The Literary Contexts of "My Kinsman, Major Molineux"

Abstract

[304] Alexander W. Allison is an associate professor of English at the University of Michigan. Since this particular topic has not been treated before and I do not found much of my over-all view of the story on earlier interpretations, I can perhaps most aptly take cognizance of previous scholarship in a footnote. It is noticed in many earlier readings that Robin is an innocent who in the course of his adventure comes to a knowledge of evil. This view becomes predominant in an essay by Seymour L. Gross 'My Kinsman, Major Molineux': History as Moral Adventure, NCF, XII [1957], 97-109). Arthur T. Broes later notices specifically the transportation of Robin as if to Dante's Hell and comments on the sinfulness of the inhabitants of the town (Journey into Moral Darkness: 'My Kinsman, Major Molineux' as Allegory, NCF, XIX [1964], 171-184). I am happy to fall in behind these scholars in a hopefully growing assembly whom one might call the moral interpreters of Molineux. Most interpretations remain either chiefly psychological, envisaging Robin as encountering one or more images of his father, or chiefly historical, envisaging him as typifying in some manner the rebellious American colonies. psychological interpretations all derive ultimately from an observation of Malcolm Cowley's: namely, that Robin achieves manhood through searching for a spiritual father and finding that the object of his search is an impostor (The Portable Hawthorne [New York, 1948], p. 28). In a specifically Freudian view, Robin frees himself from paternal domination by expressing his community with a mob which is rebelling against a surrogate father (Samuel Lessing, The Image of the Father: A Reading of 'My Kinsman, Major Molineux' and 'I Want to Know Why,' PR, XXII [1955], 372-390). These readings are variously augmented or qualified by Hyatt H. Waggoner (Hawthorne: A Critical Study [Cambridge, Mass., 1955]); Roy R. Male (Hawthorne's Tragic Vision [Austin, Texas, 1957]); Roy Harvey Pearce (Robin Molineux on the Analyst's Couch: A Note on the Limits of Psychoanalytic Criticism, I [1959], 83-90); Daniel G. Hoffman (Yankee Bumpkin and Scapegoat King, SR, LXIX [1961], 48-60); and Paul Louis (A Psychoanalytic Reading of Hawthorne's 'Major Molineux': Father Manque and the Protege Manque, Am. Imago, XVIII [1961], 279-288). Five different