In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s two stories “My Kinsman, Major
Molineux” and “The May-Pole of Merry Mount,” a duality of spirit in the
individual and collective consciousness is an image of the human estate and a
discernible provocation for personal and political rebellion and reform.  Hawthorne’s society in these two stories is of
the time of colonial New England.

Robin of “My Kinsman, Major Molineux” is an embodiment of
society in its dual nature, containing within himself both good and evil and a
capability for moral reformation.  Robin
comes to a New England town to make a life for himself there with the
assistance of his uncle, Major Molineux, who is the royal governor of the
town.  Sitting on the steps of a church
in the shadow of the steeple, Robin makes the shocking discovery that his uncle
is a discredited authority for the people of the town.  Robin will have to survive in reliance on
himself without his uncle’s protection.  In
the shadow of the church steeple and in the understanding of the governor’s
loss of political authority, Robin is confined in a circumstance of need for
reform in both church and government that is the characteristic circumstance of
the inhabitants of the colonies.

Robin is a traveler seeking a chance for a new beginning in life.  He arrives by ferryboat in a colonial town, paying
an extra fare for his passage because he arrives after dusk.  His extra fare and nighttime passage make the
spiritual duality of his person and place apparent; he seems to have a dark aspect
of self that enters with him into the moonlight of a shadowed town.  In the obscurity of moonlight, Robin finds the
town in a confusing and disorderly state, with the people of the town lacking the
social principle of a morally ordered world. 
A renewal of life with a change in custom of thought and habit might
begin for them with the coming of a lighted and resolved awareness of spiritual
presence in place.

Hawthorne describes elements of English tradition in an
account of the assumption of social and spiritual responsibility in the
American colonial world of the Puritans in the story “The May-Pole of Merry
Mount.”  The story is a pairing of the
hedonistic way of the settlement of Merry Mount with the strictly imposed
custom of a nearby Puritan town; in the relationship between the two communities,
a resolution of immediate conflict becomes a political reconciliation of life
and culture in old and new civilizations. 
The Puritans achieve a containment of the willful spirit of Merry Mount
when they capture the people of the rival town and take them into the Puritan
community.  The occasion is an
affirmation of the political authority of the Puritans and an acceptance of the
need for present and acquired lightness of heart and freedom of spirit in the constraint
of the Puritan consciousness.

Reformation of a society occurs when virtue in the human
spirit subdues the violence of evil and the chaos of rebellion.  In these two stories of New England, demand
for reform of existing English custom and for containment of social instability
sanctions the establishment of a derivation and reformation of culture and political
order in the American colonies.  For the
inhabitants of the colonies, the cause and progress of rebellion create vision
and path for realized reform residing within the structure and convention of remembered
and renewed civilization.