Mistress Hibbens mentions a "yonder potenate you wot of" to whom is she referring?

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Multiple Choice

Mistress Hibbens mentions a "yonder potenate you wot of" to whom is she referring?

Explanation:
This line taps into the Puritan folklore Hawthorne braids into the novel—the Black Man is the Devil. Mistress Hibbins, known as a witch, speaks in a way that signals temptation and secret danger, so calling him a “potentate” over there sets him up as a ruler or sovereign of evil she and others believe they might encounter in the forest. The forest scenes in the book are where illicit rites and encounters with evil are imagined to happen, so identifying the reference as the Black Man fits both the language and the mood Hawthorne is building. The other figures (the King, the Admiral, the Governor) belong to political life and aren’t connected to this witch’s brush with occult power in the same symbolic way, so they aren’t suggested by this phrasing.

This line taps into the Puritan folklore Hawthorne braids into the novel—the Black Man is the Devil. Mistress Hibbins, known as a witch, speaks in a way that signals temptation and secret danger, so calling him a “potentate” over there sets him up as a ruler or sovereign of evil she and others believe they might encounter in the forest. The forest scenes in the book are where illicit rites and encounters with evil are imagined to happen, so identifying the reference as the Black Man fits both the language and the mood Hawthorne is building. The other figures (the King, the Admiral, the Governor) belong to political life and aren’t connected to this witch’s brush with occult power in the same symbolic way, so they aren’t suggested by this phrasing.

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