It is interesting that Mr. Hooper wears his veil to
preside over both a wedding and a funeral, and his veil impacts the audience at both
events greatly. Hawthorne is clearly trying to show that the symbolic significance of
the veil and the secret sin that it represents stretches to both times of sadness and
times of joy. The way in which the veil taints this joyful event is made clear through
the following description:
Such was its immediate effect on the guests,
that a cloud seemed to have rolled duskily from beneath the black crape, and dimmed the
light of the candles. The bridal pair stood up before the minsiter. But the bride's cold
fingers quivered in the tremulous hand of the bridegroom, and her deathlike paleness
caused a whisper, that the maiden who had been buried a few hours before, was come from
her grave to be married.
If
this were not enough to ruin the wedding of this poor couple, Mr. Hooper than proceeds
to catch sight of himself in a mirror, and so terrified by his image swathed in the
black veil, runs out in fear and terror. Let us just focus, however, on the way in which
the black veil acts as a clear and obvious symbol of something that most people like to
ignore and deny. The visible reminder that it is of our secret sin disrupts even the
most joyful of events, such as the wedding. What we like to repress and ignore is thus
flaunted by such a symbol, which impacts everything.
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