43

"Young Goodman Brown" -- Puritan Don Juan:

Faith in Tirso and Hawthorne
Jeanne J. Smoot
North Carolina State University
Calling Young Goodman Brown a Puritan Don Juan may at first seem
simply another attempt to join the growing list of critics, represented by Roy
Male and Frederick Crews, who see Hawthorne's dismal hero in

psychosexualterms,I but a closerexaminationof the connectionbetween

Goodman Brown and Don Juan, particularly as it relates to the concept of
faith, indicates that such a comparison can enrich the thematic understanding
of both the Spanish and the American works. Within the course of ~heir
respective myths, both heroes, Goodman Brown and Don Juan, become
embodiments of the devil. Strikingly immature at the outset of their
adventures, they both become lovers of darkness, symbolic of evil, and
express their rebellion in sexual defiance. Characterized as a somewhat
inhibited Puritan, Brown's defiance is simply lessobvious and manifested in a
prurient way. He is nevertheless willing to sell his soul to the sable form who
promises him knowledge of "secret deeds; how hoary-bearded elders of the
church have whispered wanton words to the young maids oftheir households;
how many a woman, eager for widow's weeds, has given her husband a drink
at bed-time, and let him sleep his last sleep on her bosom; how beardless
youths have made haste to inherit their father's wealth;and how fair damselsblush not, sweet ones!- have dug little graves in the garden, and bidden me,
the sole guest, to an infant's funeral."2 Finally both Goodman Brown and
Don Juan seem the natural products of essentially hypocritical, if not sick,
societies. Whether Brown dreams his interlude in the forest or not, the reader
is left with the perception that the minister, the deacon, Goody Cloyse, and
perhaps even Faith herself probably behave pretty much as Brown imagines
them to.3 And Don Juan could never operate as he does unless he finds all too
many young women ready to sigh, as the fishergirl Tisbea does, "Tuya soy"
("I am yours"). In short, for Don Juan to be a "Burlador," a mocker, there

must be those who desireto be mocked(or, hisgrowinglistof"burladas").

4
And even the men in Don Juan's world lie and scheme to preserve surface
morality, with the notable exception of the Comendador, the statue-like
figure who brings retribution to Don Juan in the end.

42

Where Goodman Brown and Don Juan differ most, and where we the
readers can learn the most about the nature of faith and grace as envisioned by
their respective authors and the cultures they addressed, is in what happens to
both 'characters at the end of their adventures. Goodman Brown, though he is
able to sire children and livesto an old age, is never happy. He has lost faithwhether religious faith or faith in his fellow man or both. Goodman Brown's
dying hour, we are told, ''was gloom." Don Juan is not even afforded that
shadowy existence. Don Juan's death scene, one of the most impressive in all
of Spanish drama, has him consumed in a fierce conflagration, either real or
imagined, which represents the powers of nature, now under the direct
control of God, moving to destroy the Mocker, the one who misues his own
sexual nature on earth. Ironically, Don Juan, who in lifeexploited the flames
of his own lust to destroy rather than to create in the positive marital
framework ordained by God, is now lost in the symbolic representation of his
own sin.
That the author of Don Juan was a priest has Iigreat deal to do with the
ending of "El Burlador de Sevilla." Though Tirso could write some rather
frivolous and even risque passages in his drama, he was not among those
Golden Age dramatists who were priests in name only, finding it fashionable
or expedient to join the clergy. Tirso was a respected and trusted member of
the Mercedarian order.s He was not the enemy or the sceptic of organized
religion that Hawthorne was. True, Tirso attacked social and political evils
and hypocrisies, but he is most orthodox in his view of Roman Catholic
theology. In fact, Tirso probably came to the stage through writing saints'
livesfor schools and monasteries.6 He studied theology for some four years in
Toledo and Guadalajara and even taught it during a missionary journey to
Santo Domingo in the West Indies.
Because it is rare in Golden Age drama for a character, even a decidedly
evil one, to be consigned to hell, symbolized by the flames surrounding Don
Juan, Tirso must have wanted to reinforce the severity of Don Juan's sin.7Did
Don Juan die for seducing sometimes all-too-willing young ladies? Hardly,
but he did die for taking the divine retribution of God too lightly. And, what is
more, he died for being distinctly non-Roman Catholic in his theology.
Throughout the sixteenth century there raged strong conflicts over the
concepts of predestination and free will. In both the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians battled over the idea of
salvation and justification by faith. There were, of course, lamentable
excesses on both sides. Where we, as readers and critics, predominantly
influenced by the Protestant tradition in America, tend to err is in seeingonly
the horrors of the Inquisition and the other corruptions of the Roman
Catholic Church. Through this exc".;sive preoccupation we fail to see the
Martin Luther who became so obsessed with the idea of justification by faith
that he actually wanted to leavethe New Testament Book of James out of his

44

German translation of the Bible because of its caveat that faith without good
works is dead. Further, we may fail to see Calvin himselfwhose extreme belief
in the total depravity of man moved perilously close to Manicheism, the
heresy so widespread in Rome in the third and fourth centuries that postulates
a dualism between equally powerful forces of good and evil with all matter
seen as inherently evil.8That Tirso de Molina, the priest, wasfighting some of
these heresies in "El Burlador de Sevilla" is obvious. What is less obvious,
perhaps, is that Hawthorne was attacking them too, or at least their corrosive
effects.
Don Juan's major flaw in"El Burlador" is that he thinks he is immune
from punishment. On a political level, his father is one of the king's favorites.
Even the king himself will bend the law to maintain the appearance of
integrity and to preserve Don Juan's reputation. On the spiritual level, Don
Juan has renounced responsibility for his actions. He believesthat he can live
according to his appetites and somehow be saved by a last-minute petition to
God. His conception of salvation is perverse. He sees salvation almost as his
due-something he is to receive from God with no real moral obligations on
his part. Don Juan even uses the terms of finance to describe his spiritual
views. "jTan largo me 10Mis!" he tells anyone who tries to remind himofthe
need for moral responsibility ("Such long-term credit you give me!").9Don
Juan never tries to deny that he is doing wrong; he simply feels that he has a
long time to absolve himself and then he can do so by simply invoking the
name of God. That antinomianism was rife in the seventeenth century when
Tirso wrote is well known. What is perhaps lesswell known is that Nathaniel
Hawthorne was aware of the impact of the Antinomians on the Puritan New
England of which he wrote. toAntinomianism comes from two Greek words,
anit, meaning against, and nomos, meaning law. The Antinomians simply
believed they were above the law. They felt they were saved by faith and grace
and therefore were free not only from the Old Testament law of Moses but
also from all forms of law, including generally accepted standards of morality
prevailing in any given culture. On the surface, the belief sounds harmless
enough and reminds one of the Pauline doctrine of freedom in Christ. The
danger lies in the actual application of Antinomianism to everyday life. The
threat was twofold. There was the obvious fear that lack of respect for the law
would produce destructive behavior, the libertine attitude of a Don Juan.
Even more to be feared and more insidious was the erosion of free will. A
person who believes he is already saved has no need to worry about the
consequences of his behavior. "The Mocker of Seville" is as much a
dramatization of the perils of predestination and the antinomian perversion
of the doctrine of justification by faith as it is the story of a profligate young
gentleman.

45

At the same time, "Young Goodman Brown" underscores the corrosive

effect of a stern Calvinism, which stresses not only predestination but also
natural depravity. Brown ultimately accepted completely the doctrine of
natural depravity, and this acceptance, among other dubious beliefs,
destroyed him. Here Brown's attitude toward faith becomes central, for
without true faith in a loving and forgiving God, how can anyone face the
gloomy prospect of inherent evil in all things? Within the Christian tradition,
it is faith alone that enables man to overcome his nature and to make of his
mistakes the felix culpa, or happy fall that leads one from an awareness of sin
to the knowledge of the grace of God through redemption. Faith, in the
Christian sense, is initially faith in God. From this divine faith comes faith
in one's self and in one's fellow man. Here, I think, Richard Fogle, despite the
brilliance of his masterly article, "Ambiguity and Clarity in Hawthorne's
'Young Goodman Brown,' " is absolutely wrong when he writes that "Young
Goodman Brown" "could conceivably be read as intellectul satire, showing
the pitfalls that lie in wait for a too-shallow and unquestioning faith. Tone
and emphasis clearly show, however, a more tragic intention."11What could
possible be more tragic than an inadequate faith that leavesman in perpetual
doubt about himself and others?
The reader of "Young Goodman Brown" is almost overwhelmed by
images of evil as the presence of the devil insinuates itselfinto the veryfiber of
the young Puritan. When the devil figure speaks to Brown, "his arguments
seemed rather to spring up in the bosom of his auditor, than to be suggested
by himself' (X, 80);and when Brown moves through the forest we hear, "The
fiend in his own shape is less hideous, than when he rages in the breast of
man. Thus sped the demoniac on his course..." (X, 84). There is no God in
Young Goodman Brown's world because there is no genuine faith. Brown's
appreciation of faith is mechanical, almost ritualistic. He declares, "I'll cling
to her skirts and follow her to Heaven" (X, 75), and later when faced with
baptism by the devil, he cries to his Faith, "Look up to Heaven, and resistthe
Wicked One" (X, 88). In doing so, Brown voiceswhat James W. Mathews has
called, "the passive Antinomian means of salvation: the union of faith below
and grace from above."12In such a process, Mathews maintains, "personal
volition was de-emphasized, if not completely eliminiated."u Brown
pronounces Faith's name almost as one would an incantation, and his
attitude when faced with the moral decision of joining the devil through
baptism or not is reminiscent of Don Juan's pleadings to the Comendador at
the last, "Deja que llamejquien me confiese y absuelva" ("Then let someone
come who will confess and absolve me") (684b).
Melville, in speaking of "Young Goodman Brown," in "Hawthrone and
His Mosses," wrote that "It is deep as Dante. . . ."14And Hawthorne, like
Dante, has his young hero journeying in a moral wilderness; but Brown,
rather than searching for his spiritual guide, or Beatrice, has conveniently left

47

46

his Faith at home. That Hawthorne clearly mocks the shallowness of his own
character is apparent. Brown has obviously prearranged his forest meeting
and knows he is up to no good. Despite his wife's entreaties and troubled
expressions, Brown resolves to leave her, yet to return "after this one night."
"With this excellent resolve for the future," Hawthorne ironically tells us,
"Goodman Brown felt himselfjustified in making more haste on his present
evil purpose" (X, 75). Note Hawthorne's use of the word justified, which
sarcastically undercuts Brown's own perversion ofthe concept ofjustification
by faith.
Both Tirso de Molina and Nathaniel Hawthorne reveal the seaminess of
life, the underbelly of the world that is exposed when man renounces moral
responsibility. From an aesthetic standpoint, this view would be intolerable
were it not for the distancing devices employed by both authors. In
Hawthorne, there is the exaggerated gravity and formality in the speech of
the devil figure, and in Don Juan there is the humor that prevails even at the
very end of the play when Don Juan and his quaking gracioso dine on
fricasseed fingernails. Still, the moral, spiritual and theological implications
in both works come through. Brieflyoutlined, these implications are that true
faith isessential or evileverywherewillmasquerade as good. Faith is needed if
man is to have an awareness of God, and an awareness of God is essential if
man is to understand and overcome evil. Evil is the opposite of good. Man
postulates evil because he knows God, or good,-not the reverse. Man does
not postulate God only because of the overwhelming power and presence in
the world of evil. Ultimately, man must reject the Manichean view of the
universe or he will become like Young Goodman Brown.
In rejecting the Manichean view, man exalts God over evil, and assumes
moral responsibility for his own actions. Man assumes moral responsibility
by using free will to act on the faith that he has, that is, on his knowledge of
God, in order to subvert evil. Theologically speaking, the only thing that
separates man from God is sin;IStherefore, if he is to keep faith, so essential to
salvation, he must in every way he can exercise his conscious free will to
refrain from sinning. Martin Luther's stance still has theological validity.
Man is saved by faith in God and by the grace of God; but the Roman
Catholic tradition, which Tirso de Molina defended, has merit within the
Christian framework, also. Man cannot maintain faith, if he, like Goodman
Brown, knowingly takes too many trips into the heart of darkness. Tirso de
Molina would have had no difficulty with the Thomistic philosophy: "Noone
is damned except through his own fault, and no one is saved except through
the mercy of God." Tirso, like other Spanish Golden Ape dramatists,
zealously defended the concept of free will, or libre albedno.', In fact, the
defense of free will had become one of the rallying cries of the Spanish
Counter Reformation in the sixteenth century. Proponents saw the
Protestant reformers not merely as enemies of the status quo but as

champions of a facile view of faith and salvation that could only sap free will
and lead to eternal damnation.
Ultimately, Tirso and Hawthorne are dealing with similar problems of
faith-the doctrines of predestination and of justification by faith, pushed to
their antinomian extremes. In Hawthorne's case, he also treats the belief in
the natural depravity of man, which, in short story, "Young Goodman
Brown," becomes almost the inevitable result of the loss of true faith.
Hawthorne was no priest. He could not, as Tirso did, produce the happy
ending of the comedia. He could not, as the Spanish Golden Age dramatists
were so fond of doing, restore moral order at the end-even at the expense of
consigning a Don Juan to hell.
Despite Henry G. Fairbanks' article, "Sin, Free Will, and 'Pessimism' in
Hawthorne," in which Fairbanks argues for an optimistic reading of
Hawthorne's works, one finds all too many characters in Hawthorne's fiction
who fit the assessment by Austin Warren that "sin and remorse are given no
complement or relief in redemption, forgiveness, ultimate peace and joy. "16
There is a brooding, unresolved quality in much of Hawthorne's fiction.
Hawthorne's preoccupation with this darker side of life-indeed
Hawthorne's short story, "Young Goodman Brown," itself-is ambivalent.
And this ambivalence, Melville suggests, is more than a mere literary
technique. Melville, one of Hawthorne's closest friends and defenders, once
confided to Julian Hawthorne "that he was convinced that there was some
secret in [Hawthorne's] life which had never been revealed and which

accounted, for the gloomypassagein his books."I?

Though Hawthorne clearly saw the Puritan excesses and attacks them,
he nevertheless appears unable to offer alternatives in "Young Goodman
Brown." Again, Hawthorne was no priest. He was not the Roman Catholic
Tirso confident of his faith and resurrection. As Daniel Hoffman writes,
Hawthorne creates Goodman Brown who becomes "the husband of Christian
Faith," but who, "by the end of the tale, . . . proves more Puritan than
Christian, renouncing her larger vision for the '~istrustful,' 'desperate,'
'gloom,' of his life and death."18"In rejecting [Faith's] love after his initiation,
Brown is guilty of that Manichean prepossession wi(h the dark side of man's
nature which Hawthorne presents as the special sin of the Puritans."19

'Male, Hawthorne's Tragic Vision (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1957), esp. pp. 76, 78 and
80; and Crews, The Sins ofthe Fathers: Hawthorne's Psychological Themes (New York: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1966), pp. 96-116. Among others who have acknowledged sexual symbolism or
implications in the tale are Daniel G. Hoffman, Form and Fable in American Fiction (New York:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1965), pp. 149-67. esp. pp. I 65f.; Richard P. Adams, "Hawthorne's
'Provincial Tales,' .. NEQ, 30 (March, 1957),39-57, esp. p. 42; and E. Arthur Robinson, "The
Vision of Goodman Brown: A Source and Interpretation,"
AL, 35 (May, 1963),218-25, esp. p.
220.

48

2"Young Goodman Brown," The Centenary Edition orthe Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne,
V 01. X, Mosses from an Old Manse, gen. ed. William Charvat, Roy Harvey Pearce and Claude
M. Simpson (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1974), 87. All quotations from "Young
Goodman Brown" are from this edition and are hereafter cited by page reference. Crews,
especially, emphasizes Brown's prurience, The Sins of the Fathers, p. 103.
JFor many critics, the question of whether Brown was dreaming or actually experienced his
forest adventure becomes central. For an idea ofthe divergence of interpretation, see Richard H.
Fogle, "Ambiguity and Clarity in Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown,' " NEQ, 18 (Dec.,
1945), 448-65, who sees Hawthorne's
ambiguity as a deliberate rhetorical device; D.M.
McKeithan, "Hawthorne's
'Young Goodman Brown': An Interpretation,"
MLN, 67 (Feb.,
1952),93-96, who sees Brown's own guilty conscience causing him to impute evil to others; and
Thomas F. Walsh, Jr., "The Bedeviling ofY oung Goodman Brown," MLQ, 19 (Dec., 1958),33136, and David Levin, "Shadows of Doubt: Specter Evidence in Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman
Brown,' " AL, 34 (Nov., 1962), 344-52) who stress the role and the perception of demonic powers
in Puritan society in fostering Brown's vision.
, 'All quotations from EI Burlador are from Obras dramatlcas completas, ed. Blanca de los
Rios, II (Madrid: Aguilar, 1952). (Hereafter cited by page number alone; the letter a or b after the
page number indicates the first or second column). Translations mine.
sLope de Vega was notorious for disregarding his priestly orders and Gongora and Mira de
Amescua were often absent from their ecclesiastical duties. Though Tirso was censured by the
Committee for Reform of the Council of Castile in 1625 and by Fray Marcos Salmeron in 1640,
these reprimands were directed largely against his political opposition to the Duke of Olivares
and not against any moral or spiritual dereliction on his part. See Margaret Wilson, Tlrso de
Molina (Boston: Twayne. 1977), pp. 25-29. ,
6Both Karl Vossler and Blanca de los Rios support this view. See )fossler, Lecciones sabre
Tirso de Molina (Madrid: Taurus, 1965), p. 51, and Blanca de los Rios, I, 182a.
7For the few cases characters are relegated to hell on the Golden Age stage, see Wilson, pp.
115 and 151, n. 8. (All of the examples she cites are from plays believed to be by Tirso.)
8Hoffman goes a step further in stating, "Puritanism was perhaps as close to the Manichean
as any Christian sect has come," in Form and Fable In American Fiction, p. 152.
"The fact that Tirso probably wrote an earlier version ofEI Burladorentitled "iTan largo me
10 fiais!" ("What Long Term Credit You Give Me!") underscores his emphasis of Don Juan's
materialistic orientation.
The spiritual bankruptcy of Tirso's characters often is ironically
revealed through the language of finance. See Wilson, pp. 113 and 151, n. 4.
IOJames W. Mathews supports.:nis view in "Antinomianism in 'Young Goodman Brown,'''
Studies in Short Fiction, 3 (Fall. 1965).73-75. In particular, Mathews cites as evidence the ironic
sketch of Mrs. Hutchinson in The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Lathrop,
ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1883), XII, 217-26.
"Fogle, p. 454, n. II.
'2Mathews, p. 75.
IJMathi:ws, p. 73.
.
"Herman Melville: Representative Selections, ed. Willard Thorp (New York: American.
1938). p. 342.
ISD.M. McKeithan discusses the delicate balance between faith and free will, guilt and sin in
"Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown': An Interpretation," and concludes, "Young Goodman
Brown" "is not a story of the disillusionment that comes to a person when he discovers that many
supposedly religious and virtuous people are really sinful; it is, rather, a story of a man whose sin
led him to consider all other people sinful," pp. 95-96. In short, Brown has lost faith in all things
good.
16The Fairbanks article is from PMLA, 71 (Dec., 1956),975-89. The Warren quotation is
from Nathaniel Hawthorne: Representative Selections (New York: American, 1934), p. Ixxxvii.
17Julian Hawthorne, Hawthorne and His Circle (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1903), p. 33.
ISHoffman, p. 156.
I9Hoffman, p. 158.