Although the story is realistic, “Young Goodman Brown,” written in the American Romantic tradition, blurs the line between dream and reality, natural and supernatural. By writing about the past, Hawthorne is able to both expiate his family’s guilt, and analyze the social and religious climate that culminated in the Puritan zealotry of the Salem Witch Trials. Hawthorne’s great-great-grandfather, John Hathorne, had been a judge during the Salem Witch Trials, and critics maintain that Hawthorne was plagued by a sense of ancestral guilt for his family’s complicity in sending over twenty women to die at the stake. Like many of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories, “Young Goodman Brown” takes place in a reimagined colonial America during the 17th century, despite being written during the 19th century.
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