“The Minister’s Black Veil” is written in a Gothic style that uses language of obscurity, mystery, and ambiguity to reflect the terror that the townspeople feel when looking at Reverend Hooper’s black veil. Gothic literature, like Romanticism, was fascinated by the idea of the Sublime, an aesthetic theory outlined by Irish philosopher Edmund Burke in the 1700s. The Sublime essentially referred to the pleasurable fear or thrill that one experiences when experiencing something larger than oneself. In Romantic literature, it was often evoked by lengthy, poetic descriptions of nature. Large, grand things in nature, such as mountains and canyons, were often associated with the Sublime, because their scale tended to remind people how small they were in comparison to the vastness of the natural world.
Gothic literature was similarly interested in the Sublime, but with a subtle distinction. While Romanticism used the Sublime to create an effect of self-transcendence in readers, Gothic literature tended to use the Sublime to inspire fear and terror. The Gothic dwelt in scenery that was obscure or filled with unseen dangers—a dark forest, for example, or a misty moor. Nineteenth-century Gothic literature was especially interested in the obscurity and mystery of the human psyche; a dark forest or a haunted house could serve as a metaphor for the uncharted regions of one’s own mind. “The Minister’s Black Veil” follows in this tradition of the psychological Gothic. Hawthorne uses the language of the Gothic Sublime, evoking obscurity and mystery, to explore the idea that people’s minds are fundamentally unknowable, not only to each other but also to themselves.
The style of the story vacillates between fairly concrete, straightforward descriptions of events and long, abstract sentences filled with poetic flourishes that evoke intense emotions, a style typical of Gothic literature. Hawthorne’s style consistently shifts into this more Gothic mode whenever Reverend Hooper’s black veil is being described. This shift reflects the feelings of dread and horror that the black veil inspires in Milford’s townspeople. Take, for example, the passage below:
Thus, from beneath the black veil, there rolled a cloud into the sunshine, an ambiguity of sin or sorrow, which enveloped the poor minister, so that love or sympathy could never reach him. It was said that ghost or fiend consorted with him there. With self-shudderings and outward terrors, he walked continually in its shadow, groping darkly within his own soul, or gazing through a medium that saddened the whole world. Even the lawless wind, it was believed, respected his dreadful secret, and never blew aside the veil.
Here the words “cloud,” “ambiguity,” “enveloped,” “terrors,” “shadow,” “darkly,” and “dreadful” all evoke the obscurity and uncertainty typical of Gothic horror—it is not what is seen, but rather what is left unseen, the possibility of monsters lurking in the shadows, that inspires fear in the Gothic. The idea that “ghost or fiend” might “consort” with him behind his black veil further pushes this passage into the realm of Gothic literature, which was often filled with ghosts, vampires, and other supernatural horrors. In this story, the “monsters” aren’t literal, but rather the possibility of some secret sin committed by Reverend Hooper.
The story is written from a distant, third-person point of view, with very little insight given into the thoughts and feelings of its characters. This style matches the story’s theme of the fundamental unknowability of others’ minds. Just as the Reverend Hooper’s black veil obscures his face from the townspeople, so the narrator’s distant perspective obscures his thoughts and feelings from the reader.
