A real person who was involved in the Salem Witch Trials
of 1692, Goody Cloyse is recognized by Goodman Brown as he walks with the old man with
the snakelike staff. Ironically, when Goodman espies her, he tells his
companion,
readability="10">"But with your leave, friend, I shall take a cut
through the woods until we have left this Christian woman behind. Being a stranger to
you, she might ask whom I was consorting with and whither I was
going."And, his fellow
traveller agrees, "Betake you to the woods, and let me keep the path." Then, Goodman
goes, but he watches the old man who comes close to Goody and touches her neck with
"what seemed the serpent's tail."readability="42">"The devil!" screamed the pious old
lady."Then Goody Cloyse knows her old friend?" observed
the traveller, confronting her and leaning on his writhing
stick."Ah, forsooth, and is it your worship, indeed?"
cried the good dame. "Yes, truly, is it, and in the very image of my old gossip,
Goodman Brown. The grandfather of the silly fellow that now is. But,--would your
worship believe it?--my broomstick hath strangely disappeared, stolen, as I suspect,
that that unhanged witch, Goody Cory, and that, too, when I was all anointed with the
juice of smallage, and cinquefoil, and worlf's
bane"---"Mingled with fine wheat and the fat of a new-born
babe," said the shape of old Goodman Brown."Oh, your
worship knows the recipe," cried the old lady, cackling aloud...."There is a nice young
man to be taken into communion tonight. But now your good worship will lend me your
arm, and we shall be there in a
twinkling."But, the "good
worship" only gives her his staff that he throws down; it forms the shape to which "its
owner had formerly lent to the Egyptian magi. Goody disappears and Goodman reappears to
say with dramatic irony, "That old woman taught me my catechism." Hawthorne then writes
ironically as narrator, "and there was a world of meaning in this simple
comment."With her immediate recognition of the old
traveller, the devil, Goody Cloyse establishes herself as evil. Then, when she speaks
of her broom and the old man offers her his staff which transforms, indications are
clear that Goody Cloyse is evil herself.
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