Hawthorne uses Puritan New England as the setting for his stories to address politics, community, and government in an emerging nation. Puritanism was the driving force of 17th-century life. It was characterized by individual responsibility to uphold God’s word and salvation through integrity. Puritanism also viewed the Bible as a literal authority and human beings as born sinners, and held that no prayer would ensure salvation.

Hawthorne’s prominent Puritan ancestors were among the first settlers in Massachusetts, including a judge in the Salem Witch Trials. Several characters and events in “Young Goodman Brown” are taken directly from Hawthorne’s ancestry. When the traveler reveals that he helped Brown’s grandfather whip a Quaker woman in Salem, it mirrors Hawthorne’s great-grandfather William Hathorne, who ordered a whipping of a Quaker woman. Hawthorne later changed the spelling of his name from Hathorne to distance himself from his ancestors’ violent past.

Several of the characters, including Goody Cloyse and Deacon Gookin, are based on individuals who were accused of being witches or who participated in the Salem Witch Trials. While many individuals believed they were carrying out the work of God by identifying evil and eliminating it from their society, Hawthorne uses real historical events to criticize the misconception of purity of religious belief during the rise of Puritanism in America.