* For a discussion of “point of view” as a concept, please see the document

“How to Read Literature” in the introductory lecture module.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 1804-1864

Who was Nathaniel Hawthorne?

- b. 4 July 1804, in Salem, Mass.

- father d. when H. was 4.
- 1821-25, Bowdoin College.
- (6 March) 1837, came before the public with Twice-told Tales, after twelve
years of writing anonymously or pseudonymously.
- contained “The Minister’s Black Veil,” one of only 3 dark stories out of 18 (not
included: “My Kinsman, Major Molineux”; “Young Goodman Brown”; “Roger
Malvin’s Burial”).
- 1842, married Sophia Peabody.
- 1849, dismissed from Salem Custom House; death of mother => The Scarlet
Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables (1851).
- wrote no more tales or sketches after 1850 and belittled his former ones.
- 1853-57, consul in Liverpool; lived abroad till 1860.
- d. 19 May 1864 at Plymouth, New Hampshire.

 first native author to be thought of as a classic

 saw writing as a moral, as well as aesthetic business; more interested in
moral reflections that history can stimulate than history itself; interested
in situations in which no course of action is wholly right; “no win-
situations”
 obsessed with obsession
 himself obsessed with having literary career; few could earn living from
literature before Civil War and H. was not one of them

Distinctive aspects of his stories:

1) absence of conventional plots; little external action
2) reliance on symbols
3) historical romance favorite genre; stories often set in the 17th or the
early 18th centuries

Interpreting “The Minister’s Black Veil”

ENG1304 Nissen Hawthorne lect. 1

 Published anonymously in The Token in 1836 and in Twice-Told Tales the
following year.
 My discussion will be structured around five questions or sets of
questions.

1) What is the period and setting of the story?

 Hooper holds election sermon during Gov. Belcher’s admin. Gov.
Belcher’s admin. extended from 1730 to 1741. Places the story in first
half of 18th century.
 Set in a New England village during the years of the Great Awakening.

2) Why does Rev. Hooper don the veil? Has he committed a secret sin?
 crime against dead young girl has been suggested.
 no evidence that Hooper is guilty of any particular sin.
 to insist on a single or specific meaning or explanation for Hooper’s
action is to be like the parishioners and Mr. Clark.

3) What does the veil symbolize?

 Hooper says: “‘this veil is a type and a symbol, and I am bound to wear it
ever, both in light and darkness, in solitude and before the gaze of
multitudes, and as with strangers, so with my familiar friends.’”
 Second to last paragraph of the story also significant in this regard,
concludes: “‘I look around me, and lo! on every visage a black veil!”
 The veil may be seen as a literalized metaphor, a visible emblem, of
several aspects of the human condition:
a) universal sinfulness (the Calvinist idea of innate depravity); the
refusal to admit one’s sinfulness and the attempt to hide it.
b) death; a reminder of the day of judgement.
c) incommunicability of selfhood; the inability to be fully known to
others, to show his or her true face to the world.

4) How does the community react? Why does the veil strike such fear in
their hearts?
 some think he has gone mad, that it is just a whim, that he is suffering
from eyestrain, that he has committed a secret sin.
 significantly no one sees it as a symbol of universal (original) sin, as
Hooper probably intended.
 no one imagines either that he is hiding a physical deformity of some
kind.
 the community adopts a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

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 strikes fear in the heart of the community, because veil suspends two
basic assumptions that make society possible: that a person’s face is the
sign of his selfhood; that this sign can be read/interpreted; old woman
churchgoer says “‘he has changed himself into something awful only by
hiding his face.’”
 interestingly, the veil is an article of female apparel worn by a man.

5) What are the consequences of Hooper’s chosen life? How are we to

understand/judge him?
 on the positive side, Hooper is successful in his chosen career and by his
extreme measures, he may have brought salvation to more people.
 on the negative side, he has become an isolato, permanently isolated
from his fellow men and women.
 his fiancée, Elizabeth, is also directly and negatively affected by Hooper’s
unilateral decision.
 the paradox/irony of Hooper’s action is that it compounds the universal
sinfulness it attempts to illustrate.
 does the aim justify the means? Hard to say when we cannot be certain
what the aim is.
 Hooper dramatizes the essential loneliness and separateness of human
beings, but at the same time he destroys the accidental communions
that make that separateness bearable.

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