SOURCE: “Goodman Brown and the Puritan Catechism,” in ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, Vol. 40, No. 1, 1994, pp. 66-88.

In the following essay, Franklin examines the influence of Cotton Mather's catechism entitled Milk for Babes, which focuses on humankind's innate moral depravity, on Hawthorne's “Young Goodman Brown.”

If the importance of an artistic creation may be gauged by the amount of critical attention it receives, then Hawthorne's “Young Goodman Brown” is surely one of the most significant stories ever written. From Melville's comments in 1850 to the present, this dark tale has engaged many of Hawthorne's best readers and is likely to continue attracting them. I would suggest, however, that while such scholars as Hyatt H. Waggoner, Richard Harter Fogle, Frederick Crews, and other, more recent critics have helped us understand Hawthorne in general and “Young Goodman Brown” in particular, they have overlooked a statement by Brown which, when...