SWITCHING PERSPECTIVES
Zoë Wallace
Head of Political and Global Impacts
Co-Editor-in-Chief
Secretary and Outreach Officer
In English class, we were given an assignment to rewrite one of the texts we had read for class from the perspective of a different character. For my paper, I rewrote the short story “Young Goodman Brown” from the perspective of Goodman Brown’s wife, Faith. The dialogue from the book remains the same, as do the core events. If you have not yet read the original story, I would encourage you to do so before reading my rendition, but it may be appreciated on its own with credit given to the original. I had fun writing this story and was encouraged to think outside the box, so I hope you enjoy reading!
Young Goodman Brown from the Perspective of Faith
Faith, with pink ribbons dangling from her hair, thrust her head out into the Salem Village street without a second thought. She did not care if the neighbors saw her open and public affection for her husband. She was full of the spirit of young love. She exchanged a parting kiss with her husband, and attempted to convince him to stay with her instead of journeying through the night. She had been worried sick about him for the past few days because he would not tell her where he was planning to travel, and kept insisting that he must leave alone. Though Faith would never doubt her husband’s faithfulness, she was worried that the devil may try to sink his talons into her wonderful, God-fearing husband. He always had such good intentions, but was also far too trusting.
Faith had always told him with amusement that she worried he would mistake the devil for a saint one day. She never revealed to him that these jokes were grounded in deep fears. Horrible dreams had been plaguing her for nights on end. Each dream consisted of the devil tempting Faith to give her soul to him. In the most recent dream, the devil appeared to her in a strange form, one that was about fifty years old and bore a considerable resemblance to Goodman Brown. They might have been taken for father and son. The devil himself told her that he had corrupted her husband, but she would not believe his words or lose faith in Goodman Brown. She knew the devil to be a skillful deceiver.
"Dearest heart," whispered she, hoping to convince him to stay and putting her lips close to his ear, "pr'y thee, put off your journey until sunrise, and sleep in your own bed to-night.” She thought of his good heart, and used the pitiful tactic of guilt to imprison him in the house. “A lone woman is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts, that she's afeard of herself, sometimes. Pray, tarry with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in the year!"
"My love and my Faith," replied young Goodman Brown, to her dismay, "of all nights in the year, this one night must I tarry away from thee. My journey, as thou callest it, forth and back again, must needs be done 'twixt now and sunrise.” Her heart sunk in defeat. “What, my sweet, pretty wife, dost thou doubt me already, and we but three months married!"
At his question of her trust in him, she was taken aback and began to question her own intentions. She knew that her husband was a good man, and she chastised herself for the mere thought that he could be taken in by the devil. What kind of woman was she to doubt her own husband? He never missed a day of church, worked hard every day of the week, and always treated her well. She looked back fondly on the day they first met, when she was only five and he was twelve. She was playing a children’s game with two other girls, when three boys playing a game of tag kicked dirt up in her face. She cried out loudly, lamenting the dirtied pink ribbons in her hair. Goodman Brown saw her crying and wiped the dirt from her eyes. He helped her wash her pink ribbons in a bucket next to the well, then brought her to her mother. Faith would never forget that day, and she was convinced she was the luckiest woman in the colonies to be married to Goodman Brown. With this in mind, she admitted defeat in her quest to keep her husband at home.
"Then God bless you!" said Faith, feeling her pink ribbons fluttering around her face in the mellow breeze, "and may you find all well, when you come back." She prayed this would be true.
"Amen!" cried Goodman Brown. "Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no harm will come to thee." As always, Goodman Brown had a sensible solution to her problem, and she began to feel safe once again. He had successfully convinced her that everything would turn out well. Though no one on Earth was perfectly holy, she had no doubt in her mind that he was as close to the Lord as the minister of the village.
So they parted; and the young woman peered through the open front door as the young man pursued his way, until, being about to turn the corner by the meeting-house, Faith saw him look back at her. She was deep in thought, serious in spite of her pink ribbons.
When she could see him no longer, she stepped back into her husband’s house and shut the door lightly, setting the lock with vain hopes of keeping the devil out. She considered removing the lock for a brief moment, foolish thoughts of martyrdom flowing through her mind. She wondered if she should let the devil take her so that he would cease his pursuance of her husband. She knew that if the devil took her, he would not hesitate to take her husband as well, so she thought better of it and began to tidy up the kitchen.
She lay awake in bed that night, worried sick for her husband, until sleep finally overtook her. In her dream, she was running frantically through the forest. She did not know where she was going, only that she must reach Goodman Brown to save him from the devil. She uttered lamentations with an uncertain sorrow, entreating the devil to release her husband at the cost of her own life. She would give everything she had to save him. She could not tell if it was the wind rushing in her ears or the whispers of an unseen multitude that seemed to encourage her onward. She ran faster, for fear that the voices she heard came from wretches in the wilderness. The voices grew louder, and she could almost see shadowy shapes forming in the trees. As she ran, a single pink ribbon caught in a low-hanging branch and flew from her long brown hair. She spun around, irrationally hoping to retrieve it, but it was nowhere to be found. The shadows reached menacingly toward her, and she continued the frantic race for her husband. As the voices reached a crescendo, her foot caught on a wild root and she plummeted, screaming, to the soft earth. As the world grew dark around her, she heard the voices begin to laugh.
She was only awake for a brief moment before sleep overtook her once again. She was in the forest, laying in the same place she had just fallen.
As she stood up, dusting off her dirtied dress, she heard voices singing far away. Though she was comforted to know that she was not all alone in the woods, there was something inhuman about the awful harmonies. She knew the tune; the hymn was one she had heard many times in the meeting-house. As the verse began to die away, she ran towards the voices, hoping to find the source. The voices grew louder and louder as the chorus went on, and she knew the end of the song was near. She pressed her hands to her ears to block out the final notes as she ran.
Then there was silence. She saw a distant light up ahead, in between the trees. She considered hiding behind a large tree, but something drew her slowly forward. As the light became brighter, she realized the source: four pine trees blazed with fire, though their stems remained untouched. An altar of some sort, made from a crude rock, rose up in the center of the open space. She took her place in the crowd of ghosts, as if an unseen force was pulling her forward.
Looking around, she began to cry openly. Those who she had known her entire life to be devout and holy stood unabashedly next to those who had fallen to their vices and committed the most heinous of crimes. Looking to her left, the face of her childhood friend, Constance Ashael, seemed to shift in and out of the shadows. The most devout church-members, including Goody Cloyse-- who Faith remembered had taught her husband his catechism-- had proved to be no more than toys of the devil. She knew in her heart that this was a wicked meeting, and that the Lord was weeping with her.
As she weeped, the hymn began once again. This time, the lyrics consisted of all of the sinful acts known to man and beast, and Faith knew that she would never sleep soundly again. The mournful tone and rotten lyrics made her feel faint, and she could barely look at those around her. The voices rose and fell with verse after verse, and a sound of utter corruption rose through the air as if welcoming the master of all sins. Faith started as the flaming pines grew brighter and the rock in the center formed an arch of fire. A man was standing at the altar, impiously uniting the congregation.
"Bring forth the converts!" someone yelled. The echoes must have been heard by all of the beasts in the wild forest.
Faith was relatively in the shadows, as she had only stepped from the forest into the back of the congregation. She could see a slight disturbance on the other side of the clearing, as members shifted to allow a latecomer to take his place. He seemed familiar in the way he walked, but before Faith could process what she had seen, she was seized from the back by Goody Cloyse and led forward to the altar. A veil was draped from her head by a nasty hag who took hold of her other arm. From the other side of the clearing, she saw that the latecomer was being led towards the altar as well. Filled with fear, Faith turned all focus to the threatening figure above them.
They stood beneath the flaming arch as the devil spoke: "Welcome, my children, to the communion of your race! Ye have found, thus young, your nature and your destiny. My children, look behind you!"
Turning towards the congregation, she saw the faces of the damned illuminated by flames. Sick smiles could be seen on every face.
"There," the devil continued, "are all whom ye have reverenced from youth. Ye deemed them holier than yourselves, and shrank from your own sin, contrasting it with their lives of righteousness, and prayerful aspirations heavenward. Yet, here are they all, in my worshipping assembly! This night it shall be granted you to know their secret deeds; how hoary-bearded elders of the church have whispered wanton words to the young maids of their households; how many a woman, eager for widow's weeds, has given her husband a drink at bed-time, and let him sleep his last sleep in her bosom; how beardless youth have made haste to inherit their father's wealth; and how fair damsels-- blush not, sweet ones--have dug little graves in the garden, and bidden me, the sole guest, to an infant's funeral. By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin, ye shall scent out all the places--whether in church, bed-chamber, street, field, or forest--where crime has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood- spot. Far more than this! It shall be yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the deep mystery of sin, the fountain of all wicked arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies more evil impulses than human power--than my power at its utmost!--can make manifest in deeds. And now, my children, look upon each other."
Feeling faint again, Faith turned to face the mysterious man beside her. She knew, even before she met his light brown eyes, that her husband would be looking back at her. Trembling, she wished the flames would be extinguished so she could suffer alone in the dark. She desperately hoped to plead with the devil to release her husband from his grasp; she knew he was good beyond measure. She could not do so, however, as the pull of the devil was so strong she could barely open her mouth to speak.
"Lo! there ye stand, my children," said the figure. His voice was horrible. "Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream! Now are ye undeceived! Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome, again, my children, to the communion of your race!"
"Welcome!" responded the worshippers, with perverted triumph at the couple’s fall from grace.
Faith was not yet defeated. She refused to believe in the lies of the devil and in the wickedness of all those she once considered virtuous. She hoped to God that her husband had the same will to resist. A hollow in the rock was filled with a deep red substance, and the figure above them dipped his hand in to prepare a sinful baptism. Faith looked at her husband one last time, desperately hoping to preserve her honest and incorruptible view of him before they were both delivered to evil. She was sure they would soon know only sin and suffering.
"Faith! Faith!" cried her husband. The despair in his voice almost broke her spirit. "Look up to Heaven, and resist the Wicked One!"
Faith obeyed.
Suddenly, she awoke in her bed. She resolved to never tell her husband of her horrible dream, and she refused to believe that it had been real. She waited eagerly for her husband to return home, because she knew he always had a practical answer to every problem. Spying him passing the meeting-house, Faith threw open the door to their house, her ribbons fluttering wildly, and skipped along the street to meet him. She was overjoyed, and almost kissed him in front of the whole neighborhood. She was stopped short by a look of unsmiling severity on her husband’s face. He passed by her without a single word and continued on to their now-unhappy home.
Had Goodman Brown seen something in the woods? Had the devil tempted him and won? To make Goodman Brown lose faith in Faith herself, the devil must have shown him something horrible beyond measure.
Whatever the case, he was changed for good. He no longer listened when the congregation sang holy psalms and he trembled in fear when the minister spoke with his hand upon the Holy Book. He became distrustful, unloving, and cynical. Sometimes, Faith would wake at night to see her husband staring at her fearfully. He never kissed her from that day on and often turned away from her during their nightly prayer. Many years later, Faith led her children and grandchildren to pay their respects to her husband’s dreary grave. The stone was marked angrily with verses from Romans 1:18-32 per his final request.
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