Bily has a master's degree in English literature and has written for a variety of educational publishers. In the following essay, she discusses Hawthorne's use of imagery of light and darkness.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" was one of his earliest publications, appearing anonymously in the 1832 edition of The Token. It waited more than one hundred years to gain its current position as one of the author's most widely anthologized and studied short stories, although it is built on many of the same themes and techniques as Hawthorne's better-known stories and novels. Images of light and darkness, for example, are used in this story to illuminate (pun intended) the theme, just as these images provide insight to "Young Goodman Brown," "The Birthmark," and other stories.

A central question for readers of "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" has been whether or not Robin, the "shrewd youth...