THE IMAGE OF THE FATHER
379
wants to succeed through his own efforts and his own merit. His
departure from home has evidently caused him to dream of achieving
economic as well as sexual independence. When at the end of the
story the gentleman suggests that Robin may decide to stay in town
and may prosper without the help of his kinsman, he is simply giv–
ing expression to the youth's unvoiced but readily discernible desire.
The gentleman has an opportunity to observe how half-hearted
Robin is about finding his kinsman. When the sounds of the ap–
proaching procession become more clearly audible, the youth comes
to the conclusion that some kind of "prodigious merry-making" is
going forward and suggests that he and his new-found friend step
around the corner, to a point where he thinks everyone is hastening,
and partake of their share of the fun. He has to be reminded by his
companion that he is searching for
his
kinsman, who is supposed
to pass by the place where they now are in a very short time. With
insight and artistry Hawthorne spreads the evidence of Robin's ir–
resoluteness of purpose from the very beginning of the story to the
moment of Major Molineux's appearance; but so subtle is the evi–
dence, so smoothly does it fit into the surface flow of the narrative,
that its significance never obtrudes itself on our attention.
By this point in the story, furthermore, we unconsciously under–
stand Robin's vacillation more completely than I have been able to
suggest. We see that, unbeknown to himself, the youth has good
reasons for
not
wanting to find Major Molineux: when he finds
him, he will have to re-submit to the kind of authority from which,
temporarily at least, he has just escaped. At some deep level the
Major appears anything but a potential benefactor; he symbolizes
just those aspects of the father from which the youth so urgently
desires to be free.
As
an elderly relative of the father and an authority
figure, he may be confused with the father. In any case, however
undeservedly, he has now become the target of all the hostile and
rebellious feelings which were originally directed against the father.
Hawthorne tells us these things, it is interesting to note, by means
of just the kind of unconscious manifestations which twentieth-century
psychology has found so significant. While Robin sits on the steps of
the church, fighting his desire to sleep, he has a fantasy in which
he imagines that his kinsman is already dead! And his very next
thought is of his father's household. He wonders how "that evening
