SOURCE: "Shadows of Doubt: Specter Evidence in Hawthorne's 'Young Goodman Brown'," in American Literature, Vol. XXXIV, No. 3, November, 1962, pp. 344-52.

In this essay, Levin examines Hawthorne's short story from a seventeenth-century perspective and notes that Goodman Brown succumbs to despair on only spectral evidence of evil.

I choose for my text two statements written in the autumn of 1692, after twenty Massachusetts men and women accused of witchcraft had been executed. The first is by Increase Mather, the second by Thomas Brattle.

. . . the Father of Lies [Mather declared] is never to be believed: He will utter twenty great truths to make way for one lie: He will accuse twenty Witches, if he can thereby bring one honest Person into trouble: He mixeth Truths with Lies, that so those truths giving credit unto lies, Men may believe both, and so be deceived [Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits Impersonating Men...