Young Goodman Brown

This is about the third time I have read Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" and I still find Faith the most intriguing character. She represents so many aspects of the story, not only Young Goodman Brown's wife but also his "faith" as well as the "faith" of other members of the community. We even see Brown inadvertently refer to his wife as his faith. He also conceives his wife as innocent and pure and this often weighs on his conscious when he begins to partake in "unchristian" activities. Young Goodman Brown feels especially bad when he leaves to enter the woods, which can be perceived as a sign of evil; and, he even uses his wife an an excuse to his tardiness in meeting the mysterious man we later learn is the devil. Brown tells the devil that "Faith kept me back a while." This leaves plenty of room for the reader to form their own opinion of what Brown is exactly referring to by "Faith": his wife or his moral conscious. Young Goodman Brown once again uses his "Faith" as a scapegoat when he runs out of all other excuses to evade going with the devil. In this statement, Hawthorne leaves the reader to wander if Brown doesn't feel it is best to go because his wife wouldn't approve of it or because God wouldn't approve of.
However, when Brown falters in his Christian "faith," and eventually succumbs to the devil's coaching into the forest, he sees his wife about to be "baptized in blood." In this first instance, Brown comes to recognize that he had in fact put his wife on a pedestal and that she possessed an internal evil even greater than his own. This confuses and ultimately enrages Brown and he cries "My Faith is gone!" By this point in the story, I feel that it is quite obvious to the reader that he is referring to both his wife and the moral standards he had based around her. Brown even gets led to the alter himself and terrified by what he has seen and what may result if he actually partook in the communion. In turn, he yells and everything disappears and Brown is alone in the woods. When he encounters Faith when he exits the woods he shuns her because he can't ignore the evil he now associates with his wife. In this we see that when Brown had thought so highly of his wife's Christianity that he didn't give himself enough credit. He had believed that his wife was his faith when he was the one who was stronger in his own faith. This proves that even though he occasionally falters in his walk, he is ultimately the better Christian because he denies the devil, and evil, when not only Faith, but also Goody Cloyse, the minister, and Deacon Gookin fall in their own faith.