LITR 5535: American Romanticism

Sample Student Research Project 2006

Angela Douglas

November 20, 2006

Hawthorne and Poe: Lessons in Morality and Psychosis Using Gothic Images

Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe are both American Romantic authors with reputations of using gothic elements in their stories. In Hawthorne’s Young Goodman Brown and Poe’s Ligeia the authors each use a dream or hallucination sequence to arrive at their lead characters’ eventual spiritual and mental conclusions. While the path through their stories may be similar, what makes each author unique is their own individual points of view. Hawthorne imbeds lessons of morality into his stories, while Poe wishes to spotlight the psychosis of the mind. These idiosyncratic visions create each author's respective reputations.

One common connection between Young Goodman Brown and Ligeia are the dream sequences used by the authors. Intriguingly, both authors leave a bit of ambiguity as to whether or not the events in each story are “truth” or “hallucinations.” Hawthorne offers us a hint of his intentions in the first paragraphs of Young Goodman Brown. When Faith begs her husband to stay home instead of going on his journey that night, she says, “[…] pr’y thee, put off your journey until sunrise, and sleep in your own bed to-night” (610). Hawthorne alludes to the fact that Brown will not have slept in an entire day if he stays out all night. Brown leaves his wife in the light of day and goes into the darkness of night, which allows license for the appearance of gothic images since they are most commonly associated with the night.  

Hawthorne uses Brown’s entry into the forest to represent the transition from good to evil and from awake to asleep. In Cook’s analysis “The Forest of Goodman Brown’s Night: A Reading of Hawthorne’s ‘Young Goodman Brown,’” he says, “The reader does not fail to see that as Brown goes from the village to the forest he passes from a conscious world to a subconscious one” (474). The subconscious world allows the participant to act without the hindrance of inhibitions or rules created by society. Brown changes from a loving husband, to an unsettling man with a dark secret. Brown enters the subconscious world and becomes a completely different person.   

Where Hawthorne uses the woods as the location for the dramatic change in Brown, Poe, true to form, stays within the mind of his narrator using hallucinations to exhibit psychosis. Jack L. Davis and June H. Davis, in their article entitled “Poe’s Ethereal Ligeia,” argue that Ligeia is just a figment of the narrator’s delusion and the reader is given hints to this fact. They say, “But in ‘Ligeia’ Poe’s approach is sophisticated; he leaves the reader to differentiate between imagined and factual events on the basis of clues subtly disclosed throughout the story” (170).  Poe steps outside the realm of reality, leaving allusions our rational minds can grasp and understand. In the very beginning of the story the narrator tells us, “She came and departed as a shadow. I was never made aware of her entrance into my closed study save by the dear music of her low sweet voice, as she placed her marble hand upon my shoulder” (Poe 705). To say something came and departed like a “shadow” hints at a hallucination or a dream.  Poe is providing us with a clue as to the narrator’s mental state while entering the world of the gothic. 

Both Poe and Hawthorne are known for their use of gothic elements. Hawthorne uses gothic imagery to differentiate between the life Brown left behind with his wife Faith and the sinister errand he feels compelled to run. The symbolic beginning of his ominous alter ego occurs when he crosses into the forest. After a brief introduction into Brown’s domestic life, we are immediately told that he “felt himself justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose. He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind” (Hawthorne 610). Hawthorne changes our mental vision of Brown from a man who is happily married to a caring woman, to a dark, suspicious man who is on a journey of a questionable nature. Hawthorne chooses his words carefully to bring about this metamorphosis of Brown’s character.  Hurley opines in his essay “Young Goodman Brown’s ‘Heart of Darkness,’” “Hawthorne makes clear at once that Goodman Brown’s purpose on this night is an evil one” (412).  Hawthorne uses words such as “evil,” “gloomiest,” and “dreary” to create an underlying sinister personality for his lead character. 

Poe also uses gothic imagery throughout Ligeia. He uses the concept of light versus dark specifically concerning the two women of the story. The narrator describes through vivid detail that Ligeia’s eyes were “the most brilliant of black” (706) and her hair “was blacker than the raven wings of the midnight” (714). Conversely, his new wife, Lady Rowena is “fair-haired and blue-eyed” (709). The narrator vastly favors the dark-haired Ligeia over his new paler wife.  Through this favoritism of the darker being, Poe is providing subtle indications of his character’s mental state. Most things that are “dark” are considered gothic.  The narrator’s obsession with the darker Ligeia is Poe’s way of telling the reader that the narrator is mysterious and perhaps turning a bit sinister.

The gothic idea of comparing light versus dark is prevalent throughout Young Goodman Brown as well. Hawthorne uses images of gothic to foreshadow the lasting effect the journey in the forest will have on Brown. Where the narrator in Ligeia does not seem to mind his hallucinations, Brown is struggling to maintain his faith and sanity while in the gloomy forest.  After hearing the voices of the reverend and deacon Gookin “deep in […] the heathen wilderness,” he looks up to the sky and says, “With Heaven above, and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil!” (Hawthorne 614). Yet, after making this declaration, “a cloud, though no wind was stirring, hurried across the zenith, and hid the brightening stars. The blue sky was still visible, except directly overhead, where this black mass of cloud was sweeping swiftly northward” (Hawthorne 614). Brown can still see the perfection and pureness of the “blue sky,” but he will forever have a “black mass of cloud” over his head. He has physically and symbolically gone from the light to the dark.

The nightmare events experienced by Brown appear as real to him as the hallucinations appear to Poe’s narrator. These hallucinations are brought about by the narrator’s heavy opium use.  He writes the story years after the events take place. He tells us that after the death of Ligeia, “I had become a bounden slave in the trammels of opium, and my labors and my orders had taken a colouring from my dreams” (Poe 709). He is saying that his “labors,” which can be interpreted as his actions in everyday life, take signals from his dreams due to his opium use. It would not be inconceivable to believe that his life before Ligeia “died” also was a product of his opium use. Never does he say when he started using opium or that he stopped at any time.  Opium is a highly addictive drug. It is safe to assume that he was still using it even as he was writing this story. He even references the drug when he is speaking of Ligeia’s beauty. He writes, “In beauty of face, no maiden ever equalled her. It was the radiance of an opium dream […]” (Poe 705). With each line written by the narrator, his sanity is brought into question. 

As the narrator tells us more about his life with Ligeia, we get to see just how mentally disturbed he appears to be. Even though Poe’s narrator is writing the story of Ligeia many years after the events occur, it is interesting to note what specific information he does and does not seem to remember. Ligeia is his true love, or so we are led to believe, yet he does not remember how or when he first met her. Davis and Davis understand the relevance in this seeming forgetfulness when they say, “Thus Poe early arouses his reader’s suspicions of a narrator who seems to have unaccountably forgotten both how and where he first me his wife” (171). Poe is creating an ominous character, foreshadowing the story’s finale. The narrator does not remember her paternal name and his descriptions of her are not specific, but rather are almost dream-like.  Nevertheless, he remembers some peculiar specifics such as Ligeia’s intelligence about which he says was “immense – such as I have never known in a woman” (Poe 707). He further says, “I have never known her at fault” (707). With every piece of information provided by the narrator, or lack thereof, it becomes clearer that Ligeia is a figment of his imagination. He has created this perfect woman, whom he believes is the key to his happiness. Because Ligeia is a figment of his imagination, he created her without a past. He is not interested in where she came from; he is immensely more concerned about getting her back to the present. This single-minded focus demonstrates how the repeated opium use has mutated his mind.

Where Poe creates a character suffering from mental instability as a result of opium abuse, Hawthorne’s character endures a disenchantment of his world due to his own guilt. Brown has created an idyllic world in his mind, although, due to his moral blunder, it falls apart. He believes a world exists where everyone around him is perfect and pious. He believes his wife is so virtuous he pledges “[to] cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven” (Hawthorne 610). As the story progresses and he encounters moral leaders from the village, such as the minister and deacon Gookin, he is disillusioned because he finds them out at night in the same woods. Had he not had such an irreproachable picture in his head of these pillars of the community, their “fall” in his mind would not have been so tragic. Hawthorne conveys the idea that we should look at ourselves before we pass judgment on others. Had Brown looked at his own actions and thought about his own sinister dealings with the devil, he would not have been so quick to judge those around him.

Brown’s guilt continually forges the path his nightmare takes, especially when he encounters Goody Cloyse. While Brown is walking with the devil, he sees the aged woman who “taught him his catechism, in youth, and was still his moral and spiritual adviser […]” (Hawthorne 612). Brown does not want to be seen in the woods with the devil because he knows it is morally wrong and, therefore, hides while the devil greets her. It is interesting that when she comes upon the devil, she says, “Yea truly is it, and in the very image of my old gossip, Goodman Brown, the grandfather of the silly fellow that now is […] (Hawthorne 613). In a dream or nightmare, the entire sequence of events revolves around the person having the dream.  This comment by Goody Cloyse is uttered to make Brown feel uncomfortable and to reiterate the devil’s assertion that he knew Brown’s ancestors well; a fact Brown denies when he says, “And shall I be the first of the name of Brown, that ever took this path […]” (Hawthorne 611). Brown had respected the woman for being his spiritual guide, and now he has discovered that she knows the devil well. His worst fears are contained in this nightmare. This pious woman whom he had much respected does not like him. Brown’s world as he knew it has fallen apart.

This “world falling apart” is where Young Goodman Brown ends and where Ligeia begins. Brown lives out the rest of his days in misery, always questioning the motives of those around him including his wife. In Ligeia, the point where the world falls apart is the beginning of the true gothic point of the story. The narrator begins on a journey to recapture the perfection he found and lost in Ligeia. When he marries Lady Rowena Trevanion of Tremaine, he is attempting to recreate his previous faultless marriage. Early in his quest, he discovers that this perfection is impossible to obtain without Ligeia. The narrator is describing his bridal chamber with Lady Rowena as having a “[…] ceiling of gloomy-looking oak, was excessively lofty, vaulted, and elaborately fretted with the wildest and most grotesque specimens of a semi-Gothic, semi-druidical device” (Poe 709). This description shows how his mind is slipping further into a dark place; a place where only he and Ligeia exist. 

Poe offers us further evident of the narrator’s declining mental state when he tells us of his new wife Lady Rowena. After a mere two months of marriage he says, “I loathed her with a hatred belonging more to demon than to man.  My memory flew back (oh with what intensity and regret!) to Ligeia […]” (Poe 710).  He goes from hatred of a real woman, to passionate love for a figment of his imagination in an instant.  His narrator’s thoughts transition from two intense extremes, love and hate, in the same moment.

Hawthorne’s Brown is also a newlywed of three months, but instead of feeling hatred, he disrespects his bride by lying to her about his activities. Brown is leaving his wife Faith to walk through the forest with the devil, a fact that he fails to disclose to her when he leaves on this errand that “must needs be done.” Doubleday, in his essay “Hawthorne’s Use of Three Gothic Patterns,” believes the story is “[…] an analysis of a state of mind in which, through the contact of individual with evil, all virtue seems hypocrisy” (255). Our hero in Young Goodman Brown is a hesitant participant at the beginning of the story though as Doubleday points out, “Goodman Brown put himself in peril; of his own will he went into the wood of evil” (256). He makes the conscience decision to meet the devil again. When they first meet, he tells the devil, “Faith kept me back awhile” (Hawthorne 611). Using his wife’s first name insinuates familiarity between himself and the devil.  It appears as if Brown has been living a hypocritical life up until this point, and his past questionable behavior is about to come full circle.

Although Hawthorne uses the devil to represent evil in Young Goodman Brown, he actually has a more subtly hidden message.  He is commenting on implied morality. Doubleday believes Hawthorne is unique in his use of the gothic: “The impulse of Gothic literature has evidently often been abnormal, and it is one of the distinctions of Hawthorne’s work in the Gothic that in it he has kept to a humane purpose” (262). Hawthorne plainly writes in the story, “The fiend in his own shape is less hideous, than when he ranges in the breast of man” (615).  This sentence sums up Hawthorne’s main point. When Brown walks through the forest and first encounters his companion, we are told that he “bear [s] a considerable resemblance to him, though perhaps more in expression than in features” (611). Hawthorne continues with his description of Brown by saying that the pair “might have been taken for father and son” (611). By saying that they could be father and son, Hawthorne is implying that looks can deceive. Brown appears virtuous, but his actions, such as meeting with the devil and failing to tell his wife about it, show otherwise. 

Poe does not seem to have a moral theme to “Ligeia.” His narrator does not go through a radical transformation, but seems to pen his story in an attempt to justify the events that occurred in his mind. In James W. Gargano’s essay “Poe’s ‘Ligeia’: Dream and Destruction”, he offers an opinion as to Poe’s viewpoint. Gargano says, “I believe that ‘Ligeia’ can best be understood as the tale of a man (the narrator and not Poe) who, having once inhabited the realm of the Ideal, seeks even unto madness to recreate his lost ecstasy” (338). Gargano asserts that the narrator goes on a psychological journey to retrieve his idea of perfection, which is represented by Ligeia.   Poe takes this idea one step further. It appears throughout the story that he attempts to recreate his life with Ligeia by marrying Lady Rowena. Davis and Davis suggest that the narrator’s motives are more sinister. They say, “In reality, there is no physical Ligeia: thus the horror of the narrator’s murder of Rowena is intensified when the reader discovers that the deluded narrator has murdered her to bring back an entirely imaginary first wife” (171). As is classic in most of Poe’s stories, he takes an idea, and pushes the envelope. It is not enough that the narrator may hallucinate and see his dead first wife resurrect, but Davis implies that he marries Lady Rowena just to have a host body for Ligeia. The mind of a person willing to sacrifice another human being for the sake of an imagined love is truly psychotic.  Shulman, in his essay “Poe and the Powers of the Mind,” appreciates Poe taking on the challenge of writing fiction with mentally disturbed characters: “In his best fiction Poe achieves acute insights into the mysteries, processes, and terrors of the human personality […]” (245). Poe enters into the mental psyche and offers the reader a glimpse of the gothic, disturbed mind. 

After years of presumed opium use and living with his hallucinations, Poe offers us a stunning conclusion in the final scenes of Ligeia. The narrator is sitting vigil next to his wife’s, Lady Rowena, bed awaiting her death which is imminent. Poe drops hints as to what is going to happen.  Lady Rowena has died and the narrator is sitting in their bedchamber with the corpse.  He tells us, “It might have been midnight, or perhaps earlier, or later, for I had taken no note of time, when a sob, low, gentle, but very distinct, startled me from my revery” (Poe 712). He believes he sees the corpse move. This happens a few times, and each time it does he mentally returns to Ligeia: “Then rushed upon me a thousand memories of Ligeia -- and then came back upon my heart, with the turbulent violence of a flood, the whole of that unutterable woe with which I had regarded her thus enshrouded” (Poe 712). Even after the death of his second wife, he is still obsessing about Ligeia. The narrator is sitting with a corpse, which is eerie in itself, but his thoughts continue to be about his Ligeia. Poe uses gothic imagery to exhibit the depths of mental instability suffered by his lead character.

However, Poe cannot leave the topic of mental psychosis at this point. As is classic with Poe’s writing, he takes the events one step further and reaches an apex. “And now slowly opened the eyes of the figure which stood before me.  ‘Here then, at least,’ I shrieked aloud, ‘can I never -- can I never be mistaken -- these are the full, and the black, and the wild eyes -- of my lost love -- of the lady -- of the LADY LIGEIA’” (Poe 714). The corpse rises, and is no longer Lady Rowena, but the long dead Ligeia.  Poe ends the story here. He has a corpse come back from the dead, in the form of another person and offers no further explanation to the reader as to what happened.  This is how Poe has created his reputation as a true gothic writer. So much is left to the reader’s imagination to make of it what they will. We know the narrator is still alive because he is narrating the story. He does not give us any idea if he is still living with Ligeia however.  We know he believes her resurrected in the body of his dead wife Lady Rowena, but it is unclear where she is at present. This is part of the classic writing style that is unique to Poe. He brings us to a place that we did not know existed. In the case of Ligeia, we are left with the knowledge that the narrator believes his dead wife has resurrected; and then we are left hanging. Obviously the narrator has moved on because he has sat down to write this story, but we do not know whatever became of Ligeia or Lady Rowena. Poe leaves it up to the reader to hazard a guess. 

In direct contrast to Poe’s guessing game, Hawthorne provides a clear understanding of the consequences of Brown’s late night rendezvous. Hawthorne seems to leave Brown with a dark heart, unable to see the world as he had before. Cook is commenting on the lasting effects of Brown’s experience when he says, “The effect upon him [Brown] is negative; he is equal to the obligation of the tryst but he is not equal to the obligation of its consequences. He is forever turned darkly inward, a distrustful and despairing man” (478). He can no longer see his wife nor his village neighbors the same way. He is physically repulsed by anyone who feigns piety and belief in God, yet was present at the hedonistic ceremony in the woods. However, what he fails to see is that these qualities that he finds so repugnant in others were present within him also. He had made the conscious decision to follow the devil into the woods and lie to his wife about it.  As a result, he lives the rest of his life doubting everyone around him. “When he returns” Cook says, “his traumatic shock leaves him a deeply suspicious man” (474). It is interesting that Brown accepts the sins of those he encounters in the woods as true. He never questions anyone, not even his wife, about why they were in the woods. He takes what he experiences at face value.  Brown accepts everything the devil places before him, never once questioning his companion’s integrity, yet spends the rest of his life questioning everyone else.

What Hawthorne is ambiguous about is whether the events in the forest were real or not.  Hawthorne actually poses a question to his reader: “Had goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest, and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting?  Be it so, if you will” (Hawthorne 618). He leaves the ultimate decision to the reader. If the witch meeting takes place in a dream, then the unhappy, dismal life that Brown lives after his transformation in the woods is entirely of his own creation. Just as the narrator of “Ligeia” lives in a hell of his own making, so does Brown.  Hurley writes, “[…] if Goodman Brown did ‘dream,’ then the evil he saw, like the witchcraft reported in Salem in 1692, was the product of his own fancy with no reality save that supplied by his depraved imagination” (411).

This is the same imagination that fuels Ligeia’s narrator. The narrator’s imagination, which at times is garish, leads him into the dark places of the often misunderstood world of insanity via images of the sublime. Bieganowski, in his essay “The Self-Consuming Narrator in Poe’s ‘Ligeia’ and ‘Usher’” says, “Poe’s narrators appear to mediate between the mundane and the sublime, present dreariness and recollected excitement (Poe’s terror), the unpoetical and poetical, the text and the reader” (186). Bieganowski is indicating that the narrator goes back and forth between two extremes, recollecting those pieces of information that make his story more palatable. In the narrator’s description of Ligeia, he draws on intense language to get his point across about how wonderful she was. Many lines are devoted to the depiction of Ligeia’s eyes.  Finally at one point, the narrator tells us, “And of such passion I could form no estimate, save by the miraculous expansion of those eyes which at once so delighted and appalled me […]” (Poe 707). Generally, the two words “delighted” and “appalled” would not be used together to describe the same thing, unless the desired outcome was to exhibit a powerful reaction. 

The reaction warranted by Hawthorne’s writing is spiritual and not sublime. Brown has forever changed both within himself and to those around him. Hurley points out, “If the events of the night before had been real, or even symbolic of reality, would not Hawthorne have indicated in some way a shared knowledge between Goodman Brown and the townsfolk whom he sees?” (418). The next day, everyone else appears the same, except for Brown. Faith, for sure, made eye contact with her husband, yet the next day she continues as if the events from the night before had not occurred. Certainly, in a close marriage, there would have been some mention of seeing each other the night before. Though Hawthorne does not say specifically, Brown’s wife Faith probably suffers the effects of her husband’s transformation also. One can assume that she lived the rest of her life wondering why her husband was not as loving and happy as in the first three months of their marriage.  Brown can no longer live in harmony within his society. Hawthorne believes that we should be cognizant of what we do, and able to live with our decisions because those around us are facing the same trials and must make difficult decisions. Hurley believes Brown chooses to live his life in a suspicious manner. He says, “The corruption of his mind and heart is complete; Goodman Brown sees evil wherever he looks. He sees it because he wants to see it” (418).

Thus, Hawthorne leaves his readers with an overall soul searching message about hypocrisy and arrogance. Doubleday believes this is the signature of Hawthorne’s work: “[…] he was, indeed preoccupied throughout most of his career with the allegorical warning against the sin of pride” (262). Poe on the other hand, wishes to probe the mysteries of the mind.  Gargano says, “His [Poe’s] stores […] are not mere lyrical releases, but psychological investigations pursued through vicarious dramas or exciting daydreams” (338). Even with their individual points of view, Hawthorne and Poe cross paths on their literary journeys when they explore the gothic and the use of dreams. Though these two authors are unique one thing is certain; Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe have both earned their respective scholarly reputations and are each shining examples of the American Romantic literary genre.

Works Cited

Bieganowski, Ronald. “The Self-Consuming Narrator in Poe’s ‘Ligeia’ and ‘Usher.’” American Literature 60 (1988):175-87.

Cook, Reginald. “The Forest of Goodman Brown’s Night: A Reading of Hawthorne’s ‘Young Goodman Brown.’” New England Quarterly 43 (1970): 473-81.

Davis, Jack L. and June H. Davis. “Poe’s Ethereal Ligeia.” Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association 24 (1970): 170-6.

Doubleday, Neal Frank. “Hawthorne’s Use of Three Gothic Patterns.” College English 7 (1946): 250-62.

Gargano, James W. “Poe’s ‘Ligeia’: Dream and Destruction.” College English 23 (1962): 337-42.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Young Goodman Brown.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003. 610-9.

Hurley, Paul J. “Young Goodman Brown’s ‘Heart of Darkness.’” American Literature 37 (1966): 410-9.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “Ligeia.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2003. 704-14.

Shulman, Robert. “Poe and the Powers of the Mind.” ELH 37 (1970): 245-62.