it can of our spiritual aspirations, and makes
the rest ridiculous." Westervelt, as a kind of modern Lucifer,
squelches faith in mankind and hope for the improvement of
man's nature through his "cold skepticism" and his ability to o o
make evil attractive. J
Westervelt1s dusky splendor resembles that of Milton's
Satan, but Roger Ghillingworth is presented by Hawthorne as
the counterpart of the Puritan Black Man. Pearl continually
calls Ghillingworth "the old Black Man," referring not only
to his somber dress but also to his dark and evil countenance Oh
which corresponds to the familiar devil legend. Hester
Prynne makes an analogy between Ghillingworth and the Devil
when she asks him whether the promise he has extorted from
her not to reveal his identity is a Devil^s pact, a "bond that
will prove the ruin of my soul."3~* As his countenance and
expression become murkier, Ghillingworth's superstitious ac-
quaintances suspect that the "fire in his laboratory had been
brought from the lower regions, and was fed with infernal fuel;
and so, as might be expected, his visage was getting sooty from
the s m o k e . F o r Ghillingworth, like the traditional Satan,
33Ibid., p. *+35. 34lbid., p- 164.
3^Ibid., p. 100. 3^Ibid., pp. 155-156.
71
sin effects a discoloration of both the physical appearance
and the spirit.
In much of Hawthorne's writing, the Devil and sin are
almost synonymous concepts., and black is the hue which Hawthorne
uses to suggest deviltry, evil, and sin.- Another color which
represents satanism or demonism in Hawthorne's fiction is red,
the traditional color of passion. The product of HesterTs
passionate and unsanctified love affair is a demonic little
creature named Pearl, who is the physical counterpart of the
scarlet letter. Hawthorne characterizes her as "an imp of
evil, emblem and product of sin."^ She has an unearthly way
of running so that her toes scarcely touch the ground, giving
an illusion of flight. Even as an infant her eyes seem to
hold an expression of evil, mirth, and mischief befitting a
small fiend rather than a normal child. Pearl often mumbles
strange words or makes "shrill, incoherent exclamations" which
sound like "a witch's anathema in some unknown tongue."38 .11
of these peculiar characteristics of the child are the result
of vivid passion and somber sin: "The mother's impassioned
state had been the medium through which were transmitted to
the unborn infant the rays of its moral life; and, however
white and clear originally, they had taken the deep stains of
crimson and gold, the fiery lustre; the black shadow."39
37Ibid. , p.. 118. 38Ibid., p. 119.
39Ibid.
72
Pearl's pure nature has been corrupted because her parents
succumbed to the Tempter in the form of illicit love.
Another demon in Hawthorne's writing is a composite
fiend of scarlet passion and dark sin. The Devil-figure in
"My Kinsman, Major Molineux" displays a "fierce and varie-
gated countenance," for "one side of the face blazed an in-
tense red, while the other was black as midnight, the di-
vision line being in the broad bridge of the nose; and a
mouth which seemed to extend from ear to ear was black or
red, in contrast to the color of the cheek." The monstrous
creature seems to be composed of "two individual devils, a
fiend of fire and a fiend of darkness . . . . According
to Calvin, Satan continually "stirs up animosities, and
kindles contentions and wars . . . . Appropriately, the
demonic figure in this story appears "like war personified;
the red of one cheek was an emblem of fire and sword; the
blackness of the other betokened the mourning that attend
them.'*2 Passion thus results in destruction and death,
while indulgence in black sin ends with pain and grief.
Fiery passion is, according to Puritan tradition, pun-
ished by the fires of Hell. Hawthbrne often describes the
torments of the damned souls of his demonic characters by
using fire symbolism. The Devil marks his own by transforming
their features and by allowing their kinship with him to be seen
Z+0Ibid., III, 629. ^Calvin, p. 192.
42Works, III, 637.
73
or painfully felt. Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter
is a victim of passionate remorse and consuming guilt. The
pain in his heart is searing, but Chillingworth (the Devil's
counterpart) analyzes the minister's emotional and spiritual
condition and increases the torment by "adding fuel to those j | A 0 0 0
fiery tortures." The demonic nature of the physician is
revealed by "a glare of red light out of his eyes; as if the
old man's soul were on fire, and kept on smouldering duskily
within his breast, until, by some casual puff of passion, it
was blown into a momentary flame." Hester's letter, the
"red ignominyj" burns its possessor by "scorching" her brain
and "searing" her heart.*4"**
The eyes, the windows to the soul, reveal the flames of
Hell burning and blackening the spirits of a number of
Hawthorne's devilish characters. Even Judge Pyncheon of The
House of the Seven Gables, who is identified with Satan less
than most of the villains in Hawthorne's novels, exhibits "a
red fire kindled in his eyes" when thwarted from his "fiendish"
scheme of tormenting Clifford.*4^ Ethan Brand is one of the
most notable of Hawthorne's satanic types. Brand experiences
a kinship between his own passionate nature (which has de-
stroyed his soul and a young woman's), and the destructive ele-
ment of fire. It was from a blazing lime-kiln that he
43Ibid., V, 205. ^Ibid. , p p. no, 127, 205.
^5Ibid., Ill, 158.
7k
originally evoked the Devil's aid for a fiendish, quest.
Fire complements Brand's inhuman nature and its flickering
light imparts "the wild and ghastly light which alone could
have suited his expression; it was that of a fiend on the
verge of plunging into his gulf of intensest torment.
Brand has outgrown his native earth by the end of the story.
Since fire has become his true element, he finally surrenders
wholly to it and to his eternal torment by allowing his body
to be destroyed by the blaze of a lime-kiln.
The fires of satanic passion also create as well as
destroy, but what is constructed is designed for endless
torment. Hawthorne suggests that a passionate sin forms the
bond between Miriam and her model in The Marble Faun. "That
iron chain, . . . which, perhaps, bound the pair together by
a bond equally torturing to each,--must have been forged in
some such unhallowed furnace as is only kindled by evil passions
and fed by evil deeas."^ The evil committed in the past which
links them together cannot be escaped by either one, and after
the model's death Miriam is still confined by sin, although
fettered to a new partner, Donatello.
In his writings in which satanism appears in one form or
another, Hawthorne often introduces a figure who, while not
Satan, is a representative or agent of the Devil.J Witches and
wizards are the traditional agents of the Devil. Like their
46Ibid., p. 496. 47Ibid., VI, 115.
75
Master they are wholly devoted to evil pursuits* Hawthorne
suggests in the portrayal and description of Satan's servants
that the worship and creation of evil results in certain physi-
cal traits or deformities- As Ghillingworth maintains, MA
sickness . . . in the spirit, hath immediately its appropriate ll O
manifestation in the bodily frame." Demonics like Ghilling-
worth and Brand are transformed by spiritual diseases into
human replicas of Satan. Witches and wizards, too, betray
their devotion to evil through their physical appearances.
The wizard in "Alice Doane's Appeal" is a "small, gray, withered
man, with a fiendish ingenuity in devising evil, and superhuman
power to execute it, but senseless as an idiot to all better
purposes."^ The witch in "The Hollow of the Three Hills"
has a similar appearance. She is "so withered, shrunken, and
decrepit, that even the space since she began to decay ex-50
ceeded the ordinary term of human existence." Ancient and
degenerate as they are, they have extraordinary powers of
longevity and, like all of Hawthorne's fiends, grotesque notions
of humor. The hag in "The Hollow of the Three Hills" finds
"sweet sport" in a woman's death, >and the wizard of "Alice
Doane's Appeal" listens with "pleasurable interest" and
"grisly smiles" to a confession of murder. 48Ibid., V, 167. 49Ibid., XII, 28k.
5QIbid., I, 228. 5IIbid., I, 233; XII, 286.
76
Professor Westervelt in The Blithedale Romance and
Roger Chillingworth of The Scarlet Letter are purported to
be wizards by their superstitious neighbors. Although both
villains are specifically associated with the Devil, Hawthorne
emphasizes that neither one is Satan. Each is a representa-
tive of evil, acting as a fiend or" demon in pursuing devilish
schemes. By giving them roles as "wizards" Hawthorne estab-
lishes that'they are humans who reject human roles in favor of i
supernatural power and knowledge. Like the Devil's agents in
the witch tales, Westervelt and Ghillingworth physically dis-
play the characteristics of their apprenticeship to the Devili
Westervelt looks magnificent, but a gold band around his false
teeth suggests (to Coverdale) that Westervelt has sold his soul
to the Devil.Furthermore, Westervelt gives the impression
of being a "moral and physical humbug; . . . he was perhaps
but a wizened little elf, gray and decrepit . . . ."53 Roger
Chillingworth, too, is old and deformed. The diseased souls
of Satan's agents derive life-sustaining energy by preying on
victims like the remorseful young woman in "The Hollow of the
Three Hills," half-mad Leonard Doane in "Alice Doane's Appeal,"
childlike Priscilla in The Blithedale Romance, or guilt-ridden
Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter.
Ghillingworth sustains his existence completely on his
goal of obtaining revenge and torturing Dimmesdale. The
52Ibid., V, 500. 53Ibid., pp. 427-^28.
77
minister escapes, however, and the failure to damn his soul
is almost fatal to the old man. With the physician's loss
of his one demonic goal in life, "all his strength and energy-
all his vital and intellectual forces—seemed at once to desert
him; insomuch that he positively withered up, shrivelled away,
and almost vanished from mortal sight." Chillingworth cannot
exist without the evil pursuits which support his life, and
when "there was no more Devil's work on earth for him to doT
it only remained for the unhumanized mortal to betake himself
whither his Master would find him tasks enough, and pay him Sit
his wages daily."
In some of his writings Hawthorne uses a sort of Manichean
philosophy in which two contending principles of good and evil
struggle for the mastery of man's soul. Satan, when used in
such a context, is not the externalized Devil of Puritan tra-55
dition, but rather a symbol of an individual's sin. Hawthorne's
demonic characters allow the evil portion of human nature to
overwhelm the good, thus transforming themselves into fiends.
Each man has an inner devil; the weak or the wicked fail to
subdue their inner devils. In "Alice Doane's Appeal," man's
divided nature is explored through the device of the split per-
sonality. Leonard Doane and Walter Brcme are, unknown to each
other, twin brothers. Each has an unnaturally strong affection -
for his sister, Alice. Walter and Leonard not only have a ** "Ibid., p. 307. °^Lynch, p. 116.
78
physical similarity, but more, importantly "the similarity
of their dispositions made them joint possessors of an indi-
vidual nature, which could not become wholly the property of
one, unless by the extinction of the other." Walter hints
that he has seduced Alice, and the possibility drives Leonard
alraost insane with jealousy and hatred. The two men meet on
a lonely road "with the same devil in each bosom," and Leonard
succeeds in killing his brother. Leonard is now the full
possessor of "all the fierce and deep passions and of all the
many varieties of wickedness" which he had previously shared
with Walter.^
Although he refers to his slain brother as "the accursed
one," a synonym for Satan, it is his own inner devil which
has driven him to murder. The dark and evil portion of Leonard
has complete ascendency over any good in his soul. After
Brome's death Leonard is tortured by the feeling that he has
committed "some unutterable crime, perpetrated, as he imagined,
in madness or a d r e a m . H i s identification with Walter is
complete; he half-believes that he has committed incest with
his sister. The same "fiend" which urged him to kill Walter
now urges him to take Alice's life. Leonard seeks out a wizard
to find out whether he and Alice are guilty. The wizard cannot
deny Leonard such information if Leonard agrees to "certain
conditions." In terms of witch tradition the certain conditions
56Works, XII, 286. 57Ibid., p. 285. 58Ibid», p. 287. Ostein, p. 55.
79
consist of Leonard's participation in a compact with the Devil,
offering his soul in exchange for a supernatural revelation.
The making of a pact with the Devil, when interpreted psycho-
logically instead, of traditionally, means that Leonard makes
a final and fatal surrender to the evil of his own nature in
his bargain with the wizard. By seeking the truth which frees
Alice of blame, Leonard is further enlightened about his own
sinful and damned nature.
Young Goodman Brown's forest adventure may be interpreted
as Brown's encounter, not with an external Devil of the Puritan
mold, but rather with the Devil which resides inside sinful man.
At the onset of his walk through the forest, Brown alarms him-
self with the thought, "What if the Devil himself should be at
my very elbow," and suddenly a Devil does appear. Brown's
Devil may be merely a representation of the dark portion of the
young man's nature which has, until this moment, been suppressed.
In the dark and mysterious labrinth of the forest it appears
when evoked by Brown's thoughts. Significantly, Brown's Devil
does not have the glowing red eyes or horrendous laugh of Haw-
thorne's other Devils. Instead, as James Lynch explains, Brown's
satanic figure "has the appearance of a normal human being--an
indication that Hawthorne thought of the Devil as a mental phe-
nomenon symbolic of the individual's sin."^® The Devil not
only looks like an ordinary man, but he also has a strong
^Lynch, p. 60.
80
physical resemblance to Brown, being only older and behaving
with more sophistication. When the Devil tries to persuade
Brown to continue his journey, he discourses "so aptly that
his arguments seemed to spring up in the bosom of his auditor
than to be suggested by himself."^ Whether Brown meets and
converses with an external Devil or an inner psychological
Devil, he falls into the sin of doubt. By succumbing to a
lack of faith in God and man, the dark obscures the light
portion of his nature and he becomes a fiend or devil. He
rushes through the forest "with the instinct that guides
mortal man to evil." Brown becomes a more terrible figure
of evil than Satan, for "the fiend in his own shape is less
hideous than when he rages in the breast of uian."^ After
his experience Brown is unable to ever regain faith to
balance or cancel the gloom of doubt and suspicion which
pervades his nature.
When the evil in the human soul triumphs over the good,
individuals like Roger Chillingworth, Ethan Brand, and Young
Goodman Brown willingly become fiends who have lost their
humanity, at least for a while. Other characters in Hawthorne's
works struggle to suppress the inner devil. Prudence Inglefield
in "John Inglefield's Thanksgiving," for example, is the victim,
of evil passions which have degraded her mind and body. She
61Works, I, 95. 62Ibid., p. 99.
63Ibid., p. 100.
81
attempts to escape, her demon by returning to her father's
home for a holiday hoping "the guilty soul will . , , stray
back to its innocence.Unfortunately she cannot retain
mastery of her passions for long, and when she leaves her
old home "her countenance wore almost the expression as if
vshe were struggling with a fiend, who had power to seize his
victims even within the hallowed precincts of her father's
h e a r t h . S h e returns to her dissolute life when the "fiend"
prevails.
Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter also contends with an
inner demon or devil which, in moments of passion, almost
usurps his soul. When Hester confesses that she is Chilling-
worth's wife and has willfully withheld the information from
the minister, he is convulsed with wrath. "The minister
looked at her for an instant, with all that violence of
passion, which--intermixed, in more shapes than one, with
higher, purer, softer qualities--was, in fact, the portion of
him which the Devil claimed, and through which he sought the
fifi
rest." Dimmesdale manages to control his inner devil and
thwart his external one--Chillingworth.--.just before dying.
Still another character falls victim to a satanic inner
enemy. Roderick Elliston ("Egotism; or The Bosom Serpent") .
has a diabolic snake in his stomach. Elliston's egotism is
so great that it extends even to his admiration of the devilish 6^Ibid., III, 590. 65Ibid.
66Ibid., V, 232.
82
creature. He prides himself on "being marked out from the
ordinary experience of mankind by the possession of a double-
nature, and a life within a life."^7 Elliston comes to be-
lieve that "the snake was a divinity,--not celestial, it is
true, but darkly infernal,--and that hence he derived an
eminence and a sanctity, . . . -1168 Elliston consults his
inner devil in all matters, pampering it "night and day, with
69
a continual and exclusive sacrifice of Devil worship." He
is in danger of becoming completely demonic in his inability
to think of anything or anyone but himself. Elliston is saved,
however, from his "Devil" when at last he thinks of his wife.
The inner Devil in many of Hawthorne's writings is
willfully evoked by characters who are too proud. Lady
Eleanore of "Lady Eleanor's Mantle," for example, is ex-
cessively proud of her beauty and social status. The common
people claim that her pride has "evoked a fiend, and thatf smallpox epidemicj between them both this monstrous evil
had been born."7® Although Lady Eleanore inadvertently intro-
duces a deadly physical disease to a community, the real indi-
cation of her relationship with satanism is her diseased soul.
She refuses to acknowledge her kinship with the rest of the
human race until she is properly punished by "the curse of
Heaven"--smallpox*
67Ibid., II, 310. 68Ibid., p. 309.
69Ibid. 70Ibid., I, 321-322.
83
Pride motivates Roger Chillingworth in his plan to
seek revenge. Roderick Elliston and Leonard Doa.ne are both,
victims of pride in the form of jealously. Elliston nourishes
his pride and self-love by being jealous of his wife and re-
jecting all which does not reflect his own image and interests.
When his egotism is manifested in the unnatural form of a.
serpent, he spends hours with his mouth open before a mirror
waiting for it to appear (which is a grotesque way of evoking
71
the fiend.)' Leonard Doane's jealous and unnatural love for
his sister Alice calls up the demonic in himself, and it is
reflected in his double, Walter Brome. Perhaps, too, it is
pride which causes Miriam in The Marble Faun to test her
powers of attraction and call forth the model from the dark
past. When she draws him out into the modern world from the
depths of the catacombs, he warns, "Inquire not what I am,
nor wherefore I abide in darkness . . . . Henceforth, I am
nothing but a shadow behind her footsteps. She came to me
when I sought her not. She has called me forth, and must 72
abide the consequences of my reappearance in the world."
Both Miriam and Donatello suffer the consequences of Miriam* s
evocation of a Devil.
j$ot only the sin of pride, but also overdevelopment of
the intellect results in the calling forth of the Devil in
Hawthorne's fiction. Many of the author's villains have lost 7IIbid., II, 316. 72Ibid., VI, 46.
8 4-
the necessary balance between the head and heart, or the
intellect and passions. The demonic intellectual becomes
devilish as he raises the mind to an undue position of
eminence, neglects his ties with humanity, and puts all his
energy into the pursuit of one unhallowed goal. Chillingworth
-*-n The Scarlet Letter is an example of the intellectual who,
in seeking revenge and supernatural knowledge, evokes the evil
in himself. Although he plans to plumb the mysteries of
Dimmesdale's soul like an impartial, scientific investigator
who is "desirous only of truth," the nature of his undertaking
is beyond human power and human propriety. He must call forth
the most diabolic elements of his own nature and gradually
relinquish his human and natural traits. The inner demon which
is formed creates in him "a terrible fascination, a kind of
fierce, though still calm necessity which seized the old man
within its gripe, and never set him free again until he had
done its b i d d i n g . T h e one-time humanitarian and physician
has become a Devil.
Another humanitarian-intellectual transformed into a
fiend is Ethan Brand. As a demonic, Brand looks back on his
former reverence for his fellow man remembering "with what
tenderness, with what love and sympathy for mankind, and what
pity for human guilt and woe, he had first begun to contemplate
those ideas which afterward became the inspiration of his life
73Ibid*, V, 158.
85
n74
• * • The concept of an Unpardonable Sin replaces his
former humanitarian longings, disturbing the "counter-poise
between his mind and heart,"7"* As the devilish'idea grows
and flourishes, Brand becomes a fiend; "he began to be so
from the moment that his moral nature had ceased to keep the
pace of improvement with his intellect."7^ Although it is
rumored that Bx*and has evoked a fiend from a lime-kiln in
order to "frame the image of some mode of guilt which could
be neither atoned for nor forgiven," Brand cannot be bothered
with a conventional devil. Brand leaves the Devil to labor
for the souls of "halfway sinners" and creates in himself a 77 .
worse fiend. Only Brand's Titanic pride and inner devil
can forge the Unpardonable Sin. Brand finally succeeds in
creating it, and he boasts, "It is a sin which grew within
my own breast . . . . A sin that grew nowhere else! The
sin of an intellect that triumphed over the sense of brother-
hood with man and reverence for God, and sacrificed everything
to its own mighty claims."'7® After he has created the Sin,
however, Brand cannot exist on earth or in human company so
he seeks the element of fire which alone suits his demonic
nature.
Hollingsworth, the humanitarian of The Blithedale Romance,
although hardly a sinister or satanic figure, is an individual
74Ibid., III, 494. 75Ibid. 76Ibid., p. 495.
77Ibid., p.484. 78Ibid., p. 485.
86
whose over-developed intellect has given him some of the
characteristics of a demonic. Pride motivates Hollingsworth*s
pose as a reformer and philanthropist in the opinion of Zenobia
and Coverdale. Zenobia confronts Hollingswox-th saying, "Are
you a man? No, but a monsterl A cold, heartless, self-be-
ginning and self-ending piece of mechanismI" Hollingsworth
defends himself by challenging, "Show me one selfish end in
all I ever have aimed at „ . . ." He is answered bitterly,
"It is all self! . . . . Nothing else; nothing but self!
self! self I The fiend, I doubt not, has made his choicest
mirth of you these seven years past . . . Coverdale,
too, accuses Hollingsworth of being "that steel engine.of the
Devil's contrivance, a philantropist.In choosing to plot
and scheme for reform rather than employ human sympathy and
personal participation in the mainstream of life to help his
fellow men, Hollingsworth has envisioned himself as a kind of
divinity who can create new, reformed men and has rejected his
brotherhood with humanity. Hawthorne attacks Hollingsworth (and
all reformers) as a variety of demonic:
This is always true of those men who have sur-rendered themselves to an overriding purpose. It does not so much impel them from without, not even operate as a motive power within, but grows incor-porate with all they think and feel, and finally converts them into little else save that one principle . . . . They have no heart, no sympathy, no reason, no conscience . . . . They have an ideal to which they consecrate themselves high-priest,
79Ibid., V, 566-567. 80Ibid., p. 401.
87
and deem it holy work to offer sacrifices of what-ever is most precious; and never once seem to sus-pect—so cunning has the Devil been with them--that this false deity, in whose iron features, immitigable to all the rest of mankind, they see only benignity and love, is but a spectrum of the very priest him-self, projected upon the surrounding darkness.81
Reformers demonically worship the ideal of refornij and they
are willing to make any sacrifice to achieve it.
Dr. Rappaccini and his rival, Dr. Baglioni, are Devil-
figures in "Rappaccini1s Daughter." Neither one is explicitly
compared to or mentioned in connection with the Devil, but
each one has some diabolic characteristics. Rappaccini, for
example, has the demonic intellectual obsession of Hawthorne's
demonic characters. The doctor has invented a new Garden of
Eden which is a deadly, unn
the original Garden. It is
and a flower of death rathe
atural, and unholy imitation of
filled with poisonous vegetation
r than the traditional tree of life.
Beatrice, RappacciniTs daughter, has a role similar to that of
the serpent, although she iJs an unwilling and unknowing tempt-
ress. She has been made poisonous by continual association
with the plants in her father's garden and by her father's
scientific skill. Her beauty lures a young man, Giovanni,
into the garden where he gradually becomes poisonous, too.
Rappaccini intends to create a new species of man from the
offspring of Beatrice and Giovanni.
8IIbid., pp. 399-400.
88
Rappaccini dresses in black and like Hawthorne's other
devilish individuals, his physical appearance--"tall, emaci-
ated, sallow, and sickly looking"--denotes his relationship
with evil. Rappaccini suffers from the "inward disease" of
the corrupted soul. The scientist's pride in his intellectual
powers has induced him to attempt to become a creator of human
life as well As plant life, thus taking on a godlike role. In
his poisonous daughter, the scientist sees the result of "my
pride and triumph." His triumph is unnatural and shortlived,
for Beatrice swallows an antidote for the poison in her system
and destroys herself. The evil which Rappaccini has infused
into his daughter, however, touches only her physical portion
of being; her soul is untainted by his diabolic science.8^
Baglioni is another demonic type. Hawthorne suggests
that he is motivated to thwart Rappacini's experiment with
Beatrice because of professional jealously, hatred, and fear.
Baglioni poses, as does Judge Pyncheon, as a benevolent man
"apparently of genial nature" and possessing habits "that
might almost be called jovial." Baglioni is not genial, how-*
ever, in his relationship with Rappaccini and Beatrice. He
plays a devilish role as a "manipulator and calumniator,
destroyer of faith and implanter of doubts . . .," as Curtis
Dahl points out.83 Baglioni suggests to Giovanni that Beatrice
is evil, and the intimation shakes the young man's faith as
82 Ibid., II, 112, 147. 83Dahl, p. 57.
89
"a thousand dim suspicions" arise, grinning "at him like so
many d e m o n s . I t is Baglioni, too, who urges Giovanni to
give Beatrice the antidote which destroys her physical being.
Two other demonics misuse the powers of the intellect--
George Burroughs in "Main Street" and Professor Westervelt
in The Blithedale Romance. In Hawthorne's historical sketch,
Burroughs is rumored to have become a wizard because of his
"high and searching intellect" which is not satisfied with
prosaic learning, but desires knowledge of the supernatural.
Similarly, Westervelt is a sinister "wizard" because of his
use of the mind to gain wealth. Mesmerism allows the Pro-
fessor to rifle Priscilla's mirid and profit materially.
Hawthorne uses the figure of the Devil frequently and
in a variety of ways in his fiction. "Jn the witch tales he
attempts to present accurately the figure of the Devil with
the intense reality and significance he had for seventeenth
century Puritans* Although the Devil and his demonic counter-
parts are used most frequently to represent abstraction of
sin, evil, and temptation* Hawthorne also introduces a few
comic Devils to his fiction (see Chapter IV)i Even when the
character of the Devil is humorous, the author has a serious
purpose behind his characterization of the Archfiend. The
concept of the Devil to Hawthorne, as to the early New
Englanders, has a serious meaning (symbolically, psycho-
logically, and morally) in human life-*
8^Works, II, 137.
CHAPTER IV
HAWTHORNE'S LIGHTER USE OF THE DIABOLIC
Although Hawthorne usually treats the diabolic seriously,
irony and humor are elements which appear in his fiction eta-
ploying witchcraft and Devil lore. He Sometimes uses witch-
craft and Devil tradition to create an atmosphere of mystery,
horror, and suspense, but it also, provides the illusion,*
fantasy, whimsy, and half-seriousness which are characteristic
of Hawthorne's lighter writings.1 Irony is evident in much
of Hawthorne's fiction, and it adds a note of humor to even
his most solemn and serious work. Irony is Hawthorne's tool
when "accenting the divergence he found between the apparent
and the real," according to Arlin Turner. The superstition
and tradition of witch and Devil beliefs are used by Hawthorne
as "extended figurative language" in Turner's interpretation.^
Reality is clothed in the figurative language of witch and
Devil doctrine, arid Hawthorne uses irony and humor to reveal
the submerged truth. Often, too, Hawthorne treats the dia-
bolic humorously in order to present a moral while being
entertaining,
Hawthorne was well aware of the incongruities and ironies
of daily life* Turner claims that "his way of seeing things
"Arlin Turner, Nathaniel Hawthorne: An Introduction and Interpretation (New York, 1961), p. i09.
^Ibid.
90
91
was ironic, and irony was natural to his expression from the
earliest of his boyhood „ . . ."3 His sensitivity to the
humorous aspects of the incongruous and unexpected naturally
extended into his interpretation of all aspects of life, and
even into his reading. Through his reading of early New
England history, Hawthorne became acquainted with the Puritan,
frame of mind. TPhe Puritan habit of seizing supernatural ex-
planations for lifeTs mysteries, great and small, was connected
to the theory that the hand of God (or the Devil) is ever active
in men's affairs# Such emphasis upon the activities of the
supernatural and particularly the Devil in New England bordered
on the ludicrous, as Hawthorne suggests in a few passages of
The Scarlet Letter. rfhe. Devil was such an intense reality
to the citizens of New England that the common people attri-
buted all unpleasant occurrences to hixiu Thus, the sexton
in The Scarlet Letter who finds Dimmesdale's glove upon a
scaffold remarks to the minister with a grim smile that Satan
probably stole it to be mischievous and that "your reverence
must needs handle him without gloves, henceforward . . .
Ironically, Dimmesdale has been wrestling with a devil, but
under circumstances which the sexton could not imagine or
comprehend.
The citizens of Boston in The Scarlet Letter attribute
a variety of ridiculous cause and effect relationships to the
Devil, including Pearl's paternity. The townspeople maintain
3Ibid., p. 101. **Works, V, 192.
92
that Pearl is Satan's child, a theory which amuses Hester
with its absurdity, while at the same it makes her shudder
at its grotesque and horrible implications."* Hawthorne's
irony is once again appar-ent, for although Pearl acts like
a demon's child, she is in reality the daughter of the most
loved and respected man in Boston, a minister. While dis-
cussing Pearl's reputed parentage, Hawthorne records playfully
that other individuals in witch-times were given the dubious
distinction of being children of Satan. Even Luther, "ac-
cording to the scandal of his monkish enemies, was a brat of
that hellish breed . . „ .
The Evil One and his agents manipulated the minutiae of
life in order to discomfort or disconcert the righteous by
causing such unp 1 easaintries as nightmares.^ Hawthorne treats
the nightmare aspect of witchcraft tradition in an amusing
manner in "Feathertop; A Moralized Legend." In this story
Mother Rigby is a witch with great abilities. She creates
an image of a fine gentleman from a scarecrow and forces it
to come to life by making it inhale the smoke from a magic
pipe. While observing the efforts of the scarecrow to breathe,
she displays the bedside manner which is customary for a witch,
when giving unfortunate wretches bad dreams. "Mother Rigby
. . . with one brown arm akimbo and the other stretched toward
5Ibid., p. 124. 6Ibid.
^Kittredge, p. 218.
93
the figure, loomed grimly among the obscurity [of the smoke
from the pipe | with such port and expression as when she was
wont to heave a ponderous nightmare on her victims and stand
at the bedside to enjoy their agony."® Hawthorne sardonically
mocks the Puritan belief that nightmares are caused by witch-
craft in a historical sketch, "Main Street." John and Elizabeth
Proctor were put to death (according to Hawthorne's sketch)
because of superstitious and insubstantial charges that the
Proctors, those "hoary reprobates," spent their evenings
devilishly showing "their withered faces at children's bed-
sides, mocking, making mouths, and affrighting the poor little
innocents in the nighttime.
According to Puritan witchcraft doctrine, witches or the
Devil also stirred up storms at sea and tempests on land in
order to enrich life with a little malicious fun and to punish
their enemies#^® Thus in The Scarlet Letter, Pearl humorously
threatens to evoke a storm at sea to punish a sailor that has
called her a "witch-baby." With "a naughty smile" Pearl in-
forms the seaman that "Mistress Hibbins says my father is the
Prince of the Air . . . . If thou callest me that ill name,
I shall tell him of thee, and he will chase thy ship with a
tempest."^ Mother Rigby also has the ability to stir up
storms at sea. After creating Feathertop she whimsically
8Works, II, 261. 9Ibid., III, 468.
I0Kittredge, p. 152. I1¥orks, V, 291.
94
bequeaths him a fortune in useless items including "the cargo
of a certain ship, laden with the salts of Cadiz, which she
herself, by her necromantic arts, had caused to founder, ten
years before, in the deepest part of mid-ocean.
Other elements of the witchcraft tradition aroused
Hawthorne's strong sense of irony. As Arlin Turner says, "He
had an eye for incongruities and a relish for the unexpected."13
The tradition of old men and women enjoying wild rides on
broomsticks is an element of witch belief which Hawthorne finds
incongruous and amusing. He describes the rheumatic and dot-
tering Proctors in ,fMain Street" as they "whisked up the chim-
ney, both on one broomstick . . . . M i s t r e s s Hibbins and
Mother Rigby, too, are devotees of travel by broomstick and
enjoy "many an airy gallop at midnight.
Vhile seventeenth century Puritans found nothing humorous
in the common belief that elderly persons could fly on broom-
sticks, attend, forest dances and orgies, and spectrally assault
innocent victims, Hawthorne sometimes treats such matters
lightly. In "Young Goodman Brown," for example, he finds a
kind of grotesque humor in the theory that an ordinary old
woman would adopt the extraordinary role of a witch. When
Goody Gloyse is first introduced in the story, she is hobbling
through the dark forest at night, alone, "with singular speed
12Ibid., II, 263. I3Turner, p. 101.
I4Works, III, 468. L5Ibid., II, 254.
95
for so aged a woman, and mumbling some indistinct words--a
prayer, doubtless--as she went."^ Since few unescorted
women would be traveling in the forest near Salem at night,
the reader is prepared to find that Gloyse is something other
than the "pious and exemplary dame1' that she appears to be.
Goodman Brown fears that his presence in the forest would
shock the good old lady, so Brown's travelling companion, his
serpentine staff in hand, volunteers to approach her. Coming
from behind, "the traveller put forth his staff and touched
her withered neck with what seemed the serpent's tail."
Goody Cloyse is so startled that she screams, "the devilI"
and turning around discovers it really is her "old friend,"
the Devil.^ Although she shrieks "the devil" as if meeting
the Devil in the dark forest would be a cause for terror, her
conversation soon reveals that she has met him often and
willingly there.
There is a macabre humor in the discrepancy between Goody
Gloyse's seemingly normal personality, physical traits, and
interests on one hand, and her incongruous activities and
conversation with the Devil on the other. Like many old
women, Cloyse is garrulous. She begins a rapid and rambling
conversation with the Devil within seconds of recognizing him.
Her convei-sation reveals a tendency toward gossip and slander
I6Ibid., p. 94. L7Ibid.
96
which is not abnormal. The topics of her talk are, however,
most unusual.
It becomes apparent that Goody Cloyse is on her way to
a Black Sabbath even though she speaks of~ it as if it were
an ordinary social gathering. Gloyse accuses a neighbor of
stealing her broomstick and refers to Goodwife Cory, the sus-
pected thief, as "that unhanged witch."-L® Ironically, Gloyse
has forgotten that she herself is a witch and that using the
term "witch" derogatorily under those circumstances is quite
hypocritical. The old woman slips into a brief reverie and
reminisces about her old friendship with an ancestor of the
present Goodman Brown. She contemptuously dismisses Young
Brown (who overhears her conversation in shocked silence) as
a "silly f e l l o w . A little levity is displayed in the old
woman's querrulous and humorous complaint that she had anointed
herself with a special flying ointment for the Witches' Sabbath,
only to be delayed by the loss of her broomstick.
The typical domestic interests of a woman of Gloyse's po-
sition and character are revealed when she lists the ingredi-
ents for an unusual recipe. Ironically, the recipe is for
a magic ointment and it includes a grisly ingredient--"the fat
of a new-born babe."20 Furthermore, she is not reviewing
favorite recipes with another housewife, but instead with
Satan. All the ironies of Gloyse's conversation make it
I8Ibid, I9Ibid. 2 0 Ibid.
97
amusing, but Hawthorne was not atterapting to lighten his
story with humor as much as he is trying to shock the reader
(as Brown is shocked) by the difference between what Gloyse
appears to be and what she really is. Brown comes to the
rapid conclusion that Cloyse is a disciple of the Devil. Her
mind and soul seem to be so totally corrupted that the un-
natural becomes natural. Evil, as her nonchalant conversation
reveals, has become the conventional, typical, and normal
pattern of thought and behavior for Goody Cloyse.
Mistress Hibbins of The Scarlet Letter is another humor-
ous type of witch. Like Gloyse she accepts the principle of
evil as the underlying concept in human relationships and
activities. Hibbins worships evil as it is personified in
the Puritan myth of the Black Man in the forest. Hawthorne
calls her weird, eccentric, mad, and mentally infirm, because
her behavior and thought are distorted and abnormal.
Basically she is a ridiculous figure, somewhat humorous and
rarely very sinister. She dresses with curious taste in her
role as a witch in a "high head-dress, a rich gown of velvet,
and ruff" and rumor says that it -is in this outfit that she
mounts a broomstick, rides with "Satan through the air," and
reappears the next morning "with twigs of the forest clinging
to her skirts, arid looking sourer than ever, as having hardly
got a wink of sleep after her night ride."22
2IIbid., V, 286, 287, 288. 22Ibid., p. 184.
98
Broomsticks, dances in the forest with the Devil playing
the fiddle, signatures in an iron-bound book are all figments
of Mistress Hibbins' unbalanced mind, but her sane neighbors,
while behaving more circumspectly, believe the same fantasies.
Mistress Hibbins spends much of her time extending invitations
to Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimraesdale to join her arid her
"potentate" in their forest revels. Hester smiles at the old
lady's caprices while Dimraesdale is shocked and horrified.
Despite her comic madness, Mistress Hibbins ironically has a
deeper insight into a secret relationship between Hester and
Dimmesdale, and their experience with sin, than most Bostonians.
With her mental condition, however, Hibbins is at about the
same intellectual level as Pearl, and the Black Man is their
unsophisticated conception of evil and temptation.
Humorous witchcx*aft and a comic devil are elements of
Hawthorne's "Feathertop: A Moralized Legend." Hawthorne
meant "Feathertop" to be a light social satire. A serious
presentation of witch lore would be unsuitable, for Hawthorne's
usual approach as a satirist, as Arlin Turner comments, "is
so mild and tolerantly genial that his satire all but obscures
itself."23 Thus Mother Rigby and the Devil, image-magic,
broomsticks, compacts with Satan, and so forth are all made
harmless and amusing. The satire is adorned with the
23Turner, p. 100,
99
paraphernalia of witchcraft merely to achieve a fanciful
effect and to make acceptable to the reader impossible ele-
ments of plot and character.
Hawthorne alters witch lore by making Mother Rigby less
sinister than the traditional witch. Image-magic, while
traditionally a dangerous activity, becomes a harmless game
for Mother Rigby, who resolves in a creative mood to make
something useful. Since she needs a scarecrow, she produces
one from a variety of materials, and after it is constructed,
Rigby cannot resist the temptation to transform the scare-
crow into a man. With the help of a little magic she creates
Feathertop, a facsimile of the contemporary man of fashion.
Feathertop is a symbol of the empty-headed fop, and as
such he is a tool for Hawthorne's satire of men and society.
The mechanism of witchcraft allows the author to comment on
illusion and deceptive appearances through the language of
witch tradition. Hawthorne proceeds to say that since "the
miracles of witchcraft seem always to have had a very shallow
subtlety," it is really rather doubtful whether "there was
any real change . . . in the sordid, wornout, worthless, and
ill-pointed substance of the scarecrow . . . ."2^ Feathertop
can best be explained as a "spectral illusion, and cunning
effect of light and shade so colored and contrived as to
2k-Works, II, 25k,
100
25
delude the eyes of most men." Furthermore, the illusion
is not actual and physical, but rather mental, It is based
on social values.
The almost comic Devil of folk tradition is one playful
element in Hawthorne's humorous treatment of witchcraft and
the Devil. Mother Rigby associates with the Evil One, but
he is not a regal fallen angel in the Miltonic tradition or
Calvin's maleficently cunning enemy of God. The Devil whom
Mother Rigby evokes is an invisible spirit, subservient to
her every whim, and acting as more a minor devil than a
Master of Hell. Mother Rigby practices her witchcraft with
his aid, calling him "Dickon" (a favorite nickname for the
Devil in folk tradition)^0 and ordering him to perform mun-
dane duties like lighting her pipe with a coal from the fires
of Hell. Dickon is assigned the task of keeping Feathertop's
pipe lighted. The smoke from the magic pipe is the breath
of life to the scarecrow.
Feathertop has all the characteristics of the man of
fashion. His brilliant exterior deceives those who cannot
perceive the truth behind the illusion. The scarecrow, like
other "gentlemen" of his ilk, cannot see himself in per-
spective. The magic distortion of clothes, manners, and
affectations of emotion deceive him as well as others. When
25Ibid., p. 259. 26Lynch, p. 120.
101
Feather-top promises to obey Mother Rigby's orders "with all
my heart," the old woman roars with laughter, for his empty
phraseology is that of the fashionable fop.27 He is oblivious
to the humor of his own nature and situation.
The scarecrow's appearance deceives everyone except a
child and a dog who, as innocent and natural beings, observe
the reality beneath the "witchcraft" of illusion and artifice.
The citizens who encounter Feathertop are willing to accept
his judgment of them as social inferiors. As a caricature of
a gentleman, the scarecrow possesses no natural traits to make
him human and individualistic; "a well-digested conventionalism
had incoi'porated itself thoroughly with his substance and trans-
formed him into a work of art."2® Yet Feathertop imparts a
kind of "ghastliness and awe" because he is so "consummately
artificial" that his human aspect only superficially masks
his inhuman nature.^9
As an image of a man, empty-headed and artificial yet
able to dupe other men, Feathertop is a comic figure. But
since Hawthorne intended "Feathertop" to be a moralized legend,
his characters and plot must also present serious matters in
their humorous framework. The scarecrow is given a sinister
errand by Mother Rigby. He is supposed to win the love of
Polly Gookin, thereby punishing her father, Justice Gookin.
27Works, II, 263. 28Ibid., p. 21h, 29Ibid.
102
The Justice "at some earlier period of life, had given some
pledge or other to the evil principle" and now has failed to
meet the terms of his compact with the Devil.Since he has
been assigned the role of an instrument of punishment, Feather-
top poses a "supernatural peril" for P o l l y # 3 1
The Justice's daughter, like her peers, is a suitable
victim for the illusive dangers of witchcraft. She finds the
dazzling appearance and affected manners of Feathertop to be
so enhancing that within a short time she has acquired some
of the artificial mannerisms of the scarecrow. Even more im-
portantly, within fifteen minutes after meeting him she begins
to fall in love with this "hollow semblance" of a m a n . 3 2 The
painted demons on the bowl of Feathertop's pipe, who symbol-
ize his relationship with evil, dance wildly as a victory for
their side seems assured. Polly saves herself from Feather-
top's "spell" by gazing toward a mirror which reflects his
image as well as her own. The mirror, "one of the truest
plates in the world and incapable of flattery" reveals the
real nature of Feathertop.33 His lack of true substance is
reflected by the mirror to the horror of Polly and the scare-
crow. Polly faints from the shock, and Feathertop, with a
depth of emotion unexpected by Mother Rigby, destroys himself.
30Ibid. -^Ibid.
32Ibid., p. 275. 33Ibid., p. 276.
103
The whole moral of the story is summed up by Mother Rigby
as she mourns:
My poor, dear, pretty FeathertopI There are thousands upon thousands of coxcombs and charlatans in the world, made up of just such a jumble of wornout, forgotten, and good-for-nothing trash as he was I Yet they live in fair repute, and never see themselves for what they are. And why should my poor puppet be the only one to know himself and perish for it?34
She briefly considers recreating her artificial man, but
decides instead that he is much too tenderhearted for the
cruelties of the human world. Furthermore, as a scarecrow
he will serve a useful purpose, which is more than can be
said for many of his "human brethren."3"*
The comic-Devil makes an appearance in other stories in
which Hawthorne treats the diabolic whimsically. The folk
Devil usually is stereotyped as a dark figure with red eyes,
horns, cloven-hoofs, and a tail. He is given a variety of
familiar and semi-affectionate names, including Dickon, Old
Nick, Old Scratch, and Beelzebub.3^ As a meddlesome and mis-
chievous creator of bad luck and minor misfortunes, Hawthorne
brings him into a few stories just to add a touch of folk
humor. In "Mrs. Bullfrog," for example, the Devil is blamed
for a woman's sudden transformation from youth and beauty to
decrepit old age. Mr. Bullfrog marries a seemingly young
woman and conducts her to his home after the wedding. During
34Ibid., p. 278. 35Ibid. 36Lynch, p. 114.
10^
the journey ari accident causes the carriage to be overturned,
and the passengers are thrown out. Mrs. Bullfrog undergoes
an unexpected change in appearance as she loses her wig, teeth,
and good temper. Her husband, when confronted by this "ogre"
imagines that "the Old Nick, at the moment of our overturn,
had annihilated my wife and jumped into her petticoats."3?
Since he married her mostly for her money, however, and she
still retains that attraction, the new husband is soon pacified.
As in "Feathertop," the Devil tradition is used by Hawthorne
to emphasize the gap between the apparent and the real.
The stereotyped folk Devil is an element of "Peter
Goldthwaite's Treasure," a short story which is (in part) a
humorous treatment of the diabolic. In legendary treatments
of witchcraft and Devil lore, devils or demons were supposed
to be guardians of treasure troves, a tradition which goes
back to "the hoard-guarding dragon of Beowulf and Saxo
Grammaticus and many a local legend," according to George
Kittredge„3® jn order to find concealed riches, folk belief
demanded the use of spells and incantations which are employed
"first, to call up a spirit who shall disclose the right spot;
and, second, to control the demon who keeps the hoard."^9
Hawthorne loosely observes the traditional paraphernalia of
spells, spirits, devils, and treasure in "Peter Goldthwaitefs
^Works, II, 153. ^^Kittredge, p. 205.
39Ibid»
105
Treasure," but he modifies tradition to make the tale as
entertaining as possible.
The hero of the story, Peter Goldthwaite, is an indi-
vidual who has wasted years and squandered his resources on
foolish schemes to become a wealthy man. Peter's latest plan
to become rich is centered around discovering a hidden treasure
which an ancestor deposited somewhere in the family home several
generations ago. After deciding to tear down his ancestral
home in order to discover the hoard of wealth, he systematically
destroys the old house (his one remaining possession) by de-
molishing the interior, room by room. He leaves only the fa-
cade of the building to conceal his activities and renounces
all communication with the outside world.
Peter has no seer to envision the location of the treasure,
but a "spirit" lurks around, according to Peter. As Peter
searches for the treasure, often he has the feeling that "the
formex Peter Goldthwaite [the one who hid the moneyj had come
back, either to assist or impede his search for the hidden
wealth."40 Peter also has the companionship of an old house-
keeper, Tabitha, wno customarily sits in a chimney corner,
"like a witch in a dark cavern."41 Tabitha cannot disclose
the right spot to hunt for the lost treasure, but she is
Peter's source of information about the existence of a legend-
ary treasure. According to Tabitha and legend, Peter's
40Works, I, 437. 4:1-Ibid., p. 431.
106
ancestor got his wealth dishonestly and possibly with the
Devil's help. The ancient Peter had to hide his money be-
cause he could not spend it. He had made a bargain with the
Devil to deed his house and land to the Evil One for riches,
but either the Devil or the former Peter failed to abide by
the bargain. Every time old Peter went to unlock the treasure
chest, "the Old Scratch came behind and. caught his arm."^
It takes an amusing encounter with the Devil to give
Peter his first clue that a treasure does exist. While
laboring at his work of destruction one day, Peter discovers
a charcoal sketch on a wall of a "ragged man, partly sup-
porting himself on a spade, and bending his lean body over a
hole in the earth, with one hand extended to grasp something
he had found. But close behind him, with a fiendish laugh
on his features, appeared a figure with horns, a tufted tail,
and a cloven hoof."^ Behaving as if the picture of the Devil
were the demon controlling the hoard, Peter makes an attempt
to exorcise it symbolically. He lifts his spade and strikes
the figure of the Devil crying, "Avaunt SatanI . . . . The
man shall have his gold."1'"*4' The spade goes through the wall
and discloses a cavity where a piece of papex* (a record of
the amount of the treasure) is concealed.
^2Ibid., p. kkO. ^3Ibid., p. 442.
^Ibid.
107
At last Peter discovers the hidden hoard which, ironi-
cally, consists of nothing more than worthless, pre-Revo-
lutionary currency. Peter has destroyed his home, his only
possession of value, in the futile search, but he has a good-
hearted former business partner who buys the shell of a house.
If the story has a moral, it is merely that dreamers like
Peter Goldthwaite deny their ties with humanity and waste life
in foolish pursuits that can only end in failure.
In "The Celestial Railroad," a humorous adaptation of
John Bunyan's Pilgrim* s Progress, Hawthorne also presents the
Devil in a humorous manner. A narrator describes his journey
on a railway which has replaced the old way of traversing by
foot the road to the Celestial City. In the company of Mr.
Smooth-it-away the narrator is assured that progress has made
life's journey easy and pleasant. Satirizing current Uni-
tarian liberalism and Transcendentalism, Hawthorne suggests
that the trend toward "progress" has resulted in compromises
with evil. Thus the Celestial Railroad has a board of di-
rectors selected from Vanity Fair, devils are employed to
work on the railroad, and the pilgrims associate freely with
ruined souls and demons while making their journey.
One of the comic devils whom the narrator encounters is
Apollyon, the chief engineer of the train. Apollyon takes
great pleasure in diabolically teasing old-fashioned pilgrims
who still make the journey on foot. The pilgrims taking the
108
comfortable train ride mock and jibe the dusty foot travellers.
Apollyon also enters "heartily into the fun; and contrived to
flirt the smoke and flame of the engine, or of his own breath,
into their faces, and envelop them in an atmosphere of scalding
steam.Ironically, the old-fashioned pilgrims are the only
ones who arrive at the Celestial City.
Mr. Smooth-it-away conducts the trusting pilgrims by rail
over the Slough of Despond, through the Valley of Death, and
past the Hill Difficulty. Arriving in Vanity Fair they have
the pleasure of seeing Prince Beelzebub "bargaining with a
miser for his soul, which, after much ingenious skirmishing
on both sides, his highness succeeded in obtaining at about
the value of sixpence. The prince remarked with a smile that
Lift
he was a loser by the transaction." 1-0 Before leaving Vanity
Pair the pilgrims are warned that riding the Celestial Rail-
road is equivalent to selling one's soul to the Devil for the
price of a ticket.
The narrator and his companions, however, continue their
blithe journey. They board a ferry boat for the last stage
of the journey, and they discover when it is too late that
the easy route is the way to Hell. Mr. Smooth-it-away, their
guide, is a devil: And then did my excellent friend Mr. Smooth-it-away laugh outright, in the midst of which cachinnation a smoke-wreath issued from his mouth and nostrils,
45Ibid., II, 217. 46Ibid., p. 288.
109
while a twinkle of livid flame darted out of either eye, proving undubitably that his heart was all of a red blaze. The impudent fiendI^
To end the story with appropriate lightness, the narrator
awakes at the critical moment to discover that he has been
dreaming.
Hawthorne treats witch and Devil lore in some of his
fiction with a light touch. He uses humor and irony as tools
to explore the deeper meanings of plot and character, which
the fantasy and illusion of witchcraft partially obscure.
Irony is an effective device for revealing the discrepancy
between appearance and reality. Humor, when combined with
witch and Devil doctrine, emphasizes the unreality and whimsy
of superstition and folk tradition. Hawthorne combines both
humor and irony with the diabolic in order to create light
satire and to teach gentle moral lessons. Sometimes, too,
a humorous treatment of the Devil or witchcraft (as in "Mrs.
3ullfrog") is just an example of a Hawthornian fling at broad
humor.
Ibid., p 234.
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION
In several short stories, historical sketches, and The
Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne exploits the beliefs,
historical events, and the atmosphere of the witchcraft period
of New England. The witchcraft trials in Salem influenced
Hawthorne's choice of fictional material greatly. Even in
works which do not deal primarily with the historical period
of the witch trials, the author often uses the terminology
of witch and Devil doctrine and common witchcraft phenomena
to achieve certain literary effects. Hawthorne's pronounced
interest in witch and Devil lore grew out of his personal
family history. It was fostered by his early life in Salem
and was supplemented by his reading in works about New
England's Puritan era.
Hawthorne's ancestry greatly influenced his interest in
witches, devils, and all the accompanying paraphernalia of
supernaturalism. Two forebears in particular, Major William
Hat ho m e and Judge John Hat home impressed their descendent
with their iron characters and resolute will. Major Hathorne
Sternly persecuted those who threatened to undermine the Puri-
tan religion and rule in New England* His son John was a
zealous prosecutor of the Salem, "witches" who came before his
110
Ill
court in 1682 on charges of being in league with the Devil.
Hawthorne half-seriously conceived the idea that the guilt
of his self-righteous ancestors who over-stepped their
authoritative and judicial roles might be transmitted to
later generations. Perhaps he wrote his witch tales, sketches,
and The Scarlet Letter partly with the belief that he could
confess the wrongs of the past, and thus expiate ancient
wrongdoings.
With the knowledge of the roles his ancestors played in
the formation of the history of New England and with evidence
of the past ever present in his Salem surroundings where he
lived for several years, Hawthorne developed a fascination for
New England history. This interest manifested itself in his
reading. He read histories of New England with their accounts
of the Salem trials. He exposed himself to Puritan thought
about the presence and activities of the Devil in New England
by perusing sermons, lectures, and works by the theological
elite of seventeenth century New England. Cotton and Increase
Mather were two prominent theologians with whose works Hawthorne
became familiar, and whose theories and observances found their
way, sometimes scarcely modified, into the writer's fiction.
From histories of New England and their coverages of the
witchcraft period, Hawthorne derived events, dates, and names
about Salem trials and executions which he adapted to give his
writings historical authenticity and background. From the
112
Mathers and other theologians Hawthorne achieved valuable
insight into the fears and superstitions, myths and legends,
which even educated minds accepted as fact during the witch
pei~iod. The intense reality of the Devil- and his agents to
the early Puritans, which is accurately presented by Hawthorne
through subtle psychology and characterization, is a result
of his historical reading.
The paraphernalia of witchcraft doctrine—spectral evi-
dence, Black Sabbaths, orgies and dances, demons, witches,
wizards, the Black Man, demonic Indian sachems, image-magic,
broomsticks, child-murder, spells, compacts with Satan^ and
so forth, are all introduced into Hawthorne's work to achieve
certain effects. At the most elementary level, the parapher-
nalia of witch and Devil lore adds atmospheric qualities of
horror, suspense, and mystery. Element? of witch tradition
also help the author develop his themes arid characterization.
Young Goodman Brown, for example, loses his faith in mankind,
but he does so after a shocking and horrible experience
(either psychological or physical) with Satan, spectral evi-
dence, a Black Sabbath, and an unholy baptismal rite. Brown
thinks and reacts to his nightmare experience not only as a
seventeenth century Puritan, but as the universal man--quick
to judge, apt to doubt, inclined toward sin, and partly moti-
vated to reject good and choose evil instead.
The paraphernalia of witchcraft and Devil lore was so
attractive and adaptable for Hawthorne that he employed it in
113
fiction which is far removed from the Puritan witch period.
Thus in The Blithedale Romance, set in the 1800's, Hawthorne
alludes to a Devil compact in connection with the novel's
villain, and introduces a forest dance into the plot, linking
it and the dancers with the witch era of the seventeenth
century. Similarly, Hawthorne uses his own family history
and a historical witch's curse to add a touch of the demonic
to The House of the Seven Gables.
Hawthorne used three interrelated conceptions of the
Devil in characterizing Satan. The Miltonic, Galvinistic,
and folk-devil interpretations are developed separately ov?
in combination in individual works. Traditional Puritan
Devil-beliefs based on the Bible are adapted to enhance
fictional situations. For example, a serpent motif which
is prominent in the author's fiction is based on the tra-
dition of the serpent in the Garden of Eden# Hawthorne uses
serpentine imagery and symbolism to suggest sin and temp-
cation and to link villainous figures with Satan in the
reader's mind * Traditional color symbolism is another device
Hawthorne employs in characterizing the Devil and the demonic.
Black represents sin and evil; red denotes passion and sug-
gests eternal punishment in the fires of Hell. Hawthorne
used the Devil as his archetypal figure of evil. Often the
villainous or sinful nature of certain characters is revealed
by the author's illustrative parallels between Satan and a
Ilk
diabolic character, Roger Chillingworth, Ethan. Brand,
Professor Westervelt, the model (in The Mai'ble Faun) are
all characters whom Hawthorne describes in terms of Devil
tradition and whom he characterizes as demonics.
Hawthorne's demonic characters are often developed
ar-ound the theory that an inner battle rages in man between
good and evil. When the evil portion of his nature is in
ascendancy, man becomes a replica of Satan* Often Hawthorne's
characters evoke their inner "devil" or "demon" because they
nurture the sin of pride which calls forth the worst in human
nature* Roger Chillingworth, for example, suffers a blow to
his pride when he discovers his wife has been unfaithful. His
determination to use revenge as a balm for his wounded pride
results in his rejection of the good in his own nature.
Chillingworth becomes a "fiend." Similarly, Lady Eleanor in
"Lady Eleanor's Mantle," evokes a "fiend" through her ex-
cessive pride in her beauty and social status. Often, too,
overdevelopment of the intellect is the first step for the
characters in Hawthorne's fiction becoming sub-human indi-
viduals possessed by demons. Chillingworth, Ethan Brand,
Westervelt, Hollingsworth, and Dr. Rappaccini are all charac-
ters whose intellectual powers have betrayed them into the un-
pardonable sin of ignoring their ties with humanity and mis-'
using the powers of the mind to manipulate (and even destroy)
the souls of others.
115
Hawthorne's habit of using witch and Devil doctrine for
symbolism, figurative language, and irony is evident in all
his fiction dealing with witchcraft and the Devil. Often
irony is the author's tool for emphasizing the discrepancy
between appearance and reality. Irony occasionally intro-
duces a note of humor which is unexpected in Hawthorne's
usually serious treatment of witch and Devil lore. For ex-
ample, Mistress Hibbins and Goody Cloyse, two of Hawthorne's
most memorable witches, are ironic figures and humorous
characters as well. In other works Hawthorne uses the whimsy,
fantasy, and illusion of witchcraft and the humorous con-
ception of the folk Devil to achieve a light tone and teach
a moral. Witchcraft is used humorously in "Feathertop; A
Moralized Legend," for example, in order to satirize certain
elements of society. A comic folk devil adds humor and irony
to "The Celestial Railroad" and "Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure."
Whether used seriously or humorously, witch and Devil^
beliefs were valuable tools as literary devices and sources
for subject matter of Hawthorne's writings. The diabolic
provided an unreal and unbelievable aura to complement the
author's technique of using ambiguity as a tool. In Hawthorne's
writing ambiguity obscures events, thus allowing for a myriad
of interpretations of plot and character. The superstition
of witchcraft and Devil doctrine adds the horror (and some-
times humor) which Hawthorne wanted to achieve. Hawthorne
116
often invests his fiction with, "romantic indefiniteness,"
as Arlin Turner says, which provides a "vague, atmosphere
. . . just outside the precincts of real life."1- The
introduction of historic names} events, and scenes connected
with the witch period of Puritan New England often lends his
works solidity and concreteness to balance the fantasies,
ambiguities, and abstract concepts with which he deals.
•Turner, p. 108,
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books
Burr, George Lincoln, editor, Narratives of_ the Witchcraft Gases 1.684-1706, New York, Charles" Scri'bner' s Sens, 19 Ik 7 ~~~
Calvin, John, Institutes of the Ohristian Religion, 7th ed., Translated by John Allen T2 voTiuo.es)", Philadelphia, Presbyterian Board of Christian Education, 1936.
Hansen, Chadwick> Witchcraft at Salem, New York, George Braziller, Incfl,, 1*971).
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, The Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, edited by George Parsons LatKrop ( L5" volumes") , "Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 191^.
Kesselring, Mar i o n Louise, Hawthorne ' s Reading_ 1828--1650, New York, New York Public LTorary, 1949 7 "
Kittredge, George Lyman, Witc hcrjift in Old and N w England, New Yox-k, Harvard UnivarsTty Press," 1929.
Mather, Cotton, Wonders of the Invisible World, London, J. R. Smith, 186*2.
Milton, John, The Coo^lete Poetical Works of John MiJ-ton$ edited by "George "Bush, Boston," Houghton Mifflin Co., 1965.
Robbins, Rossel Hope, The Enc^^padia witchcraft and. Demonology, New York. Grown Publishers, 1959.
Starkey, Marion Lena, The Devil in Massachusetts: A Modern Inquiry Into Sal era Witch Trials, New York, A. A. Knopf Co., 1 .
Stein, William Bysshe, Hawthorne' s_ Pausjfc: A Study of the. Devil Archetype, Ga.xneivfT.le., Florida, University of ' Florida Press, 1953.
Stewart, Randall, Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Biography, New Haven, Yale UnTvarsity Press7"l<J48
117
118
Turner, Arlin, Hajbhaiiiel Hawthorne: An Introduction and InterpretatToirr~New York"IfoLt, Barries and NobXe, 19517 ~
Uyham, Charles Wentworth, Salem Witchcraft (2 volumes), New York, Frederick Ungar Go",", 1959".
Articles
Eurhams, Clinton S., Jr., "Hawthorne' s Mind and Art in 'The Hollow of Three Hills, ' " Journal of_ English and German Philology, LX (April, 1961), 286*~29~5.
Dahl, Curtis, "The Devil is a Wise One,M Cithara, VI (1967), 52-58.
Levin, David, "Shadows of Doubt: Specter Evidence in Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown,'" American Literature, XXXIV (November, 1962), 3^-352.
Lynch, James J., "The Devil in the Writings of Irving, Hawthorne, and Poe," New York Folklore Quarterly, VIII (Summer, 1952), 111-1317 "
McDowell, Tremaine, "Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the Witches of Colonial Salem," Notes and Queries, CIXVI (March 3, 193*0, 152. " ""
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