Sunday, July 27, 2014

In "Young Goodman Brown," what accessory does Goodman Brown's wife wear?

Young Goodman Brown's wife, Faith, wears "pink ribbons [in] her cap," and because they are mentioned so many times throughout the story, this is a clue that they have some symbolic significance. They are mentioned in the very first paragraph when Faith is introduced. Soon after, Faith blesses her husband as he's about to go off into the woods, and she is described as having her "pink ribbons." After Goodman Brown has left home,

he looked back and saw the head of Faith still peeping after him, with a melancholy air, in spite of her pink ribbons.

As Brown travels deeper and deeper into the woods, he thinks that he hears his wife's voice, "uttering lamentations." He panics and lets out a "cry of grief, rage, and terror," spotting a "pink ribbon" which is "caught on the branch of a tree." The fifth and final reference to the pink ribbons occurs after Brown has returned home and "he spied the head of Faith, with the pink ribbons, gazing anxiously forth [...]."
Given the ribbons' color—pink—they seem representative of a lack of maturity, of innocence. This interpretation fits with her name and personality as well: "faith" seems to imply grace, innocence, optimism. These are all things that Brown seems to associate with his wife, and so finding her ribbon in the forest seems to signify a loss of both innocence and Brown's Faith, both in terms of his wife and in terms of his Christian faith. By the time he returns to town, he's become "A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man [...]." For the remainder of his life, "he shrank from the bosom of Faith."

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