SOURCE: “‘Young Goodman Brown’ and ‘A White Heron’: Correspondences and Illuminations,” Papers on Language and Literature, Vol. 26, No. 3, Summer, 1990, pp. 346–357.

In the following essay, Zanger compares and contrasts the themes, settings, narrative sequences, imagery, and dynamics of “A White Heron” with Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story “Young Goodman Brown” and suggests that these works illuminate each other.

It has become a commonplace of Sarah Orne Jewett criticism to observe, usually in passing, the parallels between her work and that of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Some critics find stylistic similarities, others thematic ones; there is general agreement about their shared concern with New England. Edward Garnett wrote that Jewett “ranked second only to Hawthorne in her interpretation of the spirit of New England Soil” (40–41). Van Wyck Brooks concluded his essay on Jewett in New England: Indian Summer by saying, “No one since Hawthorne had pictured this New England world with such exquisite...