Young Goodman Brown and Other Short Stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne

I chose this purposefully for October because I knew Young Goodman Brown was a “spooky” story. I didn’t know all the stories in this collection have a macabre theme. Indeed, macabre is a better description than spooky or horror. The stories are reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe, who in turn was a fan of Hawthorne.

 

The collection contains seven short stories:

 

“Dr. Heidegger's experiment” – despair in the worship of youth

“The birthmark” – folly in the pursuit of perfection

“Young Goodman Brown” – (commentary below)

“Rappaccini's daughter” – tragic, the moral?

“Roger Malvin's burial” – duty and the curse of guilt

“The artist of the beautiful” – obsession

“My kinsman, Major Molineux” – put not your trust in princes

 

Goodman Brown has a date with the devil, though the reader only slowly realizes Brown’s peril. Young Goodman Brown leaves Faith, his beautiful bride against her protestations, to rendezvous with a malevolent companion on a dreary night in a dismal wood. Most troubling, Goodman Brown meets pious and respectable townsfolk, along with scoundrels and blackguards, as they make their way to the unholy convocation. Perhaps it is all a dream. Dream or no, can a man be good? Can Faith survive?

 

I’ve read this collection before, though I didn’t realize it when I started. Vaguely through the mist and motion, of my memory’s stormy ocean… each story came hauntingly back to me. Serendipitous and complimentary to the dark romanticism of the stories.

 

It’s very good, if you are in the mood for something dark and creepy, yet not without virtue in the form of painful reminders of the flaws in humanity.

 

I read this for the Back tothe Classics 2022 challenge: Classic Short Story Collection and for the R.I.P.XVII challenge.

 

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