Preparing Hardy for Affect, or dressing Eustacia Vye for her readers.

Nick Harris. 12 18 2025

The point of my studies is not merely to ramble; with much trepidation I now bring up the concept of affect theory, a tumultuous set of ideas concerning the emotional reactions of the reader as a desired point of validity. I will relate affect to Hardy in further essays, but first I must briefly touch on why affect relates to the other points I embrace, namely the reaction against modernism which Susan Sontag calls “Against Interpretation” and the study of the ethics of literature inherent in the aesthetics of Martha Nussbaum, one which views ethics and artistry as interchangeable in many ways. 

Though emphasizing the individual, affect is more than readers’ interpretation or Death of the Author in favor of the reader. Affect is an examination of how emotions creep up from within the individual, especially in relation to the other, the thing outside the individual that proclaims them different or unique. 

Teachout points out that we do not necessarily have to be view affect as coming from within the individual, as the Freudian concept of affect would argue (Teachout, 13). Rather, affect may originate from the other, and the individual then must deal with accepting it or denying it. This wrestling with affect’s existence becomes the struggle of affect itself. The individual must ask her/himself if the emotional influence exists at all. 

Contemporary affect theory indicates that existence of affect is a determinant of the ethics of literature. On the other hand, modernist structuralism, the idea that structure determines artistic worth, would make the existence of affect superfluous. It may exist, emotions stirred in the reader are even an important outcome, but they are not the determinant of artistic quality – because structure fills that role. The Sontag “Against Interpretation” theory rebels against modernist structuralism by insisting that the reader be free from interpretive models in order to achieve the jouissance of life that reading brings. 

The progression I bring to the front here is one from a reaction against structuralism (“Against Interpretation”) through the ethics of literature (Nussbaum’s Upheavals) and into a theory of affect, a theory that comes from within the individual and from the individual’s struggle with the other. 

In writing my MA Thesis, my purpose was to determine how the gothic is present even in the non-gothic literature of Henry James’ later works. My success in these gothic studies is a matter of debate; I am not convinced of the success of Gothicism arising from ethics -of-literature. But in retrospect, I think what I hit upon was the importance of the progression I just outlined. The reaction against modernism by postmodernists, the path of that thinking to the ethics of literature as a purpose of literature, and the inward-reaching activity of determining ethics leading to an inward activity of determining emotion, and, as Teachout indicates, the question of whether emotion is totally inward in character. 

I like to think of the progression that I articulate as simplistic. But anything that attacks the great mid-century behemoth of structuralist thinking cannot be simplistic, as least seventy-five years of counterargument has proven that argument by postmodernist, post-postmodernists, and now the artificial intelligence community, though the latter is an argument for another day. So readers of the Return of the Native must now prepare the mysterious character of Eustacia Vye to meet the other that those readers characterize. For they bring Eustacia's character to their world in a way far beyond any "death of the author." Eustacia has an effect on the reader that is emotional, "affect"-acious.

Up next, I hope to show, within the confines of the next blogs in this series, how my earlier work with Henry James can now jump over to Hardy, especially his heroes such as Eustacia Vye. Such a reflection can add to the conjecture that affect theory is a natural evolution from ethics-of-literature and from “Against Interpretation,” an evolution that make the importance of literature even more efficacious. 

 

Works Cited 

Nussbaum, Martha C.  "Introduction" Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions. Cambridge Univ. Press, 2001, pp. 1-16.  

Sontag, Susan. “Against Interpretation.” The Susan Sontag Reader edited by Elizabeth Hardwick, New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1984, pp. 95-104.  

Teachout, Woden. “Foreward: Teresa Brennan In Memoriam.” Brennan, Teresa. The Transmission of Affect. Cornell Univ. Press, 2015. vii-xi. 

 

 

 

The Wild Palms as a signifier

I have preferred in the past to call the novel The Wild Palms by William Faulkner by that name – The Wild Palms. Evidence suggests that Faulkner wished for the title to be If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem, since the narrative consists of two stories, one entitled “The Wild Palms” and one entitled “Old Man,” presented in alternating chapters, and Faulkner wanted a collective title encompassing the two (Singal, Daniel J. William Faulkner:  The Making of a Modernist, 240-241). The Biblical reference (Psalm 137: 5-6) directs the reader to a comparison of the right hand to the left, thus invoking comparison of the two stories. But calling the novel by the title of one of the two stories forces the reader to make that comparison without need of a classical reference. Classical references are nice, but in this case the 1939 publishers wanted something with a more direct title, and they inadvertently made the reader do the work of contrasting the stories as they are presented in alternating chapters with “The Wild Palms” having the first and the last chapters.

The matter is not so earth-shattering except that reading is an act between reader and text, and that can be its own type of devastation. If the text forces the reader to make decisions that may be against the author’s intent, that can only be a worthwhile thing in the grand scheme of interpretation. Those who promote author’s intent may disagree, but my worldview has always favored the moment-by-moment pleasure of the text (a Barthes reference that betrays my semiotic propensity.)

In this discussion, though, I mean to show how The Wild Palms in its two-part structure is a needed influence over subsequent stories, such as A.S. Byatt’s Angels & Insects discussed in my last blog.

Such an influence is predicated in the world of film, a world Faulkner was familiar with from his work in Hollywood (see Kawin, Bruce A., Faulkner and Film). But the influence I need to cite here is one of which Faulkner probably had limited knowledge, the French New Wave of the 1950s. The French filmmakers, however, paid Faulkner, and specifically The Wild Palms, a great homage in their beginnings, particularly with early films of Agnes Varda, Jean-Luc Godard, and Jean Truffaut (Neupert, A History of the French New Wave Cinema). Agnes Varda acknowledges Faulkner’s influence in the two-part structure of her early New Wave film (some say the earliest example of French New Wave) La Pointe Courte, 1954 (Neupert, 60), wherein she juxtaposes two stories that seemingly do not overlap except in the setting they take place. Godard and Truffaut in their groundbreaking Breathless, 1960, likewise acknowledge The Wild Palms to the point of having the character played by Jean Seberg carry a paperback copy of the novel as she is walking down the street in her first shot. The viewer notes the film’s narrative as a juxtaposition. A frenzied fast-paced crime story co-exists with a lengthy one room scene in the middle of the film. In this exhausting trial of patience, Seberg’s character and the criminal, played by Jean-Paul Belmondo, have a quiet, introspective look at their dual-natured relationship, realizing how different they are from each other (Neupert, 214-215).

The French New Wave Cinema remains an important milestone in the malleability of Modernism to the counterculture of the 1960s. If we can view this aesthetic of film as a part of a creative reaction to Modernism, if not an entire change in “-isms,” then we can assert that Faulkner’s The Wild Palms had an impact, a directional aesthetic toward a dual fragmentation that shows a unity inherent in the two juxtaposed parts of the artwork.

I know of no other work that creates this impact as effectively as does The Wild Palms. Therefore, when a novelist such as A.S. Byatt whose direct homages appear to come from the naturalism of Hardy and the Victorian fantastic of Dickens coupled with the adventurism of Conrad, creates a work she calls “Two novellas,”  Angels & Insects carries a whole new dimension. This dimension is now Faulknerian, but a neo-modernism that derives from Faulkner’s work. This dimension moves from one type of Modernism to another, if not away from Modernism altogether.

The French New Wave cinema showed us that The Wild Palms is now a signifier, it points the way toward a new way of thinking. Doubles no longer indicate a type of structure; they mean the reflection of two objects (narratives) which would otherwise appear diverse. The reader no longer looks solely in the mirror, though indeed the reader still does that also. But the objects bend and stretch, creating new ways of perceiving a world which otherwise would disintegrate in non-connection.

 

___________

 

Works Cited

Kawin, Bruce A., Faulkner and Film. Frederick Unger Publishing, 1977.

Neupert, A History of the French New Wave Cinema. Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2002.

Singal, Daniel J. William Faulkner:  The Making of a Modernist. Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1997.

 

Notes on AI -- Angels & Insects

Nick Harris

Blog 9/6/2025

 Notes on AI -- Angels & Insects

            Upon returning to A.S. Byatt, my original purpose was to compare her Angels & Insects, a collection of two novellas, with the two-plot structure of William Faulkner’s The Wild Palms. The stories in each book are presented differently, Byatt’s as a series of two novellas told fully in succession and Faulkner’s as a single book with alternating chapters going from one story to the other. But each author presents a paradox of theme between two stories that seemingly have nothing to do with each other, but yet mirror each other in contrasts and paradoxes that the reader must wrestle with on their own. This self-wrestling caused by reading each book has caused my purpose to change; I now view the reading of each book as a separate investigation into the nature of morality. Byatt shows, through Victorian models, the misguided attempts of humans to interconnect the physical world with its colonial and Darwinian harshness and the realm of the transcendental and how it shapes the ethics of the individual. Faulkner shows ethical dilemmas in terms of restrictions and freedom, how those who purposefully reject the terms of society for a more liberating life can find themselves involved in tragedy, while those who suddenly find themselves free can ironically long for the sturdiness of a life filled with restrictions.

            Byatt presents two novellas, “Morpho Eugenia” and “The Conjugal Angel.” “Morpho Eugenia” is printed first and complete, a rushing story told without chapter breaks (though smaller asterisked breaks appear) that deals with the paradox of British colonialism attempting to impose order on a wild, unstable world, while itself shows an underlying inability to conform to its own sense of ethics. The first two paragraphs show a juxtaposition of aristocratic propriety and the wildness of the jungle by introducing the figure of a returning world adventurer as he enters a proper British ballroom dance by invitation of an elegant hostess (Angels & Insects, 3). Immediately, and continually thereafter, Adamson, the adventurer, recognizes this juxtaposition: “Nothing he did ow seemed to happen without this double vision, of things seen and done otherwise, in another world” (7). The “now” is the world of the proper ballroom dance, and “another world” is the jungle society from which he has arrived.

            The Alabasters are the very proper British family hosting Adamson, and Harold Alabaster, the head of this family, is the benefactor who sponsored Adamson’s journeys for purposes of collecting rare insects, particularly butterflies. Adamson, though invited into the Alabaster family to further promote his research, feels a juxtaposed symbol to them, as he thrived in the Amazon adventures he undertook with his hard-science entomology and meticulous participation in “Native” society (28). Alabaster sets up Adamson in a laboratory made from a corner of a stable, and still welcomes him into the family by promoting a marriage to his eldest daughter Eugenia. Thus begins the plot of Adamson discovering, little by little, how the Alabasters misuse their position of prosperity and how his own perceptions of society in the wilderness act as a constant call for him to return.

            The second of Byatt’s novellas, “The Conjugal Angel,” immediately follows, but unfolds in a series of twelve numbered chapters over one hundred fifty pages. Like the first novella, Byatt shows an immediate juxtaposition, this time in the first two sentences outlying the two main characters (187). Lilias is all imagination, living within the flights of her fancy. Sophy, on the other hand, must see and hear anything in order to satisfy her “matter-of-fact” personality. They work together conducting seances in Victorian London.

            Lilias repeatedly associates herself with the celestial visions of Swedenborg and “his voyages throughout various Heavens and Hells of the Universe” (191). Sophy would rather watch sunsets as a physical phenomenon, contemplating the relative sizes of the sun and the moon. Eventually she would lead them both into “the delicately arranged world of paid mediums” (195).

            From the first, Lilias and Sophy’s clients set themselves into an ethical battle with the mediums, bringing up issues from the natural world. In their first controlled séance, their patrons bring up a question of the symbolism of the owl, a creature they have found scientifically interesting, even playful, since their son set out feeders for them in his youth – they do not understand the bombardment of owls as symbolic creatures of evil. The natural world and the metaphysical do not align, in their opinion (210). Lilias comforts them with more talk of Swedenborg and his angels and Sophy assures them of the validity of their spiritual explorations as steeped in reality. So the natural world and the world of controlled seances, if that can be emblematic of proper London society, mirrors those concerns from “Morho Eugenia,” at least to some degree. This testing of the physical (especially the “Conjugal” nature of the physical world as the title of the novella suggests) with the spiritual informs the plot of the novella.

            The novellas are full of comparable symbols – the wings of butterflies and the wings of angels, for example. Darwin as the impetus of “Morpho Eugenia” is juxtaposed with Swedenborg as the impetus of “The Conjugal Angel.” Both stories use these symbols of Victorian society to reflect on the nature of ethical reality and its place in the lives of individuals.

            The next step in this complicated process of comparison that I have set up is to bring into question the dual nature of the stories in Faulkner’s The Wild Palms. I shall do this in a second part of this series of notes. But I wish to mention that because of the complexity of these juxtapositions, I consulted the AI tool of ChatGPT. I have not used it so far in these notes, but I want to point out the sentence that AI produced as the final sentence of the five hundred word synopsis of these ideas for which I asked. The sentence reads: “Together, these works invite the reader to inhabit dissonance rather than resolve it—a testament to narrative tension’s capacity to illuminate human complexity.”

            This is a wonderful sentence and one that reflects the theme that I am trying to get to as the heart of these narratives, Byatt’s and Faulkner’s.

            But these are not my words. They are manufactured for me from a question. I asked for in-text references, but the AI tool gave me few. I suppose that those who know AI better than I know that this practice is common. But it does not serve me well, for I wish to be producing original material and giving credit when the words are not mine. So I asked AI further: “Where did ChatGPT get the idea for the sentence: Together, these works invite the reader to inhabit dissonance rather than resolve it—a testament to narrative tension’s capacity to illuminate human complexity.”

AI responded that it had looked at the two texts, then:  “ I [AI is referring to itself in first person] crafted a summary sentence that captures a common thread: both texts resist easy resolution and instead use narrative tension to expose human complexity.

So, that sentence is original critical commentary, not something taken from Byatt, Faulkner, or a critic.

👉 If you need to use it in academic work, you should frame it as your own analysis (no citation required), but you can support it with citations to Byatt’s and Faulkner’s texts (or to critics) to show evidence for the claim.”

            The pertinent information here is that AI claims that I “should frame it as” my “own analysis (no citation required).” I am uneasy about this response because the sentence, as wonderful as it is, is not my sentence. Yet AI says I may offer it as my own.

            The themes of Angels & Insects, which I have started comments on in this blog, and The Wild Palms, which I shall continue in future posts, concern the ethics of symbols. Byatt uses symbols from Victorian British society to show a juxtaposition of propriety and wild behavior, paradoxes in which ethics of human behavior are internalized and questioned. Showing this theme in dual format is significant to a reader because, for one thing, the reader is immediately asked to juxtapose narratives, to invent reasons why the stories might be put side by side or spliced together. Reading these narratives, glorifying the duality of comparison, becomes a meaningful and purposeful experience.

 

            [I will continue with more AI and more of The Wild Palms in a second part of this blog.]

 

_______

Works Cited

Byatt, A. S. Angels & Insects: Two Novellas. Vintage, 1992.
Faulkner, William. The Wild Palms. New York:  Modern Library, 1939.

The AI asked for on 5/9/2025 by Nick Harris through ChatGPT was: “500 word comparison of the two sections of Angels and Insects A.S. Byatt and William Faulkner's The Wild Palms”

 

 

            Upon returning to A.S. Byatt, my original purpose was to compare her Angels & Insects, a collection of two novellas, with the two-plot structure of William Faulkner’s The Wild Palms. The stories in each book are presented differently, Byatt’s as a series of two novellas told fully in succession and Faulkner’s as a single book with alternating chapters going from one story to the other. But each author presents a paradox of theme between two stories that seemingly have nothing to do with each other, but yet mirror each other in contrasts and paradoxes that the reader must wrestle with on their own. This self-wrestling caused by reading each book has caused my purpose to change; I now view the reading of each book as a separate investigation into the nature of morality. Byatt shows, through Victorian models, the misguided attempts of humans to interconnect the physical world with its colonial and Darwinian harshness and the realm of the transcendental and how it shapes the ethics of the individual. Faulkner shows ethical dilemmas in terms of restrictions and freedom, how those who purposefully reject the terms of society for a more liberating life can find themselves involved in tragedy, while those who suddenly find themselves free can ironically long for the sturdiness of a life filled with restrictions.

            Byatt presents two novellas, “Morpho Eugenia” and “The Conjugal Angel.” “Morpho Eugenia” is printed first and complete, a rushing story told without chapter breaks (though smaller asterisked breaks appear) that deals with the paradox of British colonialism attempting to impose order on a wild, unstable world, while itself shows an underlying inability to conform to its own sense of ethics. The first two paragraphs show a juxtaposition of aristocratic propriety and the wildness of the jungle by introducing the figure of a returning world adventurer as he enters a proper British ballroom dance by invitation of an elegant hostess (Angels & Insects, 3). Immediately, and continually thereafter, Adamson, the adventurer, recognizes this juxtaposition: “Nothing he did ow seemed to happen without this double vision, of things seen and done otherwise, in another world” (7). The “now” is the world of the proper ballroom dance, and “another world” is the jungle society from which he has arrived.

            The Alabasters are the very proper British family hosting Adamson, and Harold Alabaster, the head of this family, is the benefactor who sponsored Adamson’s journeys for purposes of collecting rare insects, particularly butterflies. Adamson, though invited into the Alabaster family to further promote his research, feels a juxtaposed symbol to them, as he thrived in the Amazon adventures he undertook with his hard-science entomology and meticulous participation in “Native” society (28). Alabaster sets up Adamson in a laboratory made from a corner of a stable, and still welcomes him into the family by promoting a marriage to his eldest daughter Eugenia. Thus begins the plot of Adamson discovering, little by little, how the Alabasters misuse their position of prosperity and how his own perceptions of society in the wilderness act as a constant call for him to return.

            The second of Byatt’s novellas, “The Conjugal Angel,” immediately follows, but unfolds in a series of twelve numbered chapters over one hundred fifty pages. Like the first novella, Byatt shows an immediate juxtaposition, this time in the first two sentences outlying the two main characters (187). Lilias is all imagination, living within the flights of her fancy. Sophy, on the other hand, must see and hear anything in order to satisfy her “matter-of-fact” personality. They work together conducting seances in Victorian London.

            Lilias repeatedly associates herself with the celestial visions of Swedenborg and “his voyages throughout various Heavens and Hells of the Universe” (191). Sophy would rather watch sunsets as a physical phenomenon, contemplating the relative sizes of the sun and the moon. Eventually she would lead them both into “the delicately arranged world of paid mediums” (195).

            From the first, Lilias and Sophy’s clients set themselves into an ethical battle with the mediums, bringing up issues from the natural world. In their first controlled séance, their patrons bring up a question of the symbolism of the owl, a creature they have found scientifically interesting, even playful, since their son set out feeders for them in his youth – they do not understand the bombardment of owls as symbolic creatures of evil. The natural world and the metaphysical do not align, in their opinion (210). Lilias comforts them with more talk of Swedenborg and his angels and Sophy assures them of the validity of their spiritual explorations as steeped in reality. So the natural world and the world of controlled seances, if that can be emblematic of proper London society, mirrors those concerns from “Morho Eugenia,” at least to some degree. This testing of the physical (especially the “Conjugal” nature of the physical world as the title of the novella suggests) with the spiritual informs the plot of the novella.

            The novellas are full of comparable symbols – the wings of butterflies and the wings of angels, for example. Darwin as the impetus of “Morpho Eugenia” is juxtaposed with Swedenborg as the impetus of “The Conjugal Angel.” Both stories use these symbols of Victorian society to reflect on the nature of ethical reality and its place in the lives of individuals.

            The next step in this complicated process of comparison that I have set up is to bring into question the dual nature of the stories in Faulkner’s The Wild Palms. I shall do this in a second part of this series of notes. But I wish to mention that because of the complexity of these juxtapositions, I consulted the AI tool of ChatGPT. I have not used it so far in these notes, but I want to point out the sentence that AI produced as the final sentence of the five hundred word synopsis of these ideas for which I asked. The sentence reads: “Together, these works invite the reader to inhabit dissonance rather than resolve it—a testament to narrative tension’s capacity to illuminate human complexity.”

            This is a wonderful sentence and one that reflects the theme that I am trying to get to as the heart of these narratives, Byatt’s and Faulkner’s.

            But these are not my words. They are manufactured for me from a question. I asked for in-text references, but the AI tool gave me few. I suppose that those who know AI better than I know that this practice is common. But it does not serve me well, for I wish to be producing original material and giving credit when the words are not mine. So I asked AI further: “Where did ChatGPT get the idea for the sentence: Together, these works invite the reader to inhabit dissonance rather than resolve it—a testament to narrative tension’s capacity to illuminate human complexity.”

AI responded that it had looked at the two texts, then:  “ I [AI is referring to itself in first person] crafted a summary sentence that captures a common thread: both texts resist easy resolution and instead use narrative tension to expose human complexity.

So, that sentence is original critical commentary, not something taken from Byatt, Faulkner, or a critic.

👉 If you need to use it in academic work, you should frame it as your own analysis (no citation required), but you can support it with citations to Byatt’s and Faulkner’s texts (or to critics) to show evidence for the claim.”

            The pertinent information here is that AI claims that I “should frame it as” my “own analysis (no citation required).” I am uneasy about this response because the sentence, as wonderful as it is, is not my sentence. Yet AI says I may offer it as my own.

            The themes of Angels & Insects, which I have started comments on in this blog, and The Wild Palms, which I shall continue in future posts, concern the ethics of symbols. Byatt uses symbols from Victorian British society to show a juxtaposition of propriety and wild behavior, paradoxes in which ethics of human behavior are internalized and questioned. Showing this theme in dual format is significant to a reader because, for one thing, the reader is immediately asked to juxtapose narratives, to invent reasons why the stories might be put side by side or spliced together. Reading these narratives, glorifying the duality of comparison, becomes a meaningful and purposeful experience.

 

            [I will continue with more AI and more of The Wild Palms in a second part of this blog.]

 

_______

Works Cited

Byatt, A. S. Angels & Insects: Two Novellas. Vintage, 1992.
Faulkner, William. The Wild Palms. New York:  Modern Library, 1939.

The AI asked for on 5/9/2025 by Nick Harris through ChatGPT was: “500 word comparison of the two sections of Angels and Insects A.S. Byatt and William Faulkner's The Wild Palms”

 

 

           

Nick Harris

Blog 8/8/2025

 

“Young Goodman Brown” enters the Wrestling Arena: Barthes and Hawthorne on the Nature of Good and Evil

In the story “Young Goodman Brown,” Nathaniel Hawthorne critiques both the hypocrisy within Puritan society and the peril of viewing morality as a strict, black-and-white universal. When peering through the lens of the Roland Barthes essay “Wrestling,” the reader of “Young Goodman Brown” understands more clearly the dichotomy of perspective within the story. “Wrestling,” a comment on the artistry of popular cultural constructs in the light of immediate absolutes, betrays Hawthorne’s wrestling of black and white, right and wrong. Readers must question a Puritanical notion of Good, as represented by the “Young Goodman” of Hawthorne’s story, when he confronts its necessary opposite.

A Barthes view, in the realm of the wrestling metaphor, brings to each moment of the story a step in the wrestling match that Goodman Brown has in his contemplation of the world of good and its relation to the world of evil.  Goodman Brown, while journeying through the forest, meets the old woman who taught him the catechism, Goody Cloyse – only she now exclaims the moaning of a witch that has lost her broomstick (Hawthorne 280). He encounters his minister and a deacon on horseback, late for a meeting in the dark forest, presumably with the devil (282). Eventually he encounters a multitude of worshipers of the Devil, including his wife, Faith—whose name he has symbolically used as his grounding against the dark forces, but who he now sees to be in the throes of the Dark Figure who presides over the service: “…ye had hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are you undeceived! Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness” (287). Goodman Brown escapes from this unholy meeting, but only to become, for the rest of his days, “A stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful, if not a desperate man” (288). Each of the steps he takes along the way in the dark forest shows an immediacy of event, as in the throes of wrestlers Barthes wrestling ring. Goodman Brown survives the match, but the experience has forever wounded him, forever disillusioned him.

I am bringing the very French thinking of Barthes, one which defies overall structure in lieu of the immediacy of events, into the American wrestling ring by using the Barthes lens on a classic American short story. This is not a haphazard pairing. Barthes writes that the wrestling match is “a spectacle of excess” in which each gesture carries “a precise meaning, like those of the ancient theatre” (Barthes 17). In “Young Goodman Brown,” the forest is not a realistic space but a symbolic one; the journey through the forest conveys and heightens moral extremes, much the same as in Barthes wrestling arena.  For Barthes, the outcome of the wrestling match is not important; what matters is the clarity of the roles and the satisfaction of the moral drama. “What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself” (Barthes 19). Therefore, the fact that Goodman Brown’s outcome is disillusionment does not dissuade the reader from feeling fulfilled. Though  catharsis is not exactly the sigh of relief that Barthes wishes, the process of experiencing, moment by moment, the wrestling match soothes the readers need for visceral enticement.

Barthes, to American readers, should not be unfamiliar. The American champion of Barthes’ popularist aesthetics, Susan Sontag, brought these French ideas into an American landscape replete with the dominance of structural thinking. Sontag did so first with her proclamation of an artistic interpretation that is “Against Interpretation.” In the essay of that title, along with many others such as her “Notes on Camp,” Sontag professes the insistence of the American aesthete to herald their unique ideas and not to follow the throng of structuralists who would claim to know what makes “greatness” in art. Many American academes refused this call to uniqueness at the time that Sontag presented it (the 1960s), holding on to a traditional idea that structure creates a distinguishing factor for what is artistic and what is not. (For example, the writings of Annie Dillard are replete with this insistence that “the formal relationship among parts is the essential value of all works of art [Living with Fiction  34] -- but Dillard is far from alone).

A Barthes interpretation of “Young Goodman Brown” shows how literature can directly address the question of ethics. The young “Good” man of the story continually addresses head on the “Good” people of his life and finds that they have masks of evil laying behind them. In Goodman Brown’s case, the evil is devil-centered, as befits his Puritanical upbringing. But this juxtaposition of good with evil makes him question the ethics that he has heretofore consistently believed. The deliberation of these ethics, though causing an ironic depression within the protagonist, forms the theme of the story and the impetus for readers to engage with it. The creation of the discipline of “ethics and literature” thus becomes one of the foundational reasons for reading literature, purposes that students and other readers of literature are continually questioning.

---

Works Cited

Barthes, Roland. “Wrestling.” Mythologies, translated by Annette Lavers, Hill and Wang, 1972, pp. 15–25.

Dillard, Annie. Living by Fiction. New York:  Harper & Row, 1982.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Young Goodman Brown,” 1835. Reprinted in Nathaniel Hawthorne: Tales and Sketches. Library of American # 2. 1982, pp.276-289.

Sontag, Susan. “Against Interpretation.” The Susan Sontag Reader edited by Elizabeth Hardwick, New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1984, pp. 95-104.

The image is AI generated from Google Gemini by Nick Harris 8/7/2025 using the prompt "Young Goodman Brown wlaking in forest, realistic trees and fog, small red eyes looking on from behind tree"

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