What Does The Veil Symbolize In The Minister's Black Veil

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1836 short story The Minister’s Black Veil is surrounded around the ideas of sin, humanity, secrecy, death and how each effects one another. In the story, the most important component which encompasses the entirety of the story is that of the Black Veil. Hawthorne uses the veil as a symbol of secret sin. Through his character Reverend Hooper, Hawthorne communicates to his audience that everyone withholds a secret sin. The question that many critics feel needs to be answered is if the Reverend wears the veil to confess or accept his secret sin, or if he is using himself as a visual moral lesson to his fellow people that not only he hides behind a veil but so do they. This though is not actually all that important to

the point of the story itself. Yes, he could have sinned, but in the end that is not what matters, what matters is that not only he, but everyone is a sinner.

The story opens with a third person narration of a Puritan town on their way to Sabbath. The only difference with this Sunday is that a man who is usually described as “a gentlemanly person” who dresses with “due clerical neatness” now greets his congregation in a seemingly odd manner.

Reverend Hooper has “nothing but one thing remarkable about his appearance.” That one thing being the pivotal symbol that Hawthorne uses throughout the story to convey the meaning behind his parable. Hanging from his forehead reaching down almost to be “shaken” by his breath, the Reverend has on a Black Veil. Mentioned before, Hawthorne uses the Black Veil as a symbol for secret sin, this being “those sad mysteries which [people] hide from [their] dearest, and would fain conceal from [their] own consciousness, even forgetting that the Omniscient can detect them.” The symbol in this story has both a contextual meaning as well as a universal meaning. As it pertains to the context of the story, the veil is intended to represent the secret sin of the Reverend himself. The reader never finds out what this may be, but in the end, the technicality of his sin is not what is important. Rather the fact that he has sinned is. Later on in the story, the Reverend himself states “[he] perhaps, like most other mortals. have sorrows dark enough to be typified by a black veil.” This is an acknowledgement from the Reverend that he, like everyone

living has sinned and therefore lives behind Black Veils. The universal symbolism comes from how the Black Veil represents original sin as a whole. Hawthorne, not only in this short story, but in many of his literary pieces, plays with the idea that humanity has the tendency to transgress against the laws of God. In the story, this is not blatantly shown, but Hawthorne does examine that all of his characters no matter what their defining characteristics are, have sinned. The Reverend for example, is just that, a Reverend, that is one of the most important aspects of the story. Someone who is supposed to perfectly represent Gods laws and bring forth his gospel to the people acknowledges the fact that he has sinned. Another example similar to this is that, essentially, what the Reverend and in turn Hawthorne are trying to prove through the use of the Black Veil is that the community too is guilty of sin. The community being that of Puritans. Again, along the same line as the Reverend being a symbol of the church, by Hawthorne stating that both these members are guilty of sin, then who is to say they aren’t.

Throughout the exploration of the symbolization of the black veil and how it stands in for secret sin, the reader is also forced to realized that Hawthorne is also commenting on how the only end to the great burden of secret sin is if everyone were to acknowledge that it exists.

The Reverend comments on the fact that “there is an hour to come when all … shall cast aside [their] veils” and later that in reference to his own veil, he states that “no moral eye will see it withdrawn.” The importance of this is the word mortal. The Reverend is observing the relationship between sin and death. This relationship being another one of the main motif in the story. The first incident when the reader witnesses the relationship is at the funeral that the Reverend officiates. The narrator describes an interaction between the Reverend and the young woman who has passed. He leans over the coffin of the woman to “take a last farewell” and “as he stooped, the veil hung straight down from his forehead, so that, if her eyelids had not been closed forever, the dead maiden might have seen his face.” The significance here is that the woman is dead, Hawthorne is commenting on the fact that only the deceased have unveil themselves. Symbolically, though the Reverend actually puts a Black Veil on, he is confessing to his sin and therefore taking the Veil off. Thus, there is an importance in the exchanges between the Reverend and the dead. After the funeral service, a few of the guests have an

interaction based on the fact that they both believe they have seen, during the percussion, the dead maiden and the Reverend holding hands. This is yet again Hawthorne pushing the idea that death is the only point that people truly accept their sins. To his lover, the Reverend verbalizes the entirety of this idea by saying “though this veil must be between [them] here on earth. Be [his], and hereafter there shall be no veil over [his] face, no darkness between [their] souls! It is but a mortal veil - it is not for eternity.” Hawthorne critics a very interesting relationship. How he has used the Reverend to represent someone coming to terms with their sin mortally with a bad effect overall shows the reader that society has never been and may never been advanced enough for everyone to live before their Black Veil without being ostracized in the way the Reverend was. “All through life, that piece of crape had hung between [the Reverend] and the world; it had separated him from cheerful brotherhood and woman’s love, and kept him in the saddest of all prisons, his own heart.”

Hawthorne reviews and examines the age old view that all men are natural born sinners. The only time when they are void of sin is at the time of their death or on judgement day. In his famous short story The Minister’s Black Veil he explores this through his character Reverend Hooper as he experiences his life literally living behind a Black Veil. Hawthorne concludes with an interesting paradox. The point is, is that sin is irrelevant at death, or that sin is irrelevant in heaven. The story concludes though with the Reverend on his death bed still with the veil on. Many would expect that at the end, the Reverend would remove the veil to prove the point that at death his sins have been washed away, this though is where Hawthorne twists the story. “Never, on earth, never!” is the Reverends reply when asked to remove the veil before he dies. His dying statement and the most important in the piece is “Why [does society] tremble at [him] alone? Tremble also at each other! … when man does not vainly shrink from the eye of his Creator, loathsomely treasuring up the secret of his sin; then deem [him] a monster, for the symbol beneath which [he has] lived, and die! […] look around me, and lo! on every visage a Black Veil!” The Reverend is stating that not only he but the whole of the society that he lives in hides behind a Black Veil; the reason as to why no one, other than him, steps in front of it is because of the fear of being ostracized. this is why, in the end the only time the veil would come off is at death, when there is no one to judge them. The question remains though, why does the reverend insist on leaving the veil on after death? Hawthorne is commenting on how though his character has died, his story has not. Not only do his character live behind a Black Veil but so do his readers.