Themes in My Kinsman, Major Molineux
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Short Story Features Basic Themes of Life
Mar 31, 2009
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story, My Kinsman, Major Molineux, is a powerful and complex allegory about the misplaced Tory governor who tries to succeed in the New World where he is not wanted and who has difficulty understanding that he is not wanted.
Hawthorne supports the difficulty of his struggling protagonist by delving into the themes of coming of age, order versus disorder, and city versus country.
Coming of Age
When the story opens, we meet Robin who is presented as a naïve but confident country youth who is eagerly making his first visit to town. He steps off the ferry and begins the typical coming of age journey. With his childhood behind him in the country, Robin has adventures that give him a greater understanding of the world and leave him older, wiser, and sadder.
The events of Robin’s night leave him uncertain. He doesn’t believe he is ready to enter the world. He feels foolish and unable to understand the ways of the world. However, the gentleman who waits with him to see his kinsman tells him to give himself just a little more time. He suggests that Robin has learned more than he realizes and that now he is able to survive on his own without help from others.
Order Versus Disorder
When Robin begins his coming of age journey, he leaves behind the orderly quiet life of the country, where everything seems to be what it claims to be and where the schedule of life centers on the orderly family worship that his father leads every evening.
When he arrives at town, Robin has one disconcerting encounter after another. He meets people who don’t respond the way he expects them too. He wanders streets that are crooked and meandering. The actions of the mob are described by the narrator as ‘in senseless uproar, in frenzied merriment.’’
Robin had believed that name of his kinsman would be a talisman that would open doors for him and help him make sense of his new experiences. However, nobody responds to the name as he expects and rather than help and consideration he finds anger and refusal.
The contrast between the order found in the country life that Robin left behind and the disorder of the city that he has entered represents the difficulties that most young people encounter as they grow up and must enter a world that doesn’t fit the orderly prototype of their childhood. Robin must learn to act on his own and make order out of what seems to be chaos.
City Versus Country
In My Kinsman, Major Molineux, the reader discovers the age-old story of the town mouse and the country mouse, one of the oldest themes in literature. The parties in the opposing environments always find the order and continuity of the environment they were raised in as rather dull and hope to find excitement by visiting a new world, a world unknown to them. So, the country bumpkin visits the cities looking for bright lights and excitement and the city dweller hopes to find excitement in the loneliness and wildness of the country.
Young people journey to a new world and soon discover that the signposts that work for them in their own environment are completely wrong for the new environment. They become discouraged and often like the mice in the fables or Robin in the story want to return to the order and comfort of the environment that is familiar to them.
Linked Themes
The carefully linked themes of the story, My Kinsman, Major Molineux, obviously build on each other to create the strong sense of displacement and inadequacy that causes Robin to wish to go home by the end of the night. However, these experiences also cause him to grow rapidly and to become wiser. Robin’s new friend suggests that Robin is more ready than he knows to survive in this new life, if he gives it a chance.
These linked themes also support the allegory of a composite Tory who is trying to bridge the gap between his life in America and his world in England.
Read more about Nathaniel Hawthorne at Suite101.
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