Appendix C: “Appendix A”from 26_01_Hawthorne’s Presentation of Evil as Linked Between Ordinary Iniquitous Behavior and the Paranormal

Figure 2. George Henry Boughton, Pilgrims Going to Church (also known as Puritans Going to Church), 1867, oil on canvas, New York Public Library / Bridgeman Images (hand-colored engraving reproduction). Subject Matter: Depicts an armed party of English Puritan settlers (Pilgrims) trekking through a snow-covered New England woodland toward a meetinghouse or church, illustrating the conflation of religious devotion, frontier anxiety, and institutional vigilance.

Appendix A — The JROspace ABCDE Model of Authority and Accountability

A Technical Manual for Hawthorne’s Moral Universe

Overview

The ABCDE Model is a diagnostic framework for analyzing authority, accountability, and moral collapse in Puritan culture and in Hawthorne’s fiction. It formalizes patterns of behavior found in Puritan theology, domestic hierarchy, and interpersonal domination. The model identifies five recurring moves:

1. A — Identity Claim

2. B — Obligation Rejection

3. C — Context Substitution

4. D — Data Deflection

5. E — Narrative Escapism

These moves appear consistently in Puritan sermons, legal codes, diaries, and theological writings, and Hawthorne dramatizes them across Young Goodman Brown, Ethan Brand, The Scarlet Letter, The Minister’s Black Veil, and Rappaccini’s Daughter.

A — Identity Claim

Authority begins with a claim to moral, spiritual, or intellectual superiority. Puritan ministers claimed divine mandate; husbands claimed spiritual headship; magistrates claimed covenantal authority.¹

In Hawthorne, characters such as Goodman Brown, Hooper, and Chillingworth assert moral identity as a basis for judgment.

Guided Link: Puritan authority

B — Obligation Rejection

Once authority is claimed, obligations are selectively rejected. Puritan men frequently excused their own lapses while enforcing strict purity codes on women.² Ministers framed their own temptations as “struggles,” while women’s temptations were framed as “falls.”³

In Hawthorne, Brown condemns Faith’s humanity while indulging his own curiosity; Dimmesdale preaches virtue while hiding sin.

Guided Link: Puritan morality

C — Context Substitution

Authority systems replace real human complexity with simplified moral narratives. Puritan epistemology treated ambiguity as guilt and imagination as danger.⁴ Women’s emotions, dreams, and desires were reinterpreted as moral instability.⁵

In Hawthorne, Faith’s ribbon becomes “evidence,” Hooper’s veil becomes a universal symbol, and Beatrice’s humanity is replaced by Rappaccini’s experiment.

Guided Link: Puritan epistemology

D — Data Deflection

Contradictory evidence is ignored, reframed, or redirected. Puritan diaries show selective attention to sin, especially female sin.⁶ Legal records reveal that ambiguity was treated as confession.⁷

In Hawthorne, Brown ignores his own fallibility, Brand ignores emotional evidence, and the magistrates ignore Dimmesdale’s visible collapse.

Guided Link: Puritan anthropology

E — Narrative Escapism

The authority system collapses into paranoia, isolation, or symbolic withdrawal. Puritan narrative logic followed a predictable arc: sin → shame → surveillance → collapse.⁸

In Hawthorne, Brown becomes bitter and withdrawn, Brand isolates himself, Hooper hides behind the veil, and Rappaccini retreats into scientific pride.

Guided Link: Puritan narrative

Model Summary

The ABCDE model describes a self‑sealing authority system:

• A establishes superiority

• B removes accountability

• C reframes reality

• D protects the narrative

• E collapses into paranoia

This pattern appears in Puritan theology, domestic hierarchy, and domineering partner psychology, and Hawthorne uses it as the moral engine of his fiction.

Works Cited — Appendix A

1. Cambridge Platform of Church Discipline. In The Cambridge Platform, ed. Williston Walker. Boston: Congregational Sunday‑School and Publishing Society, 1899.

2. Morgan, Edmund S. The Puritan Family: Religion and Domestic Relations in Seventeenth‑Century New England. New York: Harper & Row, 1966.

3. Mather, Cotton. Ornaments for the Daughters of Zion, ed. Michael P. Winship. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008.

4. Hall, David D. Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989.

5. Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650–1750. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.

6. Brown, B. Katherine. Women of the Commonwealth: Work, Family, and Social Change in Nineteenth‑Century Massachusetts. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993.

7. The Laws and Liberties of Massachusetts, 1648. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1929.

8. Morgan, Edmund S. Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963.

Other studies on Hawthorne;

Hawthorne’s Moral Universe: Why Ordinary Human Behavior Looks Paranormal

Chapter 3_2:Ordinary “Evil” Made Visible: Hawthorne’s Black Veil and Authority Without Accountability