Author Question: Is there any significance to the fact that the old man in the woods seemsto resemble Brown? What ... (Read 93 times)

mia · **on:** Jul 20, 2018

Is there any significance to the fact that the old man in the woods seemsto resemble Brown?

What will be an ideal response?

Question 2

Why is Browns new bride Faith aptly named according to the narrator?What does the name Goodman Brown suggest about the character of the protagonist?

What will be an ideal response?

momo1250 · **Reply #1 on:** Jul 20, 2018

Answer to Question 1

The devils looking like a blood relative may reflect another Puritan assumption. Taken literally, perhaps the resemblance between the devil and Browns grandfather suggests that evil runs in Browns family, or in the Puritan line as the devil asserts (par. 1819). Or that wickedness lurks within each human heart (as well as good) and that each can recognize it in himself, as if he had looked into a mirror. Of course, donning the family face may be one more trick of the devil: an attempt to ingratiate himself with Brown by appearing as a close relative. Hawthornes great-grandfather, the witch trial judge, would have agreed that the devil often appears in disguise. The Salem trials admitted spectral evidencetestimony that the devil had been seen in the form of some innocent person. Spectral evidence was part of the case against Goody Cloyse, Goody Cory, and Martha Carrierall named in Hawthornes story, all of whom Judge John Hathorne condemned to death.

Answer to Question 2

As discussed above, she is aptly named because she representsand exemplifiesa simple, innocent, trusting faith in God and in humanity, from which Brown strays, to his great and lasting cost. The name Goodman Brown will probably, to most people nowadays, carry the connotation of virtue, and readers may assume that it was intended to be understood ironically as applied to the storys protagonist. As the footnotes in the text makes clear, however, Goodman and Goody (short for Goodwife) were titles routinely applied to husbands (or other male heads of households) and wives. An analogous instance is the term Goody Two-Shoes, from an anonymous childrens story of that title published in London in 1765. Goody in the title was simply a form of address equivalent to Mrs. or Ms., but the phrase goody two-shoes is now universally understood to mean someone who is primly and smugly virtuous.