SOURCE: “Hawthorne's Minister and the Veiling Deceptions of Self,” in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. IV, No. 2, Winter, 1967, pp. 135-42.

In the following essay, Canaday insists that “The Minister's Black Veil” is not about secret sin so much as it is about “the sin of pride with its demoniac pretensions and inhuman results.”

Critics have treated the sin of the Reverend Mr. Hooper in “The Minister's Black Veil” with a kind of tentativeness not observed in the general critical view of many of Hawthorne's other major characters.¹ That the author's severe moral judgment of Mr. Hooper has never been sufficiently emphasized may be owing not alone to the subtlety of the portrait but also to the brevity of the tale and to the limited cast of characters. The result is that Mr. Hooper is seen in less breadth, though not less depth, than, for example, Arthur Dimmesdale. The...