THE IMAGE OF THE FATHER
375
sport of him that night. The contagion was spreading among the mul–
titude, when all at once, it seized upon Robin, and he sent forth a shout
of laughter that echoed through the street,-every man shook his sides,
every man emptied his lungs, but Robin's shout was the loudest there.
When the laughter has momentarily spent its force, the proces–
sion is resumed. Robin asks the gentleman who has been sitting be–
side him to direct
him
to the ferry. The Major, the boy realizes, will
scarcely desire to see his face again. In the friendliest possible way
the gentleman refuses Robin's request. He tells the youth that he
will speed him on his journey in a few days if he still wants to leave.
But he suggests another possibility. "'. . . if you prefer to remain
with us, perhaps, as you are a shrewd youth, you may rise in the
world without the help of your kinsman, Major Molineux.' "
II
"My Kinsman, Major Molineux" belongs, I believe,
among Hawthorne's half-dozen greatest short stories. But unexpected
difficulties arise when one attempts to account for the spell the story
casts. Although it seems clear enough as it is read, it resists analysis.
Above all, its climax is puzzling. "Mental inebriety" is hardly
an adequate explanation for a youth's bare-faced mockery of an
elderly relative for whom he had been searching, whose ill-treatment
might have been expected to inspire feelings of compassion and anger.
Of the half-dozen critics who have discussed the story, sur–
prisingly, no more than two seem aware that it presents any
difficulties. The rest accept Hawthorne's explanation at face value.
They regard "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" as the story of an
ignorant country youth who, happening to wander upon the scene
at an inopportune time, is first frustrated in
his
search as a result of
the preparation the colonists are making and then becomes a reluc–
tant and confused spectator at their humiliation of his kinsman.
Such an interpretation not only fails to explain many aspects of the
story; it hardly suggests why the story should interest us.
It
is perhaps
significant that the critics who recognize that the story is by no
means so one-dimensional as this, Malcolm Cowley and
Q.
D. Leavis,
also show the keenest awareness of its greatness. Unfortunately even
these critics have not succeeded, in my opinion, in penetrating to
the story's richest veins of meaning.
