Midterm Essay

Alicia Rajcoomar 

Midterm Essay, ENG 2001 

Oct 26, 2020 

Innocence Betrayed  

Gothic literature often pushes the limits of our form of normalcy using death, mental illness and the nature of uncertainty to address an array of our everyday issues.  In Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Black Cat” we witness the unnamed narrator fall victim to alcoholism and commit unexplainably violent acts that end in death, to his cat Pluto and unnamed wife. Similarly, in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” we experience a series of events that makes Goodman Brown lose trust in his wife, Faith. The events that “take place” create a nature of uncertainty and pose the question, “Did these events really take place or are we witnessing a character that is descending into madness?” Both stories address the betrayal of innocence but in different ways and raises the question “Does gender play a role in the events that occurred for the women of these stories?”  

In order to answer this question, I intend to focus on the wife in “The Black Cat” and the wife, Faith from “Young Goodman Brown” by comparing their situations because in terms of the betrayal of innocence, these women were betrayed in different ways. I am going to start off by discussing in detail the events that led up to the unnamed wife’s death in “The Black Cat” and the mentality of her husband. I am then going to discuss Goodman Brown’s exchange with Faith before leaving for his journey and how the nature of uncertainty leads him to betray his wife. The betrayal of innocence will show us how individuals who don’t do anything wrong still end up getting betrayed due to a power dynamic and this is where gender comes in. This essay will be wrapped up by summarizing how these women were betrayed by their husbands because of their gender and lack of power.  

“The Black Cat” is told from a first-person perspective and early in the story the narrator admits to his alcoholism and his actions because of it. “I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence.” (Poe, 4) This is a prime example of the power dynamic between the narrator and his wife. He exerts his power over her by verbally and physically abusing her. The narrator is also fully knowledgeable of his actions towards his wife but doesn’t seem to care. “The moodiness of my usual temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind; while from the sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a fury to which I now blindly abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas, was the most usual and the most patient of suffers.” (Poe, 11) Here we have the narrator acknowledge his abuse that’s usually targeted towards his wife by saying that she is patient and doesn’t complain. The narrator is again using his power to belittle his wife by making it seem as if she’s okay with being abused. We don’t get the opportunity to explore how she feels because the narrator murders her.  

“Uplifting an axe, and forgetting, in my wrath, the childish dread which had hitherto stayed my hand, I aimed a blow at the animal, which, of course, would have proved instantly fatal had it descended as I wished. But this blow was arrested by the hand of my wife.” (Poe, 11) The wife tries to stand up to the narrator in order to protect the cat, but we will see that he doesn’t like her display of power and does the extreme to reinstate his power over her, “Goaded by the interference into a rage more than demonical, I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot without a groan.” (Poe, 11) The wife is betrayed by her own husband from the beginning of the story when he admits to abusing her and it gets so extreme to the point that he murders her without a second thought after she stops him from killing the cat. Now let’s look at how this form of betrayal is both different and similar to the one that Faith endures.  

Goodman Brown doesn’t hurt or kill his wife, Faith, but he does however betray their marriage like the narrator from “The Black Cat”. In both stories their betrayed by their husbands not because of something they did, but because of their husband’s personal issues. In “The Black Cat” it was the narrator’s alcoholism but in “Young Goodman Brown” it’s Goodman Brown’s uncertainty towards the events that might or might not have taken place.  Let’s first discuss when Goodman Brown and Faith say goodbye to each other before his journey. “Dearest heart, whispered she (Faith) … pr’ythee, put off your journey until sunrise, and sleep in your own bed tonight …  Pray, tarry with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in the year.” (Hawthorne, p. 1) Faith is begging with her husband to stay home for the night instead of going on his journey because of some bad thoughts she’s been having. In response Goodman Brown says “of all nights in the year, this one night must I tarry away from thee” to which Faith replies “Then God bless you! And may you find all well, when you come back.” (Hawthorne, p.1) We see a bit of a display of power dynamic here with Faith giving up so easily on trying to get her husband to stay home after he states that he must go tonight. Despite this, it seems that the two love and care for each other deeply but this all changes during Goodman’s night journey.  

Before Goodman gets too far along in his journey it is important to note that he says “Well; she’s (Faith) a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night, I’ll cling to her skirts and follow her to Heaven.” (Hawthorne, p.6) This is important because his actions later in the story differ from what he says and feels for Faith right now. On his journey Goodman meets an old man with a staff that is adorned with a serpent. The old man offers the staff to Goodman, but he declines and states that he’s going to return to his wife when an old woman appears. Goodman hides so that he isn’t seen with the man and witnesses the old woman referring to the old man as the “devil” and a “witch” regarding herself. He begins to hear the voices of other people in the village heading to a ceremony, and thinks he hears and sees his wife, Faith. He grabs the walking stick the old man gave him before disappearing and it transports him to the ceremony. He is then grabbed and brought in front of an unknown woman they are told that they must show themselves to each other and Goodman Brown finds out that the woman is his wife. “The husband cast one look at his pale wife, and Faith at him … Faith! Faith! Look up to Heaven, and resist the Wicked One!” (Hawthorne, p.11) It is unclear if Faith obeyed him or not because suddenly, he was all alone.  

It is unclear to both the reader and Goodman if these events took place or not, but they drive Goodman into a form of madness and anxiousness that leaves him not trusting his wife. “Turning the corner by the meeting-house, he (Goodman) spied the head of Faith, with the pink ribbons, gazing anxiously forth, and bursting into such joy at the sight of him, that she skipped along the street, and almost kissed her husband before the whole village. But Goodman Brown looked sternly and sadly into her face, and passed on without a greeting.” (Hawthorne, p.12) Referring back to the quote about Goodman clinging to Faith when he gets back, we can see that his anxiousness is making him want little to do with his wife. Faith and her marriage are betrayed by Goodman because he no longer trusts her after the events that “occurred”. He believes that he has the power to ice out his wife and that is what he does for the remainder of his life until he dies.  

Lastly, let’s take a deeper look at both women by directly comparing their actions and scenes they were in. Using the gothic element of character stereotypes, we can categorize the wife in “The Black Cat” as a damsel in distress. Leading up to her death, the wife is verbally and physically abused by her husband. Despite the abuse and her lack of power, she still tries to stand up for the cat by protecting it from her husband, but she becomes the ultimate victim by being brutally murdered. This differs from the character stereotype of Faith in “Young Goodman Brown”. She can be categorized as a silent wife. It can be inferred that even though Goodman Brown no longer trusted his wife, they remain together until the day he dies. Even though her husband treated her coldly and it was apparent that he felt differently towards her, she still stayed with him and took whatever treatment he gave her. Different from the wife in “The Black Cat” Faith never stood up against her husband and instead lived with that kind of treatment until Goodman passed away. However even though she didn’t stand up for herself the same could be said about the wife in “The Black Cat” because when she stood up against her husband, she was doing it for the cat and not herself.  

In conclusion, the fact that Faith and the unnamed wife are women does play a role in the way their husbands treated them. Both women did nothing to deserve to be betrayed but in the eyes of Goodman Brown and the narrator from “The Black Cat” the women committed acts that they felt were wrong, so they exerted their power over them as a form of punishment. The unnamed wife was brutally murdered because the narrator didn’t like that she protected the cat and Goodman Brown lost trust and acted coldly to Faith because he thought she disobeyed him. If the gender roles were reversed the narrator would have probably made the wife stop drinking and Goodman Brown probably would have thought that Faith was mentally unwell. Gothic literature uses the extreme actions of its characters to create an allegory for our present world. We see that it addresses relationship issues such as trust and domestic abuse as well as individual and social issues like alcoholism, possible mental illness and gender roles in the sense of power dynamics.