The Whiteness of the Veil Color and the veil in...

In his essay â€Å"Color, Light and Shadow in Hawthorne’s Fiction† Walter Blair approaches an interpretation of Hawthorne’s work through the author’s manipulation of color and light to produce symbolic meaning. Blair addresses â€Å"The Minister’s Black Veil† and notes the repeated emphasis on the blackness of Father Hooper’s veil and the pallor as a reaction to it. â€Å"The design of this tale,† he asserts, â€Å"is one in which repeated patterns of light, then blackness, then whiteness meaningfully occur† (Blair 76). Similarly, Hawthorne’s novel The Blithedale Romance employs chiaroscuro for its characters, symbols and the veil motif in particular. Blair does not go further in his discussion of whiteness and blackness in â€Å"The Minister’s Black Veil† in relation to The Blithedale Romance. An analysis of the use of color, particularly regarding the veil symbol, in both texts can provide additiona l insights into Hawthorne’s often noted ambiguity. Veils and the act of unveiling are popular literary tropes, particularly in Gothic fiction. They may be employed to address contrasting themes of knowledge vs. ignorance, the conscious vs. the unconscious, appearance vs. reality, obscurity vs. visibility, as well as the public vs. the private. In visual arts as well as in literature, the color black is associated with the satanic or the demonic. It is the opposite of light and life and represents loss. In addition, blackness may conceal a dark mystery. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story â€Å"The