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 argues that "The Minister's Black Veil" is not about secret sin but is instead about the sin of pride.

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 rich tapestry of The Scarlet Letter pictures complexities of...