The Pragmatist Vision of Religious Experience in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown”
Review of International American Studies June 30, 2026 DOI: 10.31261/rias.18767 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that Hawthorne can be read as a proto-pragmatist whose story "Young Goodman Brown" cares less about whether Brown's vision was real than about its outcomes for Brown's life, an approach the author says illuminates the narrator's final comment that the vision's truth cannot be decided. |
Abstract
“Young Goodman Brown” has been read, among others, as Hawthorne’s commentary on Puritan obsession with sin, as an exploration of the internal demons of the human psyche, or as an allegory of losing one’s faith. Moreover, since the story does not settle whether Brown is right about his neighbors’ hypocrisy, scholars tend to either argue in favor of the reality of Goodman Brown’s vision or see in it a dangerous illusion. In my paper, I look at Hawthorne’s short story through the prism of William James’s philosophy of pragmatism in general, and his “Varieties of Religious Experience” in particular, which allows me to understand better the narrator’s final comment about the impossibility to decide whether Brown’s vision was true or not. I treat here Hawthorne as a proto-pragmatist, who, describing Brown’s religious experience, is more interested in its outcomes for the protagonist’s life than its origin.