SOURCE: “The Devils of Hawthorne's Faust Myth,” in Hawthorne's Faust: A Study of the Devil Archetype, Archon Books, 1968, pp. 67-86.

In the following essay, Stein investigates Nathaniel Hawthorne's use of the Faustian myth in his short stories to examine man's ability to profit morally from an encounter with evil.

With renewed sincerity Hawthorne declares in Twice-Told Tales that the achetypal covenant with the devil most persuasively symbolizes the enigma of human destiny.¹ This statement occurs in “The Haunted Mind,” a narrative that defines the creative patterns of Hawthorne's imagination. In a few words he unbosoms the secret inspiration to which he rarely alludes directly: “there is no name for him unless it be Fatality, an emblem of the evil influence that rules your fortunes; a demon to whom you subjected yourself by some error at the outset of life, and were bound his slave forever, by once obeying...