Hawthorne should have been an Aquarius

I have no clue as to what is wrong with me but I really dig all of these morbid and dark readings. Maybe it has something to do with the decade and a half of consecutive Bible classes I was exposed to and I just don't want to read about salvation anymore. I hope that doesn't make me evil...





Here's what you get when you go to google images and type in 'The Mister's Black Veil." Spooky.
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The definition that the ever helpful resource wikipedia has given me for Dark Romanticism refers to the pessimistic side of nature. This aspect of this genre jumps out in Hawthorne's short story 'The Minister's Black Veil' several times but there is a direct connection between the dark elements of nature and the Minister himself. I found a specific relationship to the minister and the horizon, the sky and its activity or I guess more specifically the element of air. (From here on out this blog will be me reading whatever the hell I want to into Hawthorne's work, because we as readers are allowed to do that and I'm taking advantage of it.)

Upon first introduction to the Minister's new attire his congregation is quite clearly very uncomfortable and "more than one woman of delicate nerves was forced to leave the meeting-house." I kept picking up on allusions to the minister being compared to wind. Hawthorne writes "There was nothing terrible in what Mr. Hooper said; at least, no violence; and yet, with every tremor of his melancholy voice, the hearers quaked." With this, I found myself envisioning a gust of wind passing through an area congested with trees and the leavings shaking in response. Shortly after the previous passage NH writes "So sensible were the audience of some unwonted attribute in their minister, that they longed for a breath of wind to blow aside the veil, almost believing that a stranger's visage would be discovered, through the form, gesture, and voice were those of Mr. Hooper." Again, with that 'breath of wind' the element of air is brought up.

It's made clear that Minister Hooper was not one to indulge his congregation with outbursts of visible emotion, even at weddings we learn that not much more that a "sympathetic smile" was seen. While officiating the young couple's wedding Mr. Hooper shows up again with "the same horrible black veil" and "such was its immediate effect on the guests, that a cloud seemed to have rolled duskily from beneath the black crape, and dimmed the light of the candles." Here nature again is personified through Mr. Hooper and the effect on the spectators of the wedding. Just as a cloud blocks the sun, Mr. Hooper's veil dampens the high spirits of the congregation.

Another reference to the sky is when Elizabeth is trying to convince Hooper to removing the veil and he replies "Know, then, this veil is a type and a symbol, and I am bound to wear it ever, both in light and darkness, in solitude and before the gaze of multitudes, and as with strangers, so with my familiar friends. No mortal eye will see it withdrawn. This dismal shade must separate me from the world; even you, Elizabeth, can never come behind it!" The idea of light and dark references sunrise and sunset, night and day and then "the dismal shade" is a type of eclipse, in his case the veil is causing him to receive negative judgement.

These airy characteristics mentioned throughout the 'black veil' were intriguing to me. Just as you can't see the wind itself only the outcome, the audience was unable to see the minister's emotions since he was shielded with the veil, only the church's emotional response to his bizarre costume were seen. One of my ridiculous zodiac books says "The element of air masks an intensely emotional nature." It was kind of interesting to read that after discovering the airy nature of the minister who does in fact wear a 'mask.'

Can we just keep reading stuff like this the rest of the semester?