Megan Robison

Response to Carlye:

I think that Mr. Hooper had some self-confidence issues. He had something (or maybe a few things) in his past that he was ashamed of, and wanted a way of reassuring himself that people could still like him despite the mistake(s) he'd made. He wanted to see if people would still care about him if they knew his shame. I think he chose the wrong way of going about this, though. It brought him a lot of attention, but it was the wrong kind of attention. No one really understood what he was doing, so they were afraid of him. I don't think Mr. Hooper realized that no one knew what he was doing, and I think he just thought they were ashamed of him.  His fiance, Elizabeth, begged him to remove the veil, and he wouldn't. Even though it cost him his marriage, he didn't remove the veil because he couldn't be in a marriage with someone who he believed wouldn't accept his shortcomings. When he was on his deathbed, he finally explained this to the people who were present. He explained that everyone has secrets and scandals in their past, and the reason he wore the veil was to symbolize this.