SOURCE: “‘Young Goodman Brown’: Hawthorne's Intent,” in ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance, Vol. 31, Part 2, 1963, pp. 68-71.

In the following essay, Davidson argues that Hawthorne's purpose in “Young Goodman Brown” was to demonstrate the power of an “evil thought” to corrupt psychologically and ultimately to lead an individual to “an evil deed.”

One considers the number and variety of attempts made to clarify the meaning of “Young Goodman Brown”¹ and wonders whether there is perhaps some simpler explanation of the story than has been made. May it have been the author's purpose to have the reader realize keenly the transforming power and the paralyzing deceptiveness of an evil thought, which once entertained, starts into action subtle psychological processes against which one may make resolves but which, begun, proceed with increasing strength to demoniacal frenzy and the perpetration of an evil deed?

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