SOURCE: “Deconstructing ‘Young Goodman Brown,’” in American Transcendental Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 1, March, 1988, pp. 23-33.

In the following essay, Morris examines misnaming and misreading in “Young Goodman Brown” in a deconstructive critical approach to the tale.

Two trends in recent criticism of “Young Goodman Brown” form the background to this essay. First, historicist critics, analyzing the story's Calvinist dilemmas, often remark upon the seeming inevitability of its action. Thus Michael Colacurcio concludes that “everything seems to follow from, or indeed to be contained in the initial situation of the story” (391). Jane Eberwein believes that the hero's “exploration of the hitherto concealed recesses of his soul would have come eventually as a test of his new birth” (26). For these and other critics, the story argues some necessity in Brown's confrontation with evil in the forest.¹ It is as if young Goodman Brown's fate was always, already inherent in his marriage...