ABSTRACT
“The May-Pole of Merry Mount” is, I should judge, a major tale, but not quite in that full “psychological” sense. It is one of Hawthorne’s most richly learned and ironically manipulated stories; and it does mean to speculate seriously enough, about the relation between original Puritanism and “the future complexion of New England”. But the convention of “The May-Pole” is significantly different. Its allegorical claim is not so much to the essential as to the originary; and, even so, it introduces us to a Puritanism already firmly located in time and place. At one level this means only that we have to take account of politics as well as of piety: Endicott has designs on Edith and Edgar, whereas Digby has absolutely none on Mary Goffe. Surely this is what the plot itself, in its own lowly and moralistic way, would lead us to discover.
