In looking at Mather: On Witchcraft and Hawthorne's Young Goodman Brown I keep thinking of the concept of the psychology of evil. What would it mean to believe in a Devil embodied, like Hawthorne describes; one who is, "bearing a considerable resemblance to him" as if they "might have been taken for father and son". Imagine walking through the forest with the Devil, put yourself in Goodman Brown's shoes. How terrifying it must have been to see the Devil as a likeness to himself, to stare into the eyes of evil and think this man could be my father.
This was an time period of subjective realities. A place where people feared evil lurking around every corner. Where evil could be conniving and convincing ever so close, but distant.
The subject of psychology also bring me to the idea of somatic-ally induced pain, emotion or instability. To have somatic-ally induced pain to have a physical symptom that is created by the emotion connected to it. We have all been really sad or upset about something and felt a pain in our stomach or had a stomach ache. This is exactly the phenomena I am describing. Another example of this many of us have felt or feel on a daily basis is fear, when you are truly afraid of something you being to experience physical symptoms as your nervous system becomes engaged in the fear along with your psyche. This is a fascinating detail when considering the fact that "Soma" means body and the Puritans were very focused on the mental and moral control over the body. Interesting when considering the fear that these people must have felt on a daily basis, never knowing where evil might be. Who might have the "disease" constantly in question, who is the afflicted one?
This brings me to my next idea related to psychology and that is based in relational aggression. So many lines could be crossed, so many boundaries were set up in the minds and in the lives of the Puritans. Relationship stress could be found in every relationship as illustrated by both Mather and Hawthorne, it could be seen in the husband wife relationship, the mother child relationship, sibling relationships even relationships with neighbors and friends. How could any one develop trust in this time of psychological pandemic? How could any one person depend on another without fear of deception?
Yes, wow, it would be super creepy to imagine yourself fathered by evil. Which is pretty much the anxiety that haunted Hawthorne when we considered his own family history. Good connection. And yeah, trust would be hard in this social context, and yet you would be yearning for trust and safety too. Big paradox. Nice work. Blog on.
ReplyDeleteI am playing around with the idea of 'who is the afflicted one' in my head a lot since we have discussed texts concerning the Salem Witch Trials in class. I find it very interesting about the somatic-ally, fear inducing pain. It really makes you sympathize with the people of Salem. They were absolutely petrified to find out if they were the evil ones or if it was someone else. Who would it be? It reminds me a little of the Holocaust - fend for yourself and always save yourself first. Scary!
ReplyDeleteVery interesting. I too wondered about how one could learn to trust anyone in a society where even family members are betraying each other. However, let's say that children are asked to testify against their accused mother as to whether or not they are a witch. Perhaps the mother would want her children to go along with the accusations and say that she is a witch because it could be that if they don't they too could be accused of witchcraft... Something to think about.
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