The mood of “The Minister’s Black Veil” is initially lighthearted and humorous. In the story’s first paragraph, Hawthorne paints a scene of a sunny, bustling town square, filled with the merry sound of a church bell ringing and a crowd of well-dressed churchgoers looking forward to the day’s service:
The sexton stood on the porch of Milford meeting-house, pulling busily at the bell-rope […] Children, with bright faces, tripped merrily beside their parents, or mimicked a graver gait, in the conscious dignity of their Sunday clothes. Spruce bachelors looked sidelong at pretty maidens, and fancied that the Sabbath sunshine made them prettier than on week days.
However, from the moment the minister steps out into the square in his black veil, the mood quickly begins to shift into one of mystery, dread, and terror. This shift in the story’s mood mirrors the emotional effect that the veil has on the townspeople. When the story begins, they are carefree and cheerful, thinking decidedly secular thoughts about “pretty maidens” without too closely examining the irony of their preoccupation with one another’s clothes and appearances as they are on their way to a Puritan church service. However, once Reverend Hooper appears on the scene in his black veil, it’s like a dark cloud has rolled in over their clear consciences, forcing them to examine their own hypocrisies and spoiling all the fun.
Each member of the congregation, the most innocent girl, and the man of hardened breast, felt as if the preacher had crept upon them, behind his awful veil, and discovered their hoarded iniquity of deed or thought […] There was nothing terrible in what Mr. Hooper said, at least, no violence; and yet, with every tremor of his melancholy voice, the hearers quaked. An unsought pathos came hand in hand with awe.
Here the words “crept,” “awful,” “terrible,” “tremor,” “quaked,” and “awe” clue the reader in to this shift in mood; the congregation is terrified by the minister’s veil, and what it suggests about their own possibly sinful thoughts, hidden behind the “black veil” of their facades of piety and surface appearances of goodness. They dread the unknown aspects of their own psyches that the minister is asking them to examine more closely. Rather than risk dispelling their self-delusions about their own goodness, the townspeople choose to shun the minister so as to avoid confronting their own hypocrisy. Indeed, as soon as the minister finishes giving his first sermon in the black veil, the mood becomes lighthearted and carefree again; the townspeople become “conscious of lighter spirits the moment they lost sight of the black veil” and immediately set to gossiping about Reverend Hooper.
About halfway through the story, the mood descends into one of despair and loneliness. Ostracized by his community, the minister lives the rest of his life as a sort of phantom in Milford, admired from afar by his congregation for the dreadful power evoked by his black veil, but barred from true companionship with another person. Words and phrases like “grieved,” “melancholy,” “tortured,” “the poor minister,” “sadly smiled,” “unloved,” “apart,” and “shunned” all contribute to this mood, suggesting to the reader that the minister is a tragic figure, meant to be pitied for his decision to prioritize taking the moral high ground over the possibility of true connection with others.
