Nathaniel Hawthorne- Young Goodman Brown Blog

Nathaniel Hawthorne seems to be inflicting his own personal beliefs and tendencies in religious issues into the character Goodman Brown, who also has a Puritan decent. One common realization of Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown is that he writes as if it is the 17th century, where in reality it is the 1835. The reason Hawthorne writes a story covering religious Quaker/Puritan issues 200 years before this actual point in time is to inflict his own knowledge of what lay ahead of people in this religion. In having this knowledge Hawthorne was able to successfully write a story in which his main character and narrator Goodman Brown was always on the right side of things, and always saying or thinking the politically right thoughts for this point in time. He exemplifies such beliefs when he has Goodman Brown state things such as “…I have nothing to do with the governor and council; they have their own ways, and are no rule for a simple husbandman, like me…” and “My father never went into the woods on such an errand, nor his father before him. We have been a race of honest men and good Christians, since the days of the martyrs…”

It is already established that Nathaniel Hawthorne holds strong feelings for the Quaker faith because this covers his own beliefs. What better way to write upon something he feels so strongly about and get his point across smoothly, than to cover a time period 200 years before his time about in which he already knows the answer to? At this point in time some Puritan groups separated from the Church of England such as the Pilgrims, who in 1620 founded Plymouth Colony. The Massachusetts Bay Company in which was the first major Puritan migration to New England took place around this time as well. For the Puritans New England was their stronghold and safe haven so to speak. Therefore many Congregationalist churches were set forth to verify their true feelings about a Christian society for more than 200 years. Therefore Nathaniel Hawthorne fell into this ongoing struggle in which still continues to his lifetime and the main reason he wrote such a story.