In an example of dramatic irony, Robin fails to recognize that the scarlet-clad woman he meets while walking the streets of Boston is a sex worker, instead believing her half-hearted story that she is Major Molineux’s housekeeper (a story she tells to lure him inside her house). The irony comes across in the following passage, when Robin first calls to the woman:
All that Robin could discern was a strip of scarlet petticoat, and the occasional sparkle of an eye, as if the moonbeams were trembling on some bright thing.
“Pretty mistress,”—for I may call her so with a good conscience, thought the shrewd youth, since I know nothing to the contrary—"my sweet pretty mistress, will you be kind enough to tell me whereabouts I must seek the dwelling of my kinsman, Major Molineux?”
Hawthorne intentionally includes details in this passage so that his readers will realize what the young Robin does not—that this woman is a prostitute. First, by mentioning the woman’s “strip of scarlet petticoat” as well as the “occasional sparkle of an eye,” Hawthorne hints at her coquettish intentions. The color scarlet here signifies lust and sexuality (a color that Hawthorne uses in similar symbolic fashion in his novel The Scarlet Letter).
That Robin “know[s] nothing to the contrary” than to assume the woman is simply a “sweet pretty mistress” demonstrates his innocence and naivety. He has only just arrived in the city after spending his first 18 years in the country and fails to recognize that this woman cannot be trusted. It is only because a night watchman walks by and scares the woman back inside that Robin is spared from entering her house.
The situational irony at the heart of “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” is the fact that Robin arrives in Boston believing his cousin Major Molineux to be a highly revered leader in the community, only to discover at the end of the story that his cousin is so deeply despised that he has been tarred and feathered by a militant mob before being paraded through the streets. The irony of this reveal comes across in the following passage, as Robin first spies Major Molineux at the center of the parade:
A moment more, and the leader thundered a command to halt; the trumpets vomited a horrid breath, and held their peace; the shouts and laughter of the people died away, and there remained only a universal hum, nearly allied to silence. Right before Robin’s eyes was an uncovered cart. There the torches blazed the brightest, there the moon shone out like day, and there, in tar-and-feathery dignity, sate his kinsman, Major Molineux!
The way Hawthorne leads up to this moment prepares readers for a big reveal—the parade comes to a halt, the trumpets “hold their peace,” the spectators’ laughter “die[s] away,” and Robin looks toward “an uncovered cart.” In the brightness of the torches and the moon, Robin spots his cousin, and the narrator communicates his shock with the exclamation, “there, in tar-and-feathery dignity, sate his kinsman, Major Molineux!”
This example of situational irony is significant because it communicates just how innocent and naïve Robin was to believe his cousin would be highly regarded in a place where, in the 1730s, there were near-constant clashes between colonists and British-appointed officials. It is notable that Major Molineux is presented as innocent here, while colonists pushing for self-rule are depicted as evil members of a mob. Though Hawthorne was an American, he was also a Christian who placed a lot of importance on the concept of sin, and here he communicates his belief that the lawless violence of the American Revolution was condemnable.
