A Tale of a Shrewd Young Man

There are two key elements to keep in mind when reading "My Kinsman, Major Molineaux."  First, always remember that Robin is a very young man, who is visiting the big city (so to speak) for the first time.  It's worthwhile also just to think of the implications of his name--"Robin."  Hawthorne frequently chooses the names of his characters for their symbolic implications, and such is the case for Robin.  So one way to get a handle on this story is to think about the associations we make with that word.

Second, more than once in the story Robin is referred to as "shrewd."  While a meaning of that may immediately leap to all of our minds, --no doubt the word is quite familiar to all of us--we may not completely know the full possibilities of what that word means (and I can pretty much guarantee you that Hawthorne would--he is one of our more careful writers).  So here's a link that will take you to a definition of the word--make sure you note all of the possible meanings, as well as the origins of the word:

Definition of "shrewd"

Generally, Hawthorne is using a common narrative model for this story--a coming-of-age tale.  At its simplest, "My Kinsman, Major Molineaux" is a tale about a young man gaining knowledge about the world, and in the process losing his innocence.  It's a type of story that has been told thousands of times in the history of literature (and the history of culture), which can tell you how significant that process is to human beings and human culture.  It is as old as the Adam and Eve story (in the Western Christian tradition), as familiar as To Kill a Mockingbird, and as current (and odd) as The 40-Year Old Virgin.  (No, forty is not typical of coming-of-age tales.  But as one critic of the movie pointed out, the main character may be chronologically 40, but about 15 mentally.)

So what Hawthorne is doing here is neither new nor unfamiliar.

 

Boston Harbor in the 1700s

                                                  

Furthermore, the "direction" of Robin's movementa are also common to this type of story: moving from a country/rural setting to an urban/city setting.  In our imaginations the city has long stood as a place to gain knowledge--of many different sorts (which is what can make the city so problematic for many, as is the case in American literature and culture.  In looking ahead a bit, don't lose sight of the fact that "Bartleby, the Scrivener" is set in the city.)

Another aspect of this story to keep in mind, and again something common to Hawthorne, is the setting of the story in the historical past (i.e., Hawthorne's historical past).  In this case, the story is set in pre-Revolutionary America, roughly in the 1730s.  So one thing to think about is why choose this particular time frame?  Certainly Hawthorne was capable of writing a coming-of-age tale that would be contemporary to his readers.

Tar and Feathering in Colonial America

By choosing this setting, Hawthorne is choosing a time close to a mythic cultural event--the Revolutionary War (and here by "mythic" I mean culturally iconic, not false), an event with which his readers would be quite familiar.  (Keep in mind that for his readers, the Revolutionary War was still relatively fresh.)  He and his readers would know that what's coming, in the time frame of the story, was an event that fundamentally turned us into a democracy and distributed power into the hands of the people.  (At least, that was the ideal.)  Thus, one way to think about this story is to see it as a democratic parable, in which Robin represents the new nation (or what would be the new nation) embarking into the world of self-governance.

But nothing is ever straighforward with Hawthorne.    You need to think about the "new democracy" we see towards the end of the story, we need to think about Robin's purposes in coming to the big city, and most importantly, we need to think about Robin's reaction to seeing his kinsman Major Molineux and most especially, the final comment by the gentleman at the very end of the story.