SOURCE: "'The Minister's Black Veil': Mr. Hooper's Symbolic Fig Leaf," in Literature and Psychology, Vol. XVII, No. 4, 1967, pp. 211-18.

In the essay below, Crie first provides an overview of the critical theories regarding Hooper's reasons for wearing the veil, then argues that it serves to protect the minister from women, whom he fears.

Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons.

—Gen. iii.7.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story, "The Minister's Black Veil," first published in the Token (1836), and later in Twice Told Tales (1837), relates how an apparently innocent minister inexplicably covers his face with a black veil which he wears throughout his lifetime, despite the pleas of many people that he cast it off. Critical interpretations of the story vary, but the approaches taken may be divided into five categories.

(1) The veil indicates...