In Puritan
Massachusetts the key word was suspicion. In order to be accepted, by the
community, you had to be a member of
the
"elect," destined for a spot in the eternity of heaven. In order to
be member of this elite group of "selected" individuals
you had to be
free of sin and evil. It goes without saying, that you could never be caught
conjuring the devil, as is illustrated
by the horrors of
the infamous Salem witch trials. In Young Goodman Brown, and Rappacini's
Daughter Nathaniel
Hawthorne
portrays two different ways of soliciting or being solicited by the devil. The
final scenes in both of these stories
although similar
in nature, are actually conflicting in essence, and show the two adverse ways
in which people and evil can
become one.
In Young Goodman
Brown, the protagonist, Goodman Brown goes off on a typical search for the
devil. The devil is
associated with
darkness and terror, a creature only to be sought after while enveloped in the
darkness of the night. As
Goodman Brown
himself replies to Faith's longing for him to wait until morning to embark on
his journey, "My journey needst
be done twixt now
and sunrise" (611). Goodman Brown knows exactly what he is going to look
for, he is searching for evil. He
goes to the
forest to do his deed and "he had taken a dreary road darkened by all the
gloomiest trees of the forest" to get
there(611).
Goodman Brown is willingly seeking the devil, and Hawthorne is throwing in all
the stereotypes. This entire
search for the
devil is portrayed as being very ugly. What then is pretty? In Young Goodman
Brown beauty equals inherent
goodness, or
Faith. Young Goodman Brown separates from this righteousness, for evil. From
the beginning, he was leaving,
at least for the
time being, Faith behind. "And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust
her own pretty head into the
street, letting
the wind play with the soft ribbons of her cap" (610). The beauty of faith
and her pink ribbons are left
behind, his
intentions are obvious.
In Rappacini's
Daughter Giovanni does none of this. He never went out searching for the devil,
all he wanted to do was
study in Padua.
The devil was not obvious to Giovanni, it went after him, and he did not even know
it. Giovanni's first
glimpse of the
"devil's lair" is considerably different of that of Goodman Brown.
Instead of a dreary, dark forest, Giovanni
saw Eden.
"Water which continued to gush and sparkle into the sunbeams as cheerfully
as ever. A little gurgling sound
ascended to the
young man's window, and made him feel as if the fountain were an immortal
spirit that sung its song
unceasingly and
without heeding the vicissitudes around it." (628). Instead of his first
human encounter being with a
devilish man with
slithering snake on his staff, Giovanni met the beautiful Beatrice (614).
Beatrice was as beautiful as the
devil was ugly.
Giovanni glanced into the garden and "Soon there emerged from under a
sculptured portal the figure of a
young girl, arrayed
with as much richness of taste as the most splendid of flowers, beautiful as
the day, and with a bloom so
deep and vivid
that one shade more would have been too much. She looked redundant with life,
health, and energy" (629).
In Rappacini's
Daughter instead of beauty equaling faith, it equals the Devil, or the evil
that Beatrice really represented.
This is not as
clear cut as Young Goodman Brown. There in order to "be with the
devil" you had to go searching for him/her.
In Rappacini's
Daughter, however, the Devil came to Giovanni. Furthermore he came in the form
of a beautiful woman...a
frightening
concept.
Young Goodman
Brown is told in the first person narrative. It is therefore from one persons
point of view. It is a warning of
what could happen
to you if you stray from probity, and your moral ideals. All the decisions were
clearly made by Brown
himself, and his
plight can be avoided. Rappacini's Daughter, however, is told in the a third
person narrative. It is not
from one person's
point of view, it is a universal problem which has consequences for the entire
human race. The devil does
not always look
as he is supposed to, and is not easily recognizable. He can enthrall you with
splendor, rather than trap you
with terror . The
devil can get you anyway he wants, he has agents to do his bidding. As Beatrice
mournfully explains to
Giovanni
"But my father,- he has united us in this fearful sympathy" (644).
The story is called Rappacini's Daughter
event though
Beatrice seems to be a functioning individual. Should not the story be called
Beatrice? No. Giovanni was
tricked as he
thought Beatrice was "a tender warmth of girlish womanhood. She was
human" (638). All Beatrice really
represents is
Rappacini's, or the devil's messenger sent to trap the good, unsuspecting
Giovanni, an unavoidable fate.
Young Goodman
Brown certainly knew the difference between faith and evil. He, however, wanted
the best of both worlds
to remain intact.
In fact he promises himself that "after this night I'll cling to her
skirts and follow her to heaven" (611).
All he wants is
this one night of evil, and then he will return to the faith, and cling onto
his wife. Brown wants to keep
faith and evil as
two separate distinct entities. Giovanni, however realizes that they are not
two separate things, and that
you must choose
one or the other, as he says about Beatrice "whatever mist of evil might
see to have gathered over her, the
real Beatrice was
a heavenly angel" (643). Giovanni knew that Beatrice could not be both
good and bad so he was trying to
decipher what
exactly she was. Similarly with Rappacini's garden there are aspects which
point in each direction.
Originally
Giovanni had thought of the plants as beautiful, until he realized that they
were in actuality poison. They had
to be one or the
other, there could not be independent elements of both within the garden. That
is why Giovanni had to know
whether
Beatrice's breath was poison or beauty. He had to know which path she had
chosen. Brown, however, until the
very end wanted
to keep good and evil as two perpetual different entities and options. As Brown
was looking up in the forest
where he was
deciding his fate he saw at first what he wanted. Brown looked up and saw that
"The blue sky was still
visible, except
directly overhead, where this black mass of cloud was sweeping swiftly
northward" (615). To Brown this
was perfect he
could still see his faith but the black clouds, evil, had temporarily moved in
for a quick but exciting storm.
Only when the
"dark cloud swept away, leaving the clear and silent sky above...and
something fluttered lightly down
through the
air...and beheld a pink ribbon" did he realize that he was mistaken (614).
The clouds had left, but the ribbons
had fallen from
the clouds. Evil had already started over taking faith, they were intertwined
and one had to be the victor.
Goodman Brown
wanted to connect with the devil from the beginning. He did not want to make a
complete break from faith,
yet he wanted
just to experience a little of Satan's wonderful pleasures. He was going after
the devil who was painted so
viciously in his
catechism. The devil which was worshipped at midnight, in the forest
surrounded, by blazing pines. The
devil he was
brought up despising. Brown came into the final confrontation with Faith from a
forest "which was peopled by
frightful sounds,
the creaking of trees and the howling of wild beasts", yet he still heard
"church bells tolling in the
distance"
(615). He wanted both but he could have only one, and on this night nothing was
keeping him from the lore of the
devil. Goodman
Brown stepped forth from his doubts, he "stepped out of the shadow of the
trees and approached the
congregation with
whom he felt a loathful brotherhood by the sympathy of all that was wicked in
his heart" (617). Brown
wanted to be evil
now, but to be good later. His encounter with Faith at the end illustrated this
need precisely. "And there
they stood the
only pair, as it seemed, who were yet hesitating on the verge of wickedness in
this dark world" (618).
Goodman Brown did
not know whether he should commit himself, as well as his Faith to a life of
evil, or if they should
both flee from
the altar to the arms of faith. Yet Brown continued in his desire for two
separate distinct beings in Faith and
evil. For now he
wanted the evil, therefore he beseeched Faith crying- "Faith! Faith!... ,
look up to heaven, and resist the
wicked one"
(618). Brown thought he had done it. He thought that he had achieved one night
of evil while sustaining his
life of peace.
All too soon however, it became clear that his choice of evil was the only one
he would have, as " He would
often awaken at
midnight and shrink from the bosom of Faith...for his dying hour was
gloom" (619). This last scene was the
portrayal Goodman
Brown's choice of evil and the devil, over faith and his wife.
Giovanni had no
thoughts the likes of Goodman Brown, so his confrontation with his lover
represents something entirely
different.
Giovanni knew that good and evil could not survive side by side. He had decided
to try and save Beatrice, and
himself, from
evil. Giovanni thought "might there not still be a hope of his returning
within the limits of ordinary nature,
and leading
Beatrice, the redeemed Beatrice, by the hand" (644)? He had no intention
of killing Beatrice. He himself
offered to drink
the potion with Beatrice as he says "Shall we not quaff it together, and
thus be purified from evil" (645)?
Surely if he knew
that the potion was poison he would not have offered to drink it. Giovanni did
the opposite of what
Goodman Brown did
in his final confrontation. Giovanni chose good over evil yet, "as poison
had been life, the antidote was
death", and
he too had to give up his love, his Faith, but through no flaw of his own.
Goodman Brown was
not an evil person, just a misguided one. He felt that his life would not be
complete unless he saw things
from both sides
of the spectrum. Brown, however did not want to give up the "good"
life for this one minute of evil. In
Puritan society
that, one flirtation with the Devil can cost you everything. Young Goodman
Brown abandoned Faith at the
altar and
deserved his punishment. For what, however, did Giovanni deserve his cruel
fate? After all he had been made
eternally evil by
Beatrice, who was now dead, rather than good, which was Giovanni's goal for
her. Besides Baglioni
himself states to
Giovanni that "I tell thee, my poor Giovanni, that Rappacini has a
scientific interest in thee. Though
hast fallen into
fearful hands" (635). The devil was coming after Giovanni, it was not his
fault. The last seen in Young
Goodman Brown
shows the generic search for the devil, and Goodman Brown is supposed to be
used as "what not to do"
example for the
righteous Puritans. Yet the last seen in Rappacini's Daughter is completely
different. It portrays a man
who had to endure
great sorrow through no apparent flaw of his own. This, however, is not the
case. Rather in this last
confrontation
Hawthorne is pointing out a reason for the demise of Giovanni, and at the same
time rebuking the always
nosy, and
homiletic Puritans. Giovanni got in trouble for being too meddlesome. He had to
know whether Beatrice was good
or evil, and that
brought about his downfall.
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