Hawthorne’s allegorical short stories were, in some ways, the ancestors of some of the grimmer Twilight Zone episodes. This collection includes stories written between 1832 and 1851, and includes the most famous ones, “Young Goodman Brown” , “Ethan Brand”, “Rappaccini’s Daughter”, and “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment”. All fine stories, but the one that tickled my fancy was the less well known “The Maypole of Merry Mount”. It’s a sort of 1836 version of The Wicker Man, except that the Puritans, not the Pagans, triumph. It is all the more interesting because Hawthorne seems to have been well aware of things that would not be part of common knowledge until James Frazer published The Golden Bough.
In this peculiar story, it is explained that one village in New England was not settled by the usual grim Puritans, but by men who “imagined a wild philosophy of pleasure, and came thither to act out their daydream.”
This sets the stage for a conflict that has played out in American culture, apparently, since the 17th century, when this story is set.:
All the hereditary pastimes of Old England were transplanted hither. The King of Christmas was duly crowned, and the Lord of Misrule bore potent sway. On the Eve of St. John, they felled whole acres of the forest to make bonfires, and danced by the blaze all night, crowned with garlands, and throwing flowers into the flame. At harvest time, though their crop was of the smallest, they made an image with the sheaves of Indian corn, and wreathed it with autumnal garlands, and bore it home triumphantly. But what chiefly characterized the colonists of Merry Mount was their veneration for the Maypole. It has made their true history a poet’s tale. Spring decked the hallowed emblem with young blossoms and fresh green boughs; summer brought roses of deepest blush, and the perfected foliage of the forest; autumn enriched it with that red and yellow gorgeousness which converts each wildwood leaf into a painted flower; and winter silvered it with sleet, and hung it round with icicles, til it flashed in the cold sunshine, itself a frozen sunbeam. Thus each alternate season did homage to the Maypole, and paid it a tribute of its own richest splendor. Its votaries danced round it, once, at least, in every month; sometimes they called it their religion, or their altar; but always, it was the banner staff of Merry Mount.
Unfortunately, there were men in the new world of sterner faith than these Maypole worshipers. Not far from Merry Mount was a settlement of Puritans, most dismal wretches, who said their prayers before daylight, and then wrought in the forest or the cornfield till evening made it prayer time again. Their weapons were always at hand to shoot down the straggling savage. When they met in conclave, it was never to keep up the old English mirth, but to hear sermons three hours long, or to proclaim bounties on the heads of wolves and the scalps of Indians. Their festivals were fast days, and their chief pastime the singing of psalms. Woe to the youth or maiden who did but dream of a dance! The selectman nodded to the constable; and there sat the light-heeled reprobate in the stocks; or if he danced, it was round the whipping post, which might be termed the Puritan Maypole.
The Puritans mount a violent assault on Pagan Merry Mount, while the revellers are dancing around the Maypole, dressed in animal costumes. Hawthorne’s descriptive power is marvelous. At the center of the story stand two beautiful youths, the nuptial King and Queen of the May, “But never had their youthful beauty seemed so pure as when its glow was chastened by adversity.” They melt the hearts of even the sternest Puritan, Endicott, who spares them death.
Who can read this fable and not see in it the bipolar madness of North American society? Hawthorne’s story was, it seems, based loosely on an actual incident in New England history, Endicott was a real person, and the maypole existed, but what exactly happened, I cannot say. All Hawthorne’s allegories were crafted to carefully balance the mundane and the fantastic, and to erase the barrier between life and dreams. He was simultaneously as fantasmagoric as Poe, and a meticulously observant realist.
There is, by the way, a fine musical treatment of the story by the composer Howard Hanson. His opera Merry Mount premiered in 1934. Though it was popular in its time, it never remained in the standard repertoire. A pleasant suite from the opera gets fairly regular play.
contents:
16121. (Nathaniel Hawthorne) Roger Malvin’s Burial [story]
16122. (Nathaniel Hawthorne) My Kinsman, Major Molineux [story]
16123. (Nathaniel Hawthorne) The Wives of the Dead [story]
16124. (Nathaniel Hawthorne) The Gray Companion [atory]
16125. (Nathaniel Hawthorne) Wakefield [story]
16126. (Nathaniel Hawthorne) The Ambitious Guest [story]
16127. (Nathaniel Hawthorne) Young Goodman Brown [story]
16128. (Nathaniel Hawthorne) The Minister’s Black Veil [story]
16129. (Nathaniel Hawthorne) The Maypole of Merry Mount [story]
16130. (Nathaniel Hawthorne) The Great Carbunkle [story]
16131. (Nathaniel Hawthorne) Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment [story]
16132. (Nathaniel Hawthorne) Lady Eleanore’s Mantle [story]
16133. (Nathaniel Hawthorne) Egotism, or, The Bosom Serpent [story]
16134. (Nathaniel Hawthorne) The Celestial Railroad [story]
16135. (Nathaniel Hawthorne) The Birthmark [story]
16136. [2] (Nathaniel Hawthorne) Rappaccini’s Daughter [story]
16137. (Nathaniel Hawthorne) The Snow Image: A Childish Miracle [story]
16138. (Nathaniel Hawthorne) Ethan Brand [story]
16139. (R. P. Blackmur) Afterword [article]
0 Comments.