Ebola, Salem Witchcraft, COVID, "Young Goodman Brown," and "Spectral Evidence"

Some six years ago I compared the Ebola scare of the time to the Salem witchcraft trials, as chronicled by Marian Starkey in The Devil in Massachusetts (See blog post Nov. 24, 2014). I highlighted the scapegoat theme and the racism underlying much of the “mass hysteria” in both Salem in 1692 and the U.S. in 2014. I barely mentioned the way misguided fears overshadowed scientific, medical, and public health expertise in the Ebola episode.  I was struck that as a nation, maybe we hadn’t evolved as much as we might like to expect between 1692 and 2014.

 

Lately, looking back on 2020, I see similar parallels.  COVID-19 was referred to as the “Chinese virus” and people of Asian descent were targeted for threats and harassment. This virus, along with what might be considered election “mass hysteria,” put me in mind of Hawthorne’s story reflecting on Salem witchcraft, “Young Goodman Brown,” published in 1835.

 

Young “good man” Brown presumably thinks he is one of the Puritan “elect,” who by God’s special “election” can do no evil.  Yet his curiosity leads him into the forest one night to observe a witches’ meeting.  He is shocked to see some of his well-respected neighbors at the scene, including the deacon, the minister, and his own supposedly innocent wife, Faith. In the end, as the devil calls on his followers to pledge their allegiance to him, Young Goodman Brown calls out to “resist the Wicked One!” and suddenly finds himself alone in the forest with a drop of dew on his face.

 

“Had Goodman Brown fallen asleep in the forest and only dreamed a wild dream of a witch-meeting?  Be it so, if you will.  But, alas, it was a dream of evil omen…”

 

Here Hawthorne alludes to what was referred to as “spectral evidence” in the historical Salem witchcraft trials, the court accepted the testimony of “witnesses” that they had been “visited” in the night by the accused and caused harm. Had the witnesses only dreamed of this “visitation” by a witch? “Be it so, if you will,” but the accused “witches” were hung on the basis of such “evidence.”

 

In our own age of conspiracy theories, it seems spectral evidence has reappeared and overtaken a significant segment of our population. On the basis of no empirical, documented evidence whatsoever, but only of wild fantasies and over-active imaginations, we have the pandemic being dismissed as a hoax, while masks and social distancing are accused of being a government plot. QAnon believers and other conspiracy theorists commit violence in the mistaken conviction that Hillary Clinton and the deep state are engaging in sex trafficking or the 5G cellular network is spying on us or spreading the virus or who knows what? We now have lawyers and elected officials, who should know better, introducing “spectral evidence” into election fraud cases on the basis of nothing more than wishful thinking, outlandish fears, or imaginary beliefs.

 

As a result, unnecessary deaths, violence, threats (including death threats), and the undermining of democracy, as well as of public confidence in elections, have occurred.

 

Young Goodman Brown becomes “a stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful if not desperate man…from the night of that fearful dream.”  He believes that everyone he imagined seeing at the witch meeting, including his wife, Faith, are hopelessly evil hypocrites, everyone, that is, except himself.

 

Fortunately, he commits no violence and makes no threats (though he may well have applauded at the witch hangings), but his community relationships, even his marriage, are destroyed.  He has lost his faith in others, and “his dying hour was gloom.”

 

Conspiracy theorists of today have lost their faith in science, medicine, evidence, reason, and in democratic institutions. They end up either dying of COVID or spreading it to others who die, harassing those who wear masks, committing crimes in the name of their wild fantasies, and supporting the corruption of our courts, our democracy, and our very Constitution.

 

Some years after the Salem witchcraft trials, church leaders and trial jurors apologized, convictions were reversed, and compensation rendered to the families of those wrongfully accused and convicted. Let’s hope that, similarly, starting in 2021, we come to our senses. Meanwhile, Happy New Year!

"The Maypole of Merry Mount"

I started thinking about this blog post on May Day, but life (to be specific, knee replacement surgery) intervened.  Now I’m finally getting it posted just under the May wire.

The tradition of the maypole isn’t always associated strictly with the month of May, however.  In some countries it is erected during mid-summer celebrations.  And this short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne (published 1836) is based on such an occasion in the early American colony of Mount Wollaston, a.k.a. Merry Mount, which was adjacent to the better known Plymouth colony in the 1620s.

The rivalry between the two colonies, one Puritan and one Anglican, and the historical incident in which John Endicott cut down the maypole at Merry Mount are documented by historians from both colonies.  William Bradford in Of Plymouth Plantation describes the Merry Mount colonists and their ringleader Thomas Morton as “licentious,” “dissolute,” and “profane.”   Their maypole is an “idol,” around which the merrymakers engage in drunken dancing, “inviting the Indian women for their consorts…frisking together like so many fairies, or furies…”  Thomas Morton, in his New English Canaan, mocks the “precise Seperatists” of Plymouth, who “make a great show of Religion but no humanity,” and their leader Captain Miles Standish as “Captain Shrimp.”

In the preface to his story Hawthorne notes that the historical facts “have wrought themselves, almost spontaneously, into a sort of allegory.”  “Jollity and gloom,” says the narrator of the story, “were contending for an empire.”

In The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne offers two world views for comparison, using one to critique the other, finding fault with both, and suggesting that each could learn from the other. (See blog post Oct. 24, 2012). In “The Maypole of Merry Mount” Hawthorne uses the nominally Anglican but actually more secular/commercial colony of Merry Mount to invoke pre-Christian paganism, referencing not only the maypole itself and the American Indians, but also the “Golden Age,” “fairies and nymphs,” “ancient fable,” and “Comus,” the Greek God of immoderate pleasure, excess, revelry, and disorder.  Similar to The Scarlet Letter, 17^th century Puritanism is contrasted with excessive hedonism and untempered pleasure seeking.

In this story the Puritans emerge victorious as they cut down the maypole, punish the wrongdoers, and invite the newly married “Lord and Lady of the May” into their more sober community.  Yet the narrator, while acknowledging the historical triumph of Plymouth over Merry Mount, does not spare the Puritans.  They are “dismal wretches”—“grim,” “stern,” “darksome,” hard-hearted, and punitive.  The whipping post is their maypole.  If the merrymakers of Merry Mount indulge in excessive pleasure seeking, the Puritans seem almost to take sadistic pleasure in an excess of pain and punishment.

More than an historical allegory, the story represents a process of maturation from a child-like view of the world as playground to the inevitable encounter with evil and suffering that accompanies a “coming of age.”  Yet, the story seems to question whether the Puritan view of the world as a crucible of suffering, a “vale of tears,” is really superior. 

The newly married couple who join the Puritan community offer some hope of a healthier outlook.  Even before the Puritans arrive to cast their shadow over the mirth and merriment of Merry Mount, the young couple has a “presentiment” of future “care and sorrow and troubled joy,” thus chastening the youthful exuberance and carefree quality of their wedding celebration.  Later, their devotion to each other and their willingness to suffer, each for the other, in the face of Puritan judgment and punishment, softens the “iron man,” Endicott, who lifts a wreath of roses from the ruined maypole and throws it over their heads, thereby holding open the possibility that flowers and sunshine may mix and mingle with Puritan gloom.

As Hawthorne says elsewhere, “Life is made up of marble and mud.”  Neither youthful hedonism nor age-worn cynicism captures its complexity.  Wisdom, truth, and healthy human community lie somewhere between the two extremes.

The Scarlet Letter

Margaret Fuller achieved notoriety, not only for her writing career and political advocacy (see previous post), but also for her private life.  While in Italy, in 1848, she bore a son to Giovanni Ossoli, whom she may or may not have married the following year.  The three of them died in a shipwreck just off the coast of New York on their voyage to the U.S.  This tragedy might well have been seen by her contemporaries, and even her family and friends, as God’s punishment for sexual sin.

For Nathaniel Hawthorne Fuller seemed to evoke powerful feelings.  He called her a “great humbug…defective and evil in nature” in his journal and may have had her in mind when he created the character of Zenobia in The Blithedale Romance and Hester in his 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter. 

Near the end of “Woman in the Nineteenth Century,” Fuller invokes a kind of prophetess:  “And will she not soon appear?—the woman who shall vindicate their birthright for all women; who shall teach them what to claim, and how to use what they obtain?”  At the end of The Scarlet Letter, we are told that Hester had once imagined herself a “prophetess” of women’s future:  “Earlier in life, Hester had vainly imagined that she herself might be the destined prophetess, but had long since recognized the impossibility that any mission of divine and mysterious truth should be confided to a woman stained with sin, bowed down with shame, or even burdened with a lifelong sorrow.”

Like Fuller, Hester bears a child out of wedlock.  If Fuller’s punishment came from God, however, Hester’s comes from the God-fearing humans of her Puritan community in Massachusetts Bay Colony.  In Hawthorne’s story Hester evolves from “scarlet woman” in the eyes of her community to well-respected, one might almost say revered, wise counselor of women.  Does Hawthorne hold out hope of redemption for the reputation of Margaret Fuller, or does he see her legacy forever tainted by the "scandal" of her private life?  If Hester does represent Margaret Fuller, then the answer, like a lot of those in Hawthorne’s work, would have to be ambiguous. 

The Scarlet Letter, however, is much more than a reflection on Margaret Fuller or on sexual morality or on women’s rights.  It actually constitutes a contrast, even a debate of sorts, between two world views—the Puritan, Biblical world view of the 17^th century setting of the novel and the Romantic, individualist, expressive world view of the early 19^th century—both of which are still very much with us in the 21^st century.

From the Puritan, Biblical perspective, the world is a drama, a cosmic conflict between God and Satan, good and evil, the saved and the damned, heaven and hell.  At the human level God’s “saints” (the saved) are responsible for representing God’s will, enforcing his laws as laid out in the Bible and punishing the sinners, for their own good of course, to elicit their confession, repentance, and salvation.

 Obedience to the Word of God, as interpreted by church leaders, is one’s ultimate responsibility.  Though lip service was given to the “priesthood of all believers” during the Protestant Reformation, those Puritans who sought to interpret the Bible for themselves (Anne Hutchinson) or who advocated for freedom of religion (Roger Williams) were banished. 

Socially one is expected to put one’s obligations to family, church, and community ahead of one’s own personal desires and wishes.  In this sense the Biblical world view upholds a communitarian, rather than an individualist, ethic, but the Puritan obligations were to the orthodox body of belief.  American Indians, Quakers, and any others who did not subscribe to the approved system of belief were considered outcasts, ripe for persecution.

The free individual is not to be trusted because “original sin” had left human nature essentially evil, able to be redeemed only by God’s grace, not by one’s own effort.  In such a world view social control is necessary to maintain order, and self-control, that is to say repression of one’s natural desires, is necessary for sainthood and salvation.

Conversely, from the Romantic, individualistic perspective the world is an organism.  God is a dynamic energy, power, and life force manifesting in nature, which is healthy, good, and trustworthy.  Nature is not just God’s creation; it is God’s body.  It is itself divine.  Human nature, then, participates in the beauty, goodness, and divinity of the natural world.

Ultimate authority is to be found within oneself.  Authenticity, integrity, and self-trust are the highest virtues.  The drama in this world view is not between God and Satan, but between the god-like individual guided by nature and the society which seeks to train, shape, and control the individual into conforming to a pre-determined standard of behavior and belief.

Social authority and power are to be resisted and natural feelings are to be expressed, not repressed.  Freedom of thought and expression are valued, as is the natural sympathy for others, which provides an organic, affective basis for social relations and community, as opposed to the artificial, legalistic basis of the Biblical world view.

The drama of The Scarlet Letter is played out between these two world views, a conflict which is left unresolved at the end, or, if there is any resolution in these terms, it is an affirmation that the truth lies in a middle ground somewhere between the two.

The Biblical world view is represented by the Puritan town that puts the mark of sin, the letter A, on Hester’s bosom and places her on the scaffold with her newborn child to be reviled by her townspeople.  The Romantic world view is represented by the forest, where Hester and Dimmesdale meet in secret, where Hester literally lets down her hair, and where little Pearl can wander freely, though under the watchful eye of her parents.

The three scaffold scenes mark three different aspects of the Biblical perspective: public punishment, private guilt, and public confession (but is it truly confession or merely another form of self-protection and hypocrisy?)  Some spectators claim to have seen a scarlet A on Dimmesdale’s bosom when he pulls back his shirt, heard him confess his long secret sin, and seen him acknowledge his long unrecognized family.  Others claim that he was merely speaking allegorically and that his bosom was as bare and white as the driven snow.  His words, indeed, are highly ambiguous and open to interpretation, making it possible for his fellow Puritans to hear what they want to hear and, for that matter, see what they want to see.  The whole Bible-based narrative of sin--repentance/confession--salvation is cast into doubt.

The forest scene dramatizes the triumph of the Romantic perspective, when Hester and Dimmesdale are reunited, along with their daughter, renew their vows of love, and plan their escape from Puritan oppression to a place where they can live and love openly as a family.  It is there that Hester unburdens Dimmesdale’s guilt-ridden conscience, assuring him of that their love is blessed and that his good works far outnumber his sins, and it is there that Hester removes the scarlet letter and tosses it away.  However, it is also there that little Pearl returns the scarlet letter to her mother, insisting that she wear it, and that the narrator questions the absolute innocence of nature: “Such was the sympathy of Nature—that wild, heathen Naure of the forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by higher truth—with the bliss of these two spirits.”

And the novel denies the two lovers their happy, Romantic ending, for Dimmesdale, unable to overcome his guilt, chooses to make his dramatic, final statement, however ambiguous, on the scaffold with Hester and Pearl before drawing his last breath.

From the Puritan, Biblical perspective Hester is a fallen woman, though capable of redemption.  Her story is a cautionary tale.  To the Romantic, she is a natural woman, whose free expression is thwarted by an oppressive and repressive society.  Her story is the age-old scapegoat narrative in which she unjustly bears the punishment for others’ secret sins.

Similarly, from the former view Pearl is an “imp,” tainted not only by original sin, but by that of her earthly parents, while from the latter she is an innocent child of nature, unjustly treated as an outcast.  The Puritans see Dimmesdale as either a sinful, but just, saint (assuming he confessed at the end) or as a spotless spiritual leader taking others’ sins on his own head (assuming he spoke allegorically), whereas the Romantics see him as a repressed, tormented soul, unable to break free from the bonds of his misguided religion.  Chillingworth, to the Puritans would be a just punisher, whereas to the Romantics he is a villain.

Neither world view is allowed to triumph in the novel.  The Biblical view is cruel, intolerant, and hypocritical, while the Romantic view is self-indulgent, permissive, and naïve in its unqualified trust in the goodness of human nature.  Both are self-righteous.  Wisdom is to be found in the middle ground of humility, self-discipline, forgiveness, and sympathy.  Communitarianism must respect individual rights and freedoms; individualism must temper itself and value the well-being of others, social cohesion, and the common good.  Tradition must bend to women’s rights, and women’s demands must be mediated by social reality.  Margaret Fuller deserves redemption but cannot escape the judgment of her peers.

Resistance to Civil Government II

Earlier in this blog (December, 2009, ff) numerous references were made to the redemptive narrative or recovery plot in American literature, whether it be redemption from sin, captivity, enslavement, poverty, disease, suffering, or what have you. The transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller is the best philosophical expression of that American redemptive theme.

The transcendentalists asserted great confidence in the power of the individual to redeem himself or herself from social bondage and the mental shackles that accompany it. By shutting out the voices of family, church, school, and society and turning to nature and one’s solitary self, it becomes possible to hear the voice of a higher, spiritual power in the universe, a power that transcends the everyday reality of social conformity.

Thoreau invokes his “conscience” as the medium through which this higher, spiritual voice speaks to him. It is this innate “moral sense” that has the power to redeem us from machine-like service to state and society and to transform us from “wooden” followers to moral leaders. By our refusal to serve the state or to follow social norms blindly, we can inspire others to heed their own consciences and thereby achieve lasting social change.

A couple of problematic premises underlie Thoreau’s argument. First, he assumes the “conscience” is a spiritual entity in touch with higher truth, as opposed to a Freudian superego which merely enforces what our social experience has taught us. Second, he assumes that if we all heed our consciences we will all hear the same “truth.” These premises are consistent with transcendentalism, but are difficult to support, either by reason or evidence, and impossible to verify. They must be taken on faith alone.

A counter-theme in 19th century American literature is represented by the gothic tradition of Edgar Allen Poe and the tragic vision of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville, which explore the dark side of nature and human experience. It is this counter-theme which would raise the specter of the isolated individual, out of touch with reality, listening to an inner voice of insanity rather than divine guidance.

From this perspective, Thoreau’s theory of civil disobedience might be viewed as, at the very least, misguided self-indulgence and, at worst, a dangerous step toward social anarchy and chaos.