SOURCE: "The Law of the Fathers: Hawthorne," in Desire and the Political Unconscious in American Literature: Eros and Ideology, St. Martin's Press, 1990, pp. 49-78.

In the excerpt below, Girgus offers a psychoanalytic interpretation of Goodman Brown as a tormented neurotic who represses both his sexual desire for Faith and his doubts about his parentage.

On a relatively conventional level of Freudian analysis, Young Goodman Brown would appear to be an unhappy neurotic who cannot reconcile himself to his wife's carnality and cannot return or enjoy the love she represents. He cannot appreciate her natural desires: ' "Dearest heart," whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips were close to his ear, "prithee put off your journey until sunrise and sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone woman is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts that she's afraid of herself sometimes. Pray tarry with me this...