Hawthorne's Stories

Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" and "The Birthmark" are stories that employ dreams to change the narrative and disclose the main characters. Every story has a dream which is exceedingly useful to its development since they provide its readers with a fresh outlook of the plot in particular, or the characters inside. Altogether, nevertheless, it becomes hard to establish to what extent the character affects the dream, and much of the dream is mere fantasy. This situation is evident with Young Goodman Brown who is unable to decide whether the proceedings in his life truly transpired or if they basically were formed in his distressed mentality as he slept (Edgar 2011). In "The Birthmark," Aylmer also is troubled by his nocturnal meditations as he dreams of maiming his spouse so as to free her of a little birthmark. Hence, dreams play a significant developmental part in the clarification of Hawthorne's characters.

Hawthorne, owing to the uncertainty of the circumstances, makes it hard to evaluate Brown's personality. Thus, it is impracticable to come to any fixed decisions concerning the character of Young Goodman Brown as one is unable to correctly evaluate what has occurred to him, and the penalties of those proceedings. In "The Birthmark," Aylmer’s dream gives the reader an understanding of his character, as we start to understand that Aylmer will continuously make an effort to eradicate the slight blemish on Georgiana’s cheek. From this perspective, we understand that Aylmer is fully determined to achieve perfection. Dreams happen to be a successful tool in plot development in these stories since they give a look of ambiguity to the individuals linked to them (Edgar 2011).

As an author, Hawthorne frequently portrayed modest, lively and outstanding women being tormented by pathetic, egotistical and shameful men. In these three narratives, Hawthorne builds experiences involving males and females. In these experiences, men, with their basic nervousness and violence masquerading as aspiration or passion, decline the provocation to a complete, complex, and compassionate life presented by females. These events of irrational denial reprove and even destroy females who give in to male individuals, the completely empty lives they appear to seek right from the very beginning (Edgar 2011).

Faith symbolizes the strength of the family and the household field in the Puritan mentality. Faith, as her name advocates, seems to be an extremely clean-hearted individual in the narrative and is used as a substitute of varieties for all spiritual sentiment. Goodman Brown, her husband, sticks to her when he doubts the integrity of all the people near him, reassuring himself that if Faith continues being religious, subsequently, he will keep on resisting sinful enticement. When he eventually realizes that Faith has been tainted, he puts his faith in the supreme iniquity within a human’s heart. His drifting apart from Faith at the conclusion of the narrative is the most horrible outcome of his transformation of heart. The erosion of his wife’s purity leads him to accept the devil and lose his faith (Edgar 2011).

A gorgeous and loving woman, Georgiana is shackled by her commitment to her spouse. The perfect wife - at least in line with the principles of a past age - Georgiana believes that Aylmer is her master. Although Georgiana has met many men who adore her beauty and would give anything to have her, let alone touch her birthmark, she is only concerned with Aylmer’s view of her. Since Aylmer is disgusted by her look, she thrusts aside years of admiration and gets dismayed with herself. She believes that she must do everything to bring Aylmer cheer, even to the extent of enthusiastically taking death. Georgiana behaves the way the society dictates, relying on her spouse completely, yet the only compensation for her submission and high esteem is demise. Possibly, Hawthorne is signifying that even though commitment is a creditable attribute, women must not be expected to comply with their husbands unconditionally (Edgar 2011).

Elizabeth is the woman engaged to Mr. Hooper when he was putting on the dark veil. She observes the veil strictly and finds out that it is nothing but common cloth and not something with supernatural characteristics. Elizabeth decides that the only terrible thing concerning the cloak is that it conceals the appearance of her darling. She requests him to get rid of it, but he refuses, claiming that it has significance. Like the rest of Hooper’s worshippers, a fear of the veil surmounts Elizabeth. She chooses to go after Hooper denies her request to stay so long as he removes the veil and lets her see his face. Nevertheless, it is obvious that her deep affection for Mr. Hooper is steadfast since she is his nurse when he is about to die (Edgar 2011).