Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown - The Puritans and Love Essay -- Young

upstart Goodman Brown The Puritans and Love Hawthornes Young Goodman Brown, exposes the puritan view of venerate and relationships. In theory, these two visions are diametrically opposed. One exalts jazz as a physical mirror image between two individuals (although it also claims to represent higher ideals), the other sees it as a spiritual need, one best manifested by attachment to theology. In fact, the puritans did not see love as a good thing, tho rather as an evil, a grim necessity, that is, they saw physical love (between a man and a woman, or sexuality and all it carries with it) as such. The emotional turmoil affecting Goodman Brown clearly expresses this. The problem we respect in this story, and in puritanism, is that it presents contrasting views of love. Attachment to earthly possessions, to other mess in fact, is discouraged, because everything physical leads to temptation and damnation, and ultimately hell, while the road to redemption of the individual wander s through a spiritual discipline, rigour, austerity. A man should not love his wife more than he loves God in fact, it is recommended that he not derive pleasure from his wife, plainly rather seek suffering, in order to redeem himself from his earthly condition, his impure state. This conception of love jackpot be traced back to the first chapters of the Bible, Genesis. Adam and Eve, in the garden of Eden, tucker the forbidden fruit and are forever outcast from paradise, forced to suffer. The puritans argued that, if God wishes us to suffer, who are we to go against his wishes. We are sinners, because of the Original Sin, and it was Eve who gav... ...ne, it unplowed the women in a box, it basically prevented uprising by instilling heaven-sent fear. Eventually, these ideas evolved, but we still witness many of the after effects of puritanism in todays world. Again, however, we are faced with a story, this time written after the fact, that sheds a negative light on an ideology. I t seems Nathaniel Hawthorne did not want to endorse puritanism, but denounce it, denounce the abuse and contradiction it implied. Once more, we find a work that denigrates an established understanding of love. First, there was opposition to the courtly love tradition, now, we find opposition to the puritan love ideology. So far, we have simply been willing to define love by what it wasnt, what we felt was a wrongly way of doing things. If a more definitive answer is to be found, it must be found elsewhere.