Why does young Goodman Brown end up AA stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man@ (Hawthorne 89) after his adventure in the woods? One answer is that he lost his trust in his community, especially in his wife Faith. His loss of faith in Faith is crucial to his resulting dismal outlook, yet this answer only raises a further question. What was Faith=s significance to Brown in the first place that his changed attitude toward her affected his life so profoundly? Earlier investigations of AYoung Goodman Brown@ have demonstrated the importance of Puritan history, theology, psychology, and sociology for the story (Colacurcio, Province 11-19; Levin 96-99). If Brown indeed emerged from the forest with a stronger belief in Calvinism (Connolly, AHawthorne=s Attack@ 49-50) or at least in a Agraceless perversion of true Calvinism@ (Levin 104), why then would Brown=s discovery of his wife=s and acquaintances= sinfulness, such a basic Puritan tenant, produce such a profound effect? I believe that Brown=s disillusionment at the end results not only from the illusions he encountered in the woods, but also from the illusions he carried into the woods. His key error was in viewing his wife allegorically as the personification of a virtue rather than as a real woman.

Given that AYoung Goodman Brown@ is after all an allegory, my thesis that Brown erred in allegorizing his wife seems at first glance to be perverse. However, the complexity of "Young Goodman Brown" requires us to make careful distinctions whenever we analyze it, and we must be careful to observe the various levels of the story. A narrative allegory typically has at least two levels. The first level is the literal level of the plot; the second is the symbolic level (Murfin and Ray 8). Brown's wife Faith clearly functions on the allegorical level as faith, while Brown himself is an Everyman figure. Such a wide range of scholars have agreed on this observation, albeit with distinctions among themselves as to the precise nature of faith or what type of people Brown represents, that it is almost a truism (Connolly, "Introduction" 7; Eberwein 23; Guerin et al. 59; Leavis 102; Miller 73; Robinson 108). The following statement is typical: "The names of the couple are as allegorical as any in Bunyan: The Puritan Everyman is the husband of Christian Faith" (Hoffman 86). Edgar Allan Poe, who disliked the genre and thought Hawthorne "infinitely too fond of allegory," asserted that the allegorical level in fiction interferes with the mimetic effect of the literal level and that the only way to enjoy such a work is to ignore the symbolic level, "to keep the allegory out of sight" (46, 48).

When we follow Poe's advice and focus on the literal level of the story, we begin to understand his frustration with Hawthorne, for what we find isBstill more allegory! The young husband in the story treats his wife as virtue incarnate. His initial view of Faith evokes Dante's view of "Beatrice, the ennobling female who leads him up the Ladder of Love to paradise" (Loving 225). The literal Brown sees Faith as "My love and my Faith," "a blessed angel on earth" and plans to "cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven" (74-75). Goodman Brown not only thinks of his wife as an angel; he also identifies her with his mother (Keil 44-45). According to Keil, ABrown has deliberately conflated his wife=s name with a belief system@ (40). He thinks that he will be saved through Faith, much as Puritans of the era expected to be saved through faith: "For by grace are ye saved through faith" (Ephesians 2:8). Turner's remark about Coverdale's feelings for Priscilla in Hawthorne's The Blithdale Romance could equally apply to Goodman Brown's feelings for Faith: AThe love he finally confesses for Priscilla is love for, not the woman she actually is, we learn, but the woman he has shaped in his fancy@ (Turner 20).

On the allegorical level, Brown=s expectation that he will be saved through faith is appropriate, especially within the Puritan theological framework. On the literal level, the situation is quite different. A young man who regarded his wife as Brown does Faith at the beginning of his experience would have been regarded with great disdain at the very least. Goody Cloyse indeed calls him a "silly fellow," but she does not give the reasons for her opinion (79). Brown's initial attitude toward Faith marks him as a Asilly fellow@ for several reasons. First, his addressing her as "My love and my Faith" would sound excessive to the Puritan ear; she was his wife, not his faith. Puritans exhorted one another to love their spouses and saw mutual love as a key component of marriage. ALove was more than a fortunate accident to the Puritans. It was a duty imposed by God on all married couples@ (Morgan 12). Yet duty also required one to limit that love and keep it secondary to the love of God. Morgan cites several expressions of such tempered love, including one by Edward Taylor: AMy Dove, I send you not my heart, for that I trust is sent to Heaven long since@ (Taylor, qtd. in Morgan 16). The proper Puritan couple Anever valued their love as more than an 'earthly' comfort@ (Morgan 16). By treating his wife as AMy love and my Faith@ and as Aa blessed angel on earth@ who will lead him to heaven (Hawthorne 74-75), Brown demonstrates that he thinks too highly of a fallen creature and is in danger of making her an idol. His overestimation of her in the beginning of the story leads to his abiding suspicion of her in the end. Unable to reconcile himself to her fallibility after their encounter in the wilderness, he cannot even value her as an earthly comfort for the remainder of their lives together, making his end state as unbalanced as his beginning one.

A second problem that Brown's fellow Puritans would have with his attitude toward Faith is that he plans to follow her to heaven. In so doing, Goodman Brown abdicates his responsibility to be the leader in their relationship. The Puritan husband was to remember that his wife Awas the weaker vessel in both body and mind@; he needed to provide the spiritual leadership (Morgan 10). The husband was to be the wife's priest and mediate between her and God, voicing her prayers to God and voicing God's will (as the husband understood it) to her (Thickstun 18-19). AA woman's virtue and spiritual security can be assured only through submission to male authority and reliance on male protection@ (Thickstun 31). Faith, who is a good Puritan wife, seeks that authority and protection from Goodman Brown when he is about to leave, but he withholds them from her.

Brown mistakes her fears for herself as suspicion of him and responds with Ahuffy self-importance@ (Keil 41). Were he to allow himself to notice that temptation endangers her also, he would have to give up his fantasy of her superlative virtue and his notion that he would Acling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven@ (Hawthorne 75). Brown misapprehends his wife as pure angelic spirit rather than as sinful human flesh and places her in charge of his spiritual well-being. Only when he hears her voice in the Aheathen wilderness@ and finds her pink ribbon does he realize the truth about Faith. Even if we follow Levin and Colacurcio in their theory that Brown sees spectral evidence rather than actual events in the forest (Levin 104; Colacurcio, AVisible@ 259-261, 272), Satan=s lies reveal a deeper truth; Faith is vulnerable to temptation, capable of sin. If she cannot save herself, how can she save Brown? Because Brown has been relying on Faith to save him, his belief in her differs from his belief in others both in degree and in kind. He wonders about the devil=s accusations against his ancestors but finally dismisses them: AWe are a people of prayer, and good works, to boot, and abide no such wickedness@ (77). Brown follows a pattern in the ensuing revelations of the wickedness of the governor and council, Goody Cloyse, and the minister and Deacon Gookin: first he expresses shock, then he dismisses them and resolves to persevere. By the time he overhears the minister and Deacon Gookin on their way to the witches= sabbath, he is so heavily shaken that he can barely muster his resolve, which he finally does by summoning his Faith:

Only Faith is necessary to save Brown from the devil; only Faith is sufficient. Goody Cloyse and the others may Achoose to go to the devil@; Brown's Faith will enable him to Astand firm against the devil@ (80, 82). But Brown=s version of sola Fide is short-lived; when he hears her voice in the wilderness and finds her ribbon, he succumbs to despair.

Brown calls upon Faith as faith one last time just before they receive the satanic baptism at the witches' sabbath.

Brown's cry succeeds in breaking the spell of the witches' circle, but too late for his peace of mind. He has no way of knowing whether Faith had entered into the communion of evil.

Brown's experience in the forest convinces him that Faith is human after all, possibly even in league with the devil, shattering his fantasy that Faith is Aa blessed angel on earth@ (75). At the beginning of the story, Brown has scripted the plot of his life based on his belief that Faith is the personification of Christian faith. This plot has two possible outcomes as far as Brown is concerned. On the one hand, he can continue into the woods with his dark companion and experience the evening's evil. After this sinful interlude, he will return chastened and repentant to his angel/mother/wife Faith and meekly follow her thereafter:

In addition to Athis excellent resolve for the future@ (75), Brown has an alternate plan that is even more excellent. He will meet with the sable figure, reject his enticements, and return to Faith with his loyalty proven and his conscience clear. After temporarily dismissing the devil, he congratulates himself at having overcome temptation.

Brown, however, fails to write his own story. Because Brown's adventure casts doubt on Faith, he is unable to enact either of his plans. When finally does emerge from the woods, he can no longer address her as his love and his Faith, so he does not address her at all. He makes no recorded statements to her after his return, choosing to treat her instead with silence, muttering, and stern looks.

If he cannot have her on his terms, he will not accept her on any other. Perhaps he could have found what Eberwein terms Asecular grace@ with his earth-bound Faith (30). According to Baym, Hawthorne=s typical hero has an opportunity to establish a relationship with a woman who Aoffers human love and sympathy" and a cure for his Aloneliness@ (224). The woman offers these to "a male protagonist who is isolated by some temperamental coldness, obsessional idea, or secret guilt" (224), that is, to someone like Brown. Seeing her offer as a threat, the man rejects her. The typical Hawthorne plot of a "jeopardized man and a saving but rejected woman" (Baym 224) certainly describes AYoung Goodman Brown,@ where one bad experience, and that possibly a dream, breaks an already brittle young man. Brown's realization that Faith shares his sinful human nature casts a permanent pall on their relationship. If Brown=s vision of evil in the forest was a delusion, so was his vision of purity by the hearth. By the end of his ordeal, the bleak vision has canceled the hopeful one, and Brown has found his allegory of Faith impossible to sustain.

Brown's breakdown has wider social implications, for both the time within the narrative, 1692, and for the time that Hawthorne published it, 1835 (Colacurcio; Province 15-29; Keil 34-35; Charvat et al. 573). Brown's inability to sustain the allegorization of his wife is not surprising in the social context of 1692; the wonder is that he was able to achieve such an idea to begin with. Loving speculates that the allegory fails because the story takes place in the New World without the tradition of Aa Christianity exalted in European art and history@ (227). I believe that Loving is partially correct, but follow Thickstun's thesis that this loss of tradition was a process that affected Protestants on both sides of the Atlantic. The Puritan view of women undermined their ability to allegorize women in a positive way (Thickstun ix-x, 24-25, 90). Puritans saw women as inferior both by the order in which God created Adam and Eve and also by the order in which they sinned: AFor Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.@ (1 Timothy 2:13-14). ANot only are women inferior by nature, but their subjection is also a punishment for Eve's role in the Fall@ (Thickstun 19). AEve, the weaker member of the couple-body, the disobedient wife, the original sinner, proves female frailty@ (Thickstun 31). Puritans did not think of women as pure but as more prone to sin, as Hawthorne knew. He reflects such thinking in AThe Maypole of Merry Mount@ when the May Lord pleads for Endicott to spare Edith:

Furthermore, the belief that women naturally stray more than men and therefore require Athe stricter discipline@ is one of the major themes of The Scarlet Letter. Hester's impurity must be made an occasion to warn other women not to follow her example. In Puritan thought, Athe ideal of sexual purity, traditionally a woman's greatest virtue, cannot coexist comfortably with an insistence on Original Sin@ (Thickstun 2). Of course, Catholics and Protestants shared a belief in Original Sin and in the inferior moral status of women, but the Puritan stress on human depravity did exceed the Catholic dogma of the era.

Furthermore, Protestants lost the main Catholic model for female purity by denying the Immaculate Conception, holding to the sinlessness of Jesus but not of Mary. According to Thickstun, their interpretation of Galatians 4:4-5 was particularly important for their understanding of Mary's role:

The Puritan doctrine of depravity and of humanity=s fundamental unworthiness not only undermined the idea of Mary=s goodness, but also the goodness of all the other traditional Catholic saints as well. Puritans may have venerated their elders and their ancestors (Colacurcio, AVisible@ 270), but they did so without the theological backing available to Catholics, who believed in the possibility of heroic virtue, of becoming perfectissimus, that is, of becoming a saint (Wilhelm). In the story, Satan exploits the tension that comes from trying to venerate elders and ancestors while asserting that all people are depraved:

In a system that holds to total depravity, purity becomes hard to find. By eliminating the saints, Puritans had lost a whole pantheon of chaste women, not just Mary.

According to Thickstun, Puritan allegory followed Puritan theology and lost the ability to even imagine female emblems of virtue. Thus in part two of Pilgrim's Progress, Christian's wife Christiana starts her pilgrimage as the bride of Christ, but soon loses her allegorical status and becomes simply a female believer (Thickstun 90). APuritan literature teeter[s] precariously on the brink between allegory and realism@ (Thickstun 24). Male figures could more easily maintain an allegorical dimension because of the Puritan identification of male with spirit and female with flesh (Thickstun 5-8). Christian in Part 1 of Pilgrim=s Progress could represent all Christians, male and female. Christiana in Part 2, however, could only be a model for individual Christian women. Bunyan had such difficulty in conceptualizing a woman as a representative of all Christians that when he needed a character to portray the Bride of Christ at the end of Part 2, he chose the male Stand-fast instead, who crosses the river paraphrasing the Song of Songs.

His Name has been to me as a Civet-Box, yea sweeter than all Perfumes. His Voice to me has been most sweet, and his Countenance, I have more desired then they that have most desired the Light of the Sun. His Word I did use to gather for my Food, and for Antidotes against my Faintings. He hath held me, and I have kept me from mine Iniquities: Yea, my Steps hath he strengthened in his Way. (Bunyan 311)

AHis [Stand-fast=s] final sentence, >Take me, for I come unto thee=, transforms his death into an explicitly sexual surrender (Thickstun 104), providing Christ with a male bride. Thickstun uses this and other examples to demonstrate that Puritan allegory shifts virtues to male figures that had traditionally belonged to female figures (Thickstun 1). Thus Brown=s failure to sustain this allegory of Faith fits the social context of 1692 well. But where did he get the idea that his wife embodied faith in the first place?

I believe that Brown=s belief in Faith reflects Hawthorne=s context in the nineteenth century. James Keil has made the most important study of the impact of changing gender roles on AYoung Goodman Brown.@ According to Keil, the Industrial Revolution was pulling men out of the home, separating the male and female spheres even more sharply than in the earlier era (35). The new construction of gender assigned men the task of providing, women that of nurturing. Men were to turn the child-rearing duties over to women, while Awomen=s important role in the economic production that sustained the household of the eighteenth century was, at least in discourse, eliminated@ (Keil 41). With men spending their time away from home, the issue of women=s purity had to be approached differently. AWhat was to keep this consumer, rather than producer, of resources from strayingBeconomically, sexually, morally, religiously? The solution was a socially redeemed image of womanhood: woman as Angel of the Home@ (Keil 41-42). Here then is the source of Brown=s Ablessed angel,@ and also the source of Brown=s distress when he discovered that his Angel of the Home was neither at home nor an angel.

Goodman Brown then, grounded as he was in late seventeenth century, was in important ways a product of the nineteenth century as well. The story=s Agender relations begin to have more in common with nineteenth-century ideology and behavior than Puritan history@ (Keil 41). Hawthorne maintains an ironic distance from both worlds, mixing elements of both in the petri dish of the story to expose the weaknesses of each. As suspicious as he was of the excesses of the older era, he also frequently voiced doubts about his own.

Brown=s elevated image of his wife at the beginning of the story might at first glance seem to be welcome change from the negative Puritan view, based on the view that the man is to the woman as the head is to the body, with the body as the locus of appetites and desires (Thickstun 19).

The traditional scapegoating is back in place by the end of the tale, where Brown projected his discomfort over his own sexuality onto his wife; he often Ashrank from the bosom of Faith@ and scowled and muttered at her while at the same time managing to father Achildren and grandchildren, a goodly procession@ (Hawthorne 89; Keil 54).

But if the negative view of women created problems, the elevated view brought its own set of problems, as the story reveals. The first difficulty centers on the consequences for Brown himself. Brown=s attitude toward Faith was not an end in itself, but was instrumental. As we have already seen, Brown=s idealized Faith was to be his easy road to heaven. Hawthorne had enough of his ancestors= Puritan sensibility that Henry James called him Aa chip off the old block@ (10); he did not trust an easy salvation. In Hawthorne=s treatment, Brown=s casual assurance of an easy road to salvation comes across as presumption (Colacurcio, AVisible@ 264-267, 269). Hawthorne satirizes the presumption of his own era in AThe Celestial Railroad,@ another story in Mosses from an Old Manse. In this sequel to Bunyan=s Pilgrim=s Progress, modern pilgrims enjoy a train ride instead of walking on the old-fashioned path, taking the easy road to heaven. What is obvious to the reader from the beginning becomes apparent to the riders only at the endBthe conductor, Mr. Smooth-it-away, is in reality a demon, and their ultimate destination is far from heaven. AAligning himself with Bunyan, Hawthorne ridiculed the stream-lining which promised to ease the burden off Christian's back through modern conveniences@ (Fairbanks 10). Brown=s search for an easy path to heaven clinging to Faith=s skirts is also ridiculous, self-delusory, and destined to fail. In one sense, the sooner that he is disappointed the better. If he is to gain salvation at all, he must work it out himself Awith fear and trembling@ (Philippians 2: 12), not delude himself that his wife=s purity will save him. Even if she were completely pure, her goodness still could not save him. But she was not that pure, nor could she be, a cautionary note for Hawthorne=s contemporary readers: Ain Hawthorne=s lifetime women, thought to be morally superior to men, were entrusted with preparing children for Christian salvation@ (Keil 40).

Faith could not live by the standards set for her by her husband, a second difficulty his elevated fantasy created. Brown=s faith in Faith is as constrictive for her as it is disappointing for him. Life on a pedestal can be confining, literally in this case. The Anineteenth-century ideology of separate spheres@ intensified the earlier separation between male and female realms; the woman=s place was in house (now Aknown as the >home=@) with the children (Keil 35). That is the significance of the opening scene of the story, with Brown outside and Faith inside. Brown believes that all will be well if only Faith remains inside: ASay thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no harm will come to thee@ (74).

The range of activities Brown=s vision allowed for Faith was as closely circumscribed as her range of physical movement: he certainly did not expect to find her in the forest at the witches= sabbath, a ritual involving sexual debauchery as well as the worship of Satan. Goody Cloyse was anticipating the Anice young man to be taken into communion tonight@ (79), while Deacon Gookin and the minister look forward to communing with the Agoodly young woman@ (81). Brown too seems to want to go "beyond the limits of socialized sex or religion" (Colacurcio, AVisible@ 271), which would make Faith=s motives for being there similarly suspect. Her presence there would violate nineteenth-century constructions of gender in a way that Brown=s would not. Contemporary Asexual advice literature . . . portrayed men as sexually predatory andBa distinct difference from the Puritan constructionBwomen as virtually passionless@ (Keil 39). Brown seems to want a passionless Faith. After only three months of marriage, and after she begged him, Aher lips . . . close to his ear,@ (74) to spend the night in bed with her, he remained firm in his determination to leave Faith and gratify his sexual desires in the forest. AThe young wife=s desire for intimacy with her husband could not be more explicit@ (Keil 40). Brown may have been disconcerted by her sexuality during their three months of marriage: Ashe is, within the terms of nineteenth-century ideology, aggressive in her sexuality@ (Keil 42). Rejecting her sexuality, Brown seeks gratification in the wilderness (Guerin et al., 227). For Brown, sex was probably evil and definitely somatic: hardly an activity for angels, who Aneither marry, nor are given in marriage@ (Matthew 22: 30).

By placing Faith on a pedestal, Brown at first only sees her goodness, rendering him unable to see her Faith=s fears, needs, and sins. At the end of the story, Brown is only able to see her potential for sin, not her good qualities. He can only see the world as black and white, not gray, and certainly not pink. Both of Brown=s perspectives (angelic Faith versus demonic Faith), opposite as they may seem, deny the couple the possibility of a real adult relationship. It is the kind of relationship Faith longs for and Brown shrinks from, both at the beginning of the story and at the end. It is also the kind of relationship that nineteenth-century idealization of women and the fusion of wives with mothers and angels would make difficult for those who held it. Keil notes Athe difficulty Brown has in differentiating love of mother from love of wife, a dilemma with which Hawthorne and his contemporaries were not unfamiliar@ (Keil 44).

AYoung Goodman Brown@ certainly satirizes the Puritans= suspicious, judgmental outlook that led to the witch trials of 1692. But it also turns out to satirize the saccharine view of women that was typical of Hawthorne=s own era. Brown=s allegorization and idealization of Faith at the beginning of the story set him up for his bitter disappointment at the end. Infected with the Angel of the Hearth ideology of the nineteenth century, he is unable to see Faith as a fellow fallen creature struggling through life, which would have been the proper view for a Puritan. Brown has placed Faith on a narrow pedestal that few could inhabit, one that was is constricting as it is idealizing. Supposing her purity to be beyond even thinking of sin, he thinks she will easily carry both of them to heaven. When he does realize that she too is fallen, he is unable to embrace her as she is, with unfortunate consequences for them both. Faith is a good wife and an appealing character, the most appealing of the story. Refusing to accept that even the best people of the community combine elements of good and evil, he assumes that all the good he sees around him is a hypocritical cover for deviltry and turns his back on the whole community, including Faith. Cut off from his society and family, he lives a lonely existence and dies estranged from his family, his community, his God, and himself: Athey carved no hopeful verse upon his tomb-stone; for his dying hour was gloom@ (90).

---. AIntroduction.@ Connolly, Young Goodman Brown 1-9.

The Holy Bible. King James Version. New York: Arno Press, 1968.

Leavis. AHawthorne As Poet.@ 1951. von Frank, Critical Essays 94-110.