The Puritan Thoughts in Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.doc

霍桑在红字中的清教思想The Puritan Thoughts in Hawthornes The Scarlet LetterAbstract: Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of the most important novelists in America. Many of his stories are set in Puritan New England, describing the deep effect of Puritan cruel doctrine of sin and punishment on the early settlers of North America. The Scarlet Letter (1850) shocked the nation by boldly discussing “forbidden” topics including sexual misconduct of societys leader, the miserable life of a single mother, the separation of church and state. His work not only provide a taste of 19th century puritan culture, but also take a glimpse of Hawthornes mind as he comes to terms with his witch-hunting ancestors and his vocation. Now, no study of American history is complete without through appreciation of Nathaniel Hawthornes timeless works. This thesis chooses to explain Hawthornes puritan thoughts from my understanding of The Scarlet Letter. W. C Browell once said “Hawthorne success only when he is concerned with puritan themes”. From his religious thoughts we can find how he criticizes human nature.Key words: The Scarlet Letter; Puritanism; human nature; sin摘要：纳撒尼尔霍桑是美国最重要的小说家之一,他的许多小说都以清教徒为主的新英格兰作为背景,描述当时清教严酷的罪与罚的教义对美国早期定居者的深刻影响。他在巨作红字（1850）中探讨了当时严禁的话题，其中包括上层社会人士的不端行为，单身母亲的悲惨生活，以及宗教和政治的争端。他的作品中反映了他从参与政治迫害的祖辈和工作中得来的宗教思想以及十九世纪的宗教观念。现在人们多说，缺乏了霍桑作品研究的文学是不完整的文学。本文选择了从清教思想来解读红字。正如布伦威尔曾经说的霍桑的成功基于他的清教主题。从他的清教思想中我们可以开到他对人性的剖析。关键词：红字；清教主义；人性; 原罪ContentsI. Introduction.1A. A brief introduction to Hawthorne.1B. Hawthornes religious background.1II. The Story and Its themes.2III. The Puritan Mind of Hawthorne.3A. The doctrine of original sin in The Scarlet Letter.4B. Good deeds in The Scarlet Letter.5C. Human nature in The Scarlet Letter .7IV. Conclusion.9Works Cited.11I. Introduction A. A brief introduction to HawthorneHawthorne was born on the forth of July, 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. He was born with puritan thoughts as his forefathers were man of prominence in the Puritan theocracy of seventeenth century New England. One of them was a colonial magistrate, notorious for his part in the persecution of the Quakers, and another was a judge at the Salem Witchcraft Trial in 1962(Chang 70). Gradually the family fortune declined. His father died in a sea voyage when Hawthorne was five. So the boys poverty-stricken mother moved her family to the home of relatives in Salem named Manning. In 1821 Hawthorne went to Bowdoin College where he had Longfellow and Franklin Pierce, who become the 14th president of the U.S. as friends. Due to his foot injury at age of about nine, Hawthorne was confined at home for several years, during which he read many books, especially the works of Sir Walter Scott, John Bunyan, and Shakespeare. After his graduation from Bowdoin College, he returned home to Salem spending all of his time perfecting the art of writing there. In his early writing period, he devoted most of his time indoors to mainly writing short stories. In 1837, he published his first collection of stories entitled Twice-told Tales, which received good critical attention. And in 1842 the second volume of Twice-told Tales was published and received a very complimentary review by Edgar Allan Poe. In 1847, he began to write The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850, which recognized by numerous critics as one of the greatest American novels. Later on, he wrote more novels, such as The House of the Seven Gables and The Blithedale Romance. He died on May 19, 1864 while he was on a trip to the White Mountains of New Hampshire with his friend, Franklin Pierce.B. Hawthornes religious backgroundHawthorne was born with puritan thoughts as his forefathers were man of prominence in the Puritan theocracy of seventeenth century New England. One of them was a colonial magistrate, notorious for his part in the persecution of the Quakers, and another was a judge at the Salem Witchcraft Trial in 1962(Chang 70). Hawthorne is a man of paradoxes and opposites. Living in a society, which his puritan forefathers built, Hawthorne is much influenced by Calvinism. The first and most important of Calvins dogmas is: God is to tally sovereign; man is totally depraved. In this concept of Gods omnipotence and mans complete inability are implied the doctrines of predestination (election and reprobation), the lack of freedom of the will, and limited atonement (Christ died only to save the elect). Calvins clarion declaration of Gods supremacy over all human thought and action and of Gods vast displeasure which amounted to detestation and abomination of man since Adams Fall is the bulwark of this reformed faith. The first words of the New England primer state: “In Adams fall, we sinned all” (Johnson 27). After the fall of Adam, the hearts and souls of human beings were believed evil from the moment of conception, no matter how kind or how pious the act, the reality in soul was that they were capable of every sin. II. The Story and Its themesThe Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorns masterpiece of Pscyho1ogical romance setting in the seventeenth century New England. Hawthorne successfully presents the strictness of the Puritanism of that time and its cruel killing of human nature by presenting a realistic setting and puritanical philosophy. Hawthorne, however, aims not only to expose the harsh state of the Puritan society of that time but to explore a way out for people to take a fresh air. It tells the passionate, forbidden love affair of a married woman who has a child with some else but not her husband. She keeps the child, raising it herself in the community where her situation is known and she refuses to reveal the name of her lover. In order to punish her, she is shamed, publicly, by wearing a letter “A” which means adultery on chest at the scaffold. The Scarlet Letter is an example of how Puritan society will always remember the sin. Hawthorne uses the scarlet letter to depict his feelings of the exaggerated emotions of the puritans and their overly dramatic punishments. This book explores the conflicts between private truth and public appearances, and the choice between sin and salvation.The theme of this novel highlights Hawthornes display of the oppression against human beings physical passion under the reign of New England Puritanism. Also observed moral value is based on the doctrine of Puritan duality of body and soul, that is, the physical passion is the root of sin and is obstacle of human beings spiritual pursuit. Human inheritance of sin from their ancestors also contributes to this, because from the very beginning of human life Eve couldnt resist the temptation of the Serpent, satisfying her vanity at the expense of going against Gods order. So its after human beings quietly eating the forbidden fruit that they began to acquire the knowledge and all kinds of physical passions. In this novel, he cant publicly oppose the Puritan cruelty. Instead, he pays more attention to how the female protagonist directly faces her own sin of adultery, gets the forgiveness of the fellow townsmen and finally gets accepted by the Puritan society. In this process, Hawthorne adopts the pattern of Jesus Christs forgiving the prostitute who abandoned wickedness in the New Testament of the Bible. However, by using symbols and ambiguities, Hawthorne implicitly expresses his dissatisfaction with the Puritan oppression against human beings free will and human nature.III. The Puritan Mind of HawthorneBy the sympathy of your human hearts for sin, yet shall scent out all the placeswhether in church, bed-chamber, street, field or forestwhere crime has been committed, and shall exist to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood-spot. Far more than this! It shall be yours to penetrate, in every bosom, the deep mystery of sin, the fountain of all wicked arts, and which inexhaustibly supplies more evil impulses than human power.can make manifest in deeds.Depending upon one anothers hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived! Evil is the nature of mankind. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Yong Goodman Brown (Zhang 41)Hawthorne is very much concerned with the intolerance and bigotry of his Puritan ancestors, in The Scarlet Letter, he creates characters and situations to help project his complex point of view about Puritanism. In regard to the relationship between God and man, Hawthorne adheres to some of the main Puritan dogmas, such as the Absolute Sovereignty of God, the Innate Depravity of man and concept of Gods Salvation .The Transcendentalist doctrines that man was essentially good in nature, illimitable in abilities and that man could get access to God through ones innate instinct were totally unacceptable to Hawthorne .According to Hawthorne, only when man accepted the fact of mans Innate Depravity could he atone for his sin. Only by means of penance repentance and atonement could man get close to God. A. The doctrine of original sin in The Scarlet LetterAll his life, Hawthorne seems to be haunted by his sense of sin and evil in life. Reading his tales and romances, one cannot but be overwhelmed by the “black” vision which these works reveal (Chang 71). In Puritan doctrines, the relationship between God and man was of prime importance. They believed in God with absolute power, controlling everything. God has total dominant power over man; while man had no real decision to make concerning the world around him. In Puritans eyes, Gods Sovereignty was absolute (Johnson 50). The doctrine of Gods sovereignty led to the Puritan doctrine of Innate Depravity, which meant that all human beings were born with sin. Man inherited the sin from Adam and Eve. In The Scarlet Letter, Puritan doctrines were embodied in a variety of forms. Most importantly, Hawthorne affirmed the Absolute Sovereignty of God and mans Innate Depravity in his work. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne created a world in which everybody had committed sins. Different men had just one status in front of God-sinners (Sun 87). There were open sinners, such as Hester that committed adultery and was punished in public. There were secret sinners, such as Dimmesdale who had committed adultery together with Hester while lacking the courage to acknowledge it in public and chose to hide himself and evade punishment. There were sinners who enjoyed the happiness of committing sins, like Chillingworth who took pleasure in probing Dimmesdales heart and torture his soul. Even common people without concrete names in The Scarlet Letter were sinful. Those merciless housewives advocating punishing Hester with death were representatives of unconscious sinners. Just take Chillingworth as an example, he shows up in Chapter III. He is short and has a wrinkled brow. One of his shoulders rises higher than the other. And he is seen by Hester when she is on the scaffold shamed by public as her adultery. He marries Hester without real love and is stupid to send his young wife to American alone. Chillingworth arrives in Boston on the day that Hester is publicly shamed and forced to wear the scarlet letter. He vows revenge on the father of Pearl. Due to his experimentation with herbs used by the Indians in the American wilderness, he becomes a competent doctor in the Puritan community. When Dimmesdale helps Hester to keep right of charging Pearl, Chillingworth begins to suspect that the minister is the guilty man he is searching for. Sooner, due to Dimmesdales poor health, Chillingworth tortures his physician and lives with him under the same roof. As time goes by, Chillingworth detects that Dimmesdale is the very person he is searching for. He increases his psychological and mental persecution of the young priest. At last, Dimmesdale dies after his public confession. After Dimmesdales death, Chillingworth, who has already become a man of great vengeance and takes pleasure in torturing Dimmesdale, loses his purpose in life. Finding no pleasure in life any more, the avenger dies, too. In Hawthornes eyes, Chillingworth is a total sinner. A sinner not only has intelligence and medical techniques but also one with revenge heart. He is a man looks quite gentle but psychologically distorted in heart. His ugly appearance reveals his “black” soul. Chillingworth tries every means to find out the person who is Hesters adultery. He tortures Dimmesdale as possible as he can psychologically. But in doing so he himself deteriorates fast morally and finally he becomes a “devil” tormented by his own base desire of revenge and dies. When Dimmesdale courageously confesses his own sin in the public, Chillingworth loses his target, and dies as his life is meaningless without revenge. Throughout his life span we can see that Chillingworth has changed himself into a “devil” by “devoting himself to the constant analysis of a heart full of torture” (Leavitt 76). Just like Dimmesdale tells Hester that “We are not, Hester, the worst sinner in the world. There is one wore than even the polluted priest! That old mans revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart” (Hawthorne 178). Though the thing that Chilllingworth wants a family with Hester is a litter bit selfish but that is a kind of love. But when this kind of love changes into a revenge and becoming a target of life, which is rebellion of biblical doctrines. Then he needs to pay what he has done, his appearance becomes more and more ugly, finally he pays his sin through death. And for Puritans they believe that people like Chillingworth who are “the taint of sin” will never go into the heaven and never reborn. Hawthorne here advocates Christian love for all people as a virtue of the first importance, while the absence of this human love, as in the case of the doctor, is the most deadly sin. In his mind, human needs to be purified that the basic opinion of Puritans, also Hawthornes.B. Good deeds in The Scarlet Letter But, out of the whole human family, it would not have been easy to select the same number of wise and virtuous persons who should be less capable of sitting in judgment on an erring womans heart, and disentangling its mesh of good and evil, than the sages of rigid aspect towards whom Hester Prynne now turned her face. (Johnson 55) The Puritans as whole believe themselves to be Gods “Chosen People”. They believe that if a person is good, godly, and pious, and God seems to be good to him or her, there is a strong suspicion that person might be one of the elect. If God had not from the beginning of time elected a person, amount of good deeds would change what God had decided. So, Pu