The minister's black veil : the problem of leadership in America
著者（英） Noriaki Nakai
journal or
publication title
Doshisha literature
number 28
page range 41‑47
year 1976‑11‑22
権利（英） English Literary Society of Doshisha University
URL http://doi.org/10.14988/pa.2017.0000016496
"The Minister's Black Veil":
Problem of Leadership in America
NORIAKI NAKAI
There is something in the American temperament which wishes to resist all actual social institutions, and this temperament has been clearly reflected in American Fiction; in one way or another heroes and heroines in American Fiction are rebels. Rester Prynne, Ruckle- berry Finn, and Lambert Strether, among others, are dissatisfied with their societies, because in these societies as they are, they cannot have the sense of living which they want to have. Although they want to have a surer sense of being, their societies cannot grant it to them. Rence their eagerness to go beyond their societies. Rester feels as if she could live an entirely different and happy life once she and Dimmesdale were in Europe. Ruck is sick of the society to which he belongs; he feels "all cramped up" there. Experiences in Europe seem to give Strether opportunities in which he can liberate himself from his old identity in Woollett, Massachusetts. As A. N.
Kaul has pointed out, we see in nineteenth-century American novel- ists "a critical attitude toward the actual society of the time on the one hand and a constant preoccupation with ideal community life on the other." 1
I would like to point out 1ll this short paper, however, that Rawthorne is often very successful when he depicts the dehumanizing effect upon the idealists of their efforts to go beyond the aCtual society and establish an ideal community. The idealists begin to feel keenly
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the gap between themselves and the common people who have only limited awareness of being. They become isolated figures among the crowd of the community. A typical example of these idealists is . Mr. Hooper of "The Minister's Black Veil." My argument is that in "The Minister's Black Veil: A Parable" Havvthorne tries to depict the failure of communication between an idealistic leader and the mass of a society.
We must first note that he is an idealist in the sense that he strives to inculcate a deeper awareness of secret sin among his pari- shioners. In his ideal community people would live with full aware- ness of sin; there would be no secret sin there. They would live fully and willingly exposed to God. But now before his eyes live his unawakened people in the actual society.
When Mr. Hooper decides to wear the black veil, his decision is a symbolic act intended for the parishioners' good: " 'If I hide my face for sorrow, there is cause enough,' he merely replied; 'and if I cover it for secret sin, what mortal might not do the same?'" 2
Behind his decision to wear the veil is hidden the minister's aware- ness; the veil is his language expressing this awareness. He wears the black veil for its conspicuous visibility, its capacity as an easily understandable-understandable, that is to say, to the public-symbol of "secret sin." Because of its secrecy and invisibility, the "secret sin" cannot be comprehensible very easily to the ordinary public with their limited awareness. Everyone sins secretly but many people are not aware of the fact. We must remember the following words:
"Mr. Hooper had the reputation of a good preacher, but not an ener- getic one: he strove to win his people heavenward by mild, persuasive influences, rather than to drive them thither by the thunders of the Word" (P. 185). His expressive ability by means of words is not
sufficient for his wish "to WIll his people heavenward." His adopt- ing the conspicuous veil derives from his ardent wish to make up for his deficiency in expressive power in words. By means of the conspicuous veil he wants to express what he cannot preach well in words. For the minister the veil becomes a part of his language, and it turns out successfully an eloquent language for S01ne of the parishioners. With the he,lp of the mysterious veil "he became a man of awful power over souls that were in agony for sin" (p. 194).
It is clear that Mr. Hooper becomes an effective clergyman be- cause of the veil, but even the dying sinners, who "would not yield their breath till he" appears, shudder "at the veiled face so near their own" (P. 194). The veil expresses something whi.ch the mini- ster wants to show' to the public, but the trouble with it is that peo- ple do not understand that "something." 3 (My suggestion above of a possible way of interpreting the veil was not meant to present its new interpretation. I only tried to show the illustrative nature of the veil from the side of the minister.)
Since what the veil symbolizes is not so important in the story as how the public take it, we must here discuss the black veil in terms of its effect upon the parishioners. For the parishioners seeing the veil, it works against the minister's intention; the veil does not illustrate to the ordinary public what the minister wants to convey.
The quality of opaqueness of the black veil comes foremost and in- dicates to them the gap between them and the minister. They cannot see him through the black veil- this fact seems to mean to them that they cannot understand him. It is a paradox that his wish to be a good mediator between God and the people prevents him from communicating with his fellow men: "All through life that piece of crape had hung between him and the world: it had separated
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him from cheerful brotherhood and woman's love, and kept him III
that saddest of all prisons, his own heart" (p. 195).
The most pathetic case of his loss of communication with his fellow men can be seen in his relationship with his fiancee. At first the minister's black veil is "but a double fold of crape" (p. 191) for her, because she firmly believes that she knows him. But when all her entreaties are rejected by him, she suddenly becomes aware of the gap between them:
And with this gentle, but unconquerable obstinacy did he resist all her entreaties. At length Elizabeth sat silent. For a few moments she appeared lost in thought, considering, probably what new methods might be tried to withdraw her lover from so dark a fantasy, which, if it had no other meaning, was perhaps a symptom of mental disease. Though of a firmer character than his own, the tears rolled down her cheeks. But, in an instant, as it were, a new feeling took the place of sorrow: her eyes were fixed insensibly on the black veil, when, like a sudden twilight in the air, its terrors fell around her. She arose, and stood trembling before him. (p. 192)
Hawthorne often depicts an insurmountable gap between man and man, that is, the difference in awareness. The preceding quotation is one of the most impressive scenes of the shock of recognition of this gap that Hawthorne has incorporated in his works. (Another moving scene of the same kind appears in Chapter XXII of The Scarlet Letter where Hester perceives the gap between Dimmesdale and herself.) The terror she feels here is that the man behind the veil might not be her lover. The veil changes into a symbol of something which separates her from her lover. The veil makes her aware that he is not the Mr. Hooper that she used to think she knew him to
be. She does not know him now because he becomes a stranger to her. It makes such a strong impact on her that she will not come to see him until she attends him at the end.
The gap definitely remains between those who are unconsciously contented with their limited awareness of being, and those who try to transcend the awareness of the ordinary and have a deeper sense of existence. Those who are idealistic and seek are sometimes suf- ferers in the sense that they must feel an acute sense of isolation.
Mr. Hooper says, "o! you know now how lonely I am, and how frightened, to be alone behind my black veil" (p. 192). They are different from the ordinary public and the quality of difference some- times makes them grotesque figures in the eyes of the ordinary. The parishioners do not hate the minister but fear the unfathomable Hooper; he is "a bugbear" (P. 193) among them. Elizabeth does come to him at the end, but, sin~e the two lovers meet again only after thirty or forty years of absence, and that at his deathbed, their relationship could hardly be called a happy one with mutually sym- pathetic understanding.
vVe must note that the story IS actually told neither from the side of the minister nor that of the public; Hawthorne is outside both and observes their relationship. His concern is their relationship, that is, the problem of meeting between a leader and the common people in an early American society. (Governor Belcher referred to in this story came into office in 1729.) Mr. Hooper as a public leader delivered an election sermon and "wrought so deep an impression, that the legislative measures of that year were characterized by all the gloom and piety of our earliest ancestral sway" (p. 194). 'Vhat is meant here by the word "earliest" is probably the same age where
"religion and law were almost identical" (Chapter II of The Scarlet
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Letter) and ministers were regarded as influential public leaders. Do the minister and his parishioners meet in their "meeting-house?" If not, why not? These are some of the questions that Hawthorne poses in this story.
Hawthorne depicts various responses of the people to the veil.
They cannot understand what Mr. Hooper intends by means of his veil. "Something must surely be amiss with Mr. Hooper's intellects"
(p. 187), says the physician of the village. The physician is not competent enough to deal with the mind and heart of men. eWe must recognize that in many of Hawthorne's works physicians have a very limited and sometimes distorted awareness of problems of existence. Chillingworth is another example.)
Idealism on the one side and lack of understanding on the other -the leaders are not persuasive; the people cannot understand their leaders. The difficulty of meeting / between the two causes a very dangerous situation for a country at an early stage of its foundation.
(Hawthorne published this story in 1836.) From its incipiency demo- cratic America yearned for persuasive leaders. Full communication between leaders and the people was needed for the founding of the new country. What America needed most were leaders who could propagate ideals to the public in understandable ways. Mr. Hooper is not qualified as a good leader in that he ignores completely how the mass would take the veil. In the way that Hawthorne describes the failure of communication we find his recognition and fear of the danger caused by such failures at a critical time of the founding of America. "The Minister's Black Veil" is a story in which Haw- thorne expresses, subtly but assuredly, his concern in a problem in American History, leadership in the United States.
47 Notes
1. The American Vision: Actual and Ideal Society in Nineteenth.Century Fiction (New Haven: Yale University Press), p. 43.
2. Nathaniel Hawthorne, "The Minister's Black Veil: A Parable," Nathaniel Hawthorne: Selected Tales and Sketches, ed. Hyatt H. Waggoner (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970), pp. 191-92. All the succeeding page references to this story indicated in parentheses will be to this edition.
3. The symbol was not unfathomable in the case of another clergyman in Hawthorne's note to the story; the symbol had a definite and understandable source there.
