The Logic of Compulsion in “Roger Malvin's Burial”

Abstract

In the proliferation of Hawthorne criticism over the past decade every current literary-theory or methodology has had a say. A good deal of this criticism, nevertheless, has shared an assumption that the way to see to the bottom of Hawthorne is to analyze his symbolism or his recurrent motifs. Though there have been many careful studies of separate plots, and though some critics have preferred to approach Hawthorne by way of his biography or his explicit ideas, more usually he is revealed to us in terms of such symbolic categories as “the light and the dark,” “the power of blackness,” the Devil archetype, or the myth of man's fall. This kind of criticism can be fruitful, especially if, as in Hyatt Waggoner's case, a sense of Hawthorne's eclecticism and irony is allowed to temper the zealous pursuit of symbolic consistency. Yet there is other evidence to suggest that the exegesis of verbal patterns can subserve and disguise a critical hobbyhorse; some of the more dogmatic moral and theological readings have been couched as mere explications of Hawthorne's symbols. The rich suggestiveness of Hawthorne's language tempts the critic to ignore what is literally occurring in the plot, to iron out possible uncertainties of meaning or purpose, and to minimize the great distance separating Hawthorne from the tradition of pure didactic allegory. Such, I feel, are the shortcomings of Roy R. Male's Hawthorne's Tragic Vision, which, by analyzing only those symbols that can bear Biblical or sacramental glossing, succeeds in blending Hawthorne into a background of Christian moralism.