Throughout my designer’s statement, I hope to provide context to my inspiration behind the more creative aspects and solidify my understanding of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown.” From the cover art, author’s biography, text synopsis, and two promotional blurbs, I will explain how all aspects of this project integrate essential themes from our course on how literature can be a complex and compelling form of resistance, whether cultural, religious, or historical.
In choosing the cover art for my book jacket project on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, “Young Goodman Brown”, I wanted to utilize art from the period Hawthorne wrote in, the American Renaissance, which influenced all of the creative works of the time, including artwork. I first saw Thomas Cole’s work from our course website on the American Renaissance, and I knew that as he was the founder of the artistic movement, coupling his work with Hawthorne’s addition to the literary counterpart of this era would reinforce those ideas of redefining a national sense of identity. Within Cole’s work are prominent themes of American landscape and defining geographical features such as expansive forest lands and this sense of wild and uncivilized terrain. The piece I selected by Cole as part of the cover art is called “Tornado in an American Forest,” and I was immediately drawn to the dark and uncertain nature of the painting; I couldn’t immediately tell if this was depicting the moment during a tornado or after and I thought that this questioning nature fit incredibly well with the uncertainty of Hawthorn’s main character and narrator, Goodman Brown, as he walked further and further into the wilderness. Again, this sense of a landscape being American is paramount to how the newly American people wished to emphasize their place within it and to look to this untamed, perhaps savage. As we know, this period of the American Renaissance also utilized the connotations surrounding Indigenous peoples as a place to assert this native-to-the-land mentality in reclaiming those pre-history events as their own. This same connotation is employed in Hawthorne’s story as he writes, “The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds, the creaking of trees the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians” (Hawthorne 1169). In addition to this cover image of Cole’s artwork, I wanted to bring in an element of modern book covers that I am drawn to with this simplistic information of the title and author and then a border with the same thematic elements.
The next piece of this project is the author’s introduction or biography, which most book jackets have to provide a short but crucial blurb of information to orient the reader. From looking at examples and reading book jackets in general, I wanted to include who the author is and provide facts like where they are from, their educational background, and other significant works and/or achievements. For Nathaniel Hawthorne, this information is incredibly vital to the story and orients the reader to the period as it has historical significance. For instance, making sure to incorporate that Hawthorne was born in Salem and has a direct family lineage to the Salem Witch Trails of the 1690s was essential contextualization as the setting of “Young Goodman Brown” is in 1600s Salem. Another factor that I made sure to include is the geographical location Hawthorne lived in and was influenced by, New England, as well as the significance of that due to his achievements being part of the literary era of the American Renaissance. Hawthorne’s other notable works are also listed in the short introduction – famous among them being The Scarlet Letter, which also looks to redefine and work through American colonial pre-history and the Puritan faith, similar to “Young Goodman Brown.” Finally, adding a concluding thought that gives the reader some more significant sense of achievement in Hawthorne’s work and life as a part of early American literature, I hope, allows the story to carry even more significance. In addition to it working as a powerful historical critique or genre, Hawthorne’s work also highlights an essential theme for our class: the avenues literature can take to shape the living cultural history of a particular moment in time and what that allows us to do as contemporary readers to continue making connections with literature in our moment as well.
For the text synopsis portion of the book jacket project, my aim in summing up Hawthorne’s story “Young Goodman Brown” was influenced by my takeaways from having read this story in class and preparing for examinations on it as well as just someone who appreciates the form and craft of a short story like this. I wanted to make sure that the allegorical form of his work was made clear, as it is a vital point in understanding the layers of complex meaning Hawthorne weaves throughout. This gives the readers a bit of a heads-up that there is much more to focus our attention on besides the narrator of Brown leaving his wife Faith for an evening. I also thought pointing to the historical significance of the setting of this story, the Puritan community of Salem during the witch trials era, is helpful context for the understanding of Hawthorne’s critique of the atmosphere that led to such a troubling period in American history. This again harkens back to the American Renaissance theme of looking to the past to make sense of how to improve and redefine their society as contemporary writers of their time. Lastly, as with any short synopsis, I cannot delve into too much detail, but I find it essential to end on a note of Hawthorne’s central critique of Puritan doubt and how obsessed and distrustful that community was toward the potential of sin. Knowing the history of how this community adhered to Calvinsm’s pre-destination doctrine, where only God knew which among them were elected for salvation, Hawthorne’s story can provide a glimpse into the mindsets that allowed for such a hysterical and violent event as the witch trials.
The final aspect of the book jacket project is to provide a few promotional blurbs for Hawthorne’s text from one author that we as a class have read and then at least one other that connects with Hawthorne and the short story. The author I selected within our course syllabus is Mary Rowlandson, who wrote around 150 years before Hawthorne, was a Puritan from Massachusetts, and was an immensely devoted one at that. By selecting Rowlandson, I made a humorous and ironic promotional blurb that purposefully misses the actual critique Hawthorne makes. Rowlandson would find it glaringly obvious that those exaggerated Purtian themes are indeed correct and identify them with her incredible piety and her larger religious community. Another aspect that drew me to Rowlandson is that within her work, A Narrative of the Captivity and Restauration of Mrs. Mary Rowlandson, published in 1682, the very structure of her captivity narrative follows a series of “Removes” as she is taken further into the forest and away from her Puritan community. I imagine that the connection she would feel to Goodman Brown in Hawthorne’s story would be quite strong and hit a personal note as she can weigh in on how disoriented and un-godly the wilderness was perceived through the minds of a strict Calvinist follower. I also felt that incorporating a testament to her writing style within the blurb of quoting the bible was an additional way she might give herself authority and credibility as a devoted Puritan to convey her understanding and significance of Hawthorne’s story.
In selecting my other promotional blurb that doesn’t come from our course texts, I chose the historical figure and great-grandfather of Nathaniel Hawthorne, John Hathorne. Judge Hathorne was one of the leading judges in the Salem Witch trials and a prominent judicial leader in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Adding to this humorous side of the blurbs, I found it to be a great avenue to highlight how Hawthorne was rumored to have changed the spelling of his name to avoid connection with this horrific historical event. Additionally, I know from previous courses that Judge Hathrone was a notoriously egotistical and resolute man who I envisioned would take this story at its literal, factual, very legal-minded level. Like Rowlandson, this promotional aspect can miss Hawthorne’s entire critique of the Puritan faith; as we know, this was their obsession with doubting everyone around them as potential sinners. Instead, Judge Hathorne can uphold its significance as a testament to how right Hawthorne perceived the duty of Purtians to adhere to that strict Calvinist doctrine way of life. Where Goodman Brown’s misery and very outlook on life skewed with obsessive suspicion is Hawthorne’s critique, I felt that Judge Hathorne would find this an accurate exemplar of how a Puritan’s outlook on life should be.
