This passage got cut from The Black Veil for the simple reason that no one liked it as much as I did. It circulated around the book, in various chapters, for six months or so, but it never seemed to live comfortably anywhere. I sacrificed it, therefore, but with a heavy heart. A rare example in my work of good reporting or, I suppose, participant-observer anthropology. —R.M.

 

The image of the veil in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s work seems to issue from an uncomfortable psycho-sexual stratum. So the critics say with respect to “The Minister’s Black Veil”:

We would expect Hooper to display a fastidiousness in his personal relations as well as in his dress. And indeed, the note of tidy womanliness here runs through the tale in a faint, suggestive undercurrent, particularly in the continual mention of the veil. As one parishioner remarks with unconscious acuteness, “How strange … that a simple black veil, such as any woman might wear on her bonnet, should become such a terrible thing on Mr…