论文总字数：27951字

摘 要

Additionally, I would like to extent my gratitude to the faculty members in School of Foreign Languages and Huaiyin Normal University: Prof. Pu, Prof. Wang, Prof. Yuan and all the other respectable teachers who have ever helped me greatly widen my vision and build up related knowledge for my thesis with their enlightening and earnest lectures and instructions over the past four years.

My gratitude also goes to my family, my foreign teachers and my friends for their company, encouragement and trust. With their cordial help and support, I am able to finish the thesis successfully.

Without all the support and help, I could not have accomplished my thesis.

Abstract

Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose works are characterized by rich religious elements, especially his representative work The Scarlet Letter, is the most distinguished romantic novelist in the 19^th century America. The masterpiece became an immediate success after its publication in 1850 and is becoming more and more influential in American literature. Through the analysis the development of the heroine Hester Prynne’s personality and destiny in the context of Puritanism, this thesis aims to reflect the positive influence of Puritanism upon her and reveals its illumination to the current American social morality.

Keywords: Puritanism；ethical morality；The Scarlet Letter; Prynne Hester

摘要

纳撒尼尔·霍桑的作品充满着浓厚的宗教主义色彩，尤其是代表作《红字》是美国19世纪最杰出的浪漫主义小说。这部杰作在1850年问世就立即获得了成功且在美国文学史上颇具影响力。本文通过分析在清教主义的环境下，主人公海斯特的性格和命运的发展，旨在反映清教主义对她的积极影响以及揭示出其对当今美国社会伦理道德的启示。

关键词: 清教主义；伦理道德；《红字》；普林·海斯特

Contents

1. Introduction 1

1.1 A Brief Introduction to Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Work 1

1.2 The Writing Background of The Scarlet Letter 2

1.3 The Main Ideas of The Scarlet Letter 2

2. Literature Review 3

2.1 An Introduction to Puritanism 4

2.2 The Puritanical Principles 4

3. Puritanism Embodied in Hester’s Morality 5

3.1 Hester’s Original Sin and Salvation 5

3.2 Hester’s Diligence and Independence 6

3.3 Hester’s Tolerance and Thrift 8

3.4 Hester’s Introspection and Atonement 8

4.The Illumination of Puritanism to Current American Social Ethics 10

5.Conclusion 11

Works Cited 12

1. Introduction

Along with the economic booming and the social development, nowadays, more and more people are inclined to materialism and neglect current ethical morality so as to do a lot of inhuman and immoral things. They try their best to chase their desires and pursue what they want at all costs, which has violated ethical morality. However, it is all known that Puritanism has a profound influence on the development of America and constitutes the core values of Americans.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose works are characterized by rich religious elements, especially his representative work The Scarlet Letter, is the most distinguished romantic novelist in the 19^th century America. Through the analysis the development of the heroine Hester Prynne’s personality and destiny in the context of Puritanism, this thesis aims to reflect the positive influence of Puritanism upon her and reveals its illumination to the current social morality. It is indispensable for people to treat Puritanism with dialectical eyes, that is to say, people need reject the dross and assimilate the essence.

1.1 A Brief Introduction to Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Work

Hawthorne was born on the fourth of July, 1804 in Salem Massachusetts. He is considered as the most distinguished and renowned American romance writer. His romantic writing is a landmark of the romantic period in American literature. The wonderful combination of symbols, contrast and psychoanalysis in best novel of romanticism——The Scarlet Letter, enables the readers to have a better understanding of the profound connotation and the theme of the novel.

Hawthorne carried a sophisticated attitude to Puritanism. He declared that it could purify people’s hearts to get salvation by benevolence and repentance. He made friends with transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau in 1841, and their thoughts also influenced him and his writing. Emerson and Thoreau are the most significant representatives of transcendentalism, and they have proposed that individualism works first and the spirit of self-service is of great importance. So transcendentalism was in the opposite direction of Puritanism.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is the outstanding novel of great significance in the 19 century America. In fact, through The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne means to display some of puritanical doctrines can persecute human beings, oppress and even distort human nature. Due to Hawthorne’s unique family background and the long exposure to Puritanism, The Scarlet Letter is believed to consider as the best to reflect Puritanism in American literature. This novel embodies the understanding of Puritanism and the concept of ethical morality by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

1.2 The Writing Background of The Scarlet Letter

In the 17^th century, the May-flower ship first landed on America which was called the new world. British puritans began to migrate to the colonies in the North America.

In that time, America was being opened up. Many Europeans emigrated to this new land. Most of those Englishmen went to America in order to escape the religious persecution and wanted to realize their religious dream that couldn’t be realized in England. As far as they founded their own paradise in America, they also set up the autocratic government which combined religion and politics into one. In the middle age of the 19^th century, America took place a tremendous change in industry, economy, population and politic. The advanced technique and machines couldn’t improve the society ethical value and social quality, but the contradiction between society and people, and religious conflict were continuously aggravated, so people got trapped into abyss deeply. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne was published in 19^th century, people had the impact of Calvinism, Christianism, and the control of puritanical religious principles destroyed men’s spirit and depressed people’s natural need. Meanwhile, human being had profound influence on Puritanism, they devastated people’s minds, suppressed human nature and rights, which made people’s life miserable. Once human being disobeyed the puritanical doctrines, puritans would punish them harshly.

1.3 The Main Ideas of The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter describes a tragic story. The protagonist Hester was a beautiful and kind lady who emigrated to North America with other puritans. Her husband named Chillingworth was an aged learned man, who had long time dwelt in Amsterdam for his work. He sent his wife before him because he had looked after some necessary affairs. Hester went to this small town lonely and live difficulty. When Hester was acquainted with Dimmesdale, she had been taken good care to settle down firmly. Afterwards, she fell in love with Dimmesdale and committed adultery with him. They had a daughter named Pearl. Dimmesdale was a priest, considering his identity and social status, he had no courage to acknowledge the extramarital affair with Hester. Hester must be sentenced to commit adultery and need put the scarlet letter “A” on the breast forever. She had to live in shame and humiliation, deserted by other people. What’s the bitterest was that Dimmesdale must perform his duty to persuade Hester to say who the adulterer was. However, Chillingworth, Hester’s husband went to Boston after two years later and saw his wife had stood in the jail door. He also tortured the priest psychologically and mentally as the revenge.

2. Literature Review

Puritan is the name given in the sixteenth century to the more extreme Protestants within the Church of England who thought the English Reformation had not gone far enough in reforming the doctrines and structure of the church; they wanted to purify their national church by eliminating every shred of Catholic influence. In the seventeenth century, many puritans emigrated to the New World, where they sought to found a holy commonwealth in New England. The puritans established their own religious and moral principles known as American Puritanism, which became one of the enduring influences on American thought and American literature. The puritans hoped build “a city upon a hill” ——an ideal community. Since that time, Americans have viewed their county as a great experiment, a worthy model for other nations. The American values owe very much to the puritanical belief. (Lan Hongmei, 2010:3)

As the theme of traditional American culture, Puritanism and puritans are the major concerns that should always be brought into consideration in the study of American culture. Over the century, American scholars have been making extensive and profound studies of Puritanism from various angles. Their studies have roughly undergone the following three stages: (Lan Hongmei, 2010:3-5)

From the late nineteenth century to the 1920s, the studies of Puritanism were still influenced by the early history tradition which focused on studying the framework of political and institutional history, trying to explore the democratic problems under the authority of Puritanism and holding a negative view towards the puritans. (Lan Hongmei, 2010:3)

From the 1930s to the 1950s, as historians became more and more conscious of the necessity of affirming the traditional values, they began to reexamine the role of Puritanism in American civilization. Studies of Puritanism achieved a major breakthrough during that period. (Lan Hongmei, 2010:3)

From the 1960s to the present, the studies of Puritanism have experienced a period of prosperity. More scholars have devoted themselves to this field and have achieved unprecedentedly fruitful accomplishments. One of them is the first issue of Early American Literature, which is one of the most important periodicals in promoting American Puritanism studies and symbolizes that the studies of American Puritanism have entered into a “golden age”. (Lan Hongmei, 2010:3-4)

2.1 An Introduction to Puritanism

The originator of Puritanism is John Knox, who is a unique creative Scottish man. Puritanism is the practices and beliefs of the puritans. Puritanism followed the teachings of Calvinism. With the doctrines in their mind, the puritans have always valued the qualities of hard work, thrift, diligence and abstinence.

2.2 The Puritanical Principles

On the one hand, Puritanism highlighted that people should live in a plain and hardworking way and need keep on the rails. They opposed that men pursued happiness and art. They were firmly convinced that people were diligent and thrifty which could reveal morality. Thus, they maintained that asceticism and thrift must be proposed before creating a new situation.

Those puritans positively initiated their “asceticism” which aimed to damage the sophisticated impulse and enjoyment of people, and to make puritans follow the doctrines orderly. Under their control, people spent majority of their lives in working and praying the God. People’s personal desires, feelings and needs were inhabited.

On the other hand, the puritans regarded The Bible as the authority of their doctrines. To be able to read The Bible and understand God’s will, education was essential for puritans. Puritans believed that human beings were predestined by God before they were born.

3. Puritanism Embodied in Hester’s Morality

According to the puritanical principles, the wife should submit to her husband completely, puritans expected marriage to be simultaneously affectionate. They believed that husband should rule their wives: their wives should be submitted to their husband and subject to their wills just as relation between God and human being. Under such kind of thought, no matter how old, hypocritical and ugly Chillingworth was, Hester must submit and be faithful to him. Everything she did should be around him since he was her husband and she had married with him. He was her God. He ruined Hester’s youth and happiness, but she need to obey him.

Hester was a charming and vigorous girl, but his husband was ugly, unhealthy and old. There was no affection between Hester and Chillingworth, so she was the sacrificial lamb of the unhappy marriage. She hadn’t heard from of his husband for two years, so she lived alone and need people’s care. Unfortunately, a priest intruded her life and she fell in love with him. Lawrence said that, “if the spirit and body are not harmonious relationship, they have no balance and mutual respect naturally, so the life is miserable and intolerable.” In order to stop the miserable and intolerable life to attain the realization of life value, Hester tried to break though the shackles of feudal ethical code boldly to pursue her beautiful love. She disobeyed the traditional ethics for women and brought her condemnation of that community.

3.1 Hester’s Original Sin and Salvation

The original sin derived from the tale of Christianity, which means human being are sinners in born and can’t wash it away. According to The Bible, people have two kinds of sins, the original sin and the principal crime. The original sin is left behind by our ancestor, and principal crime is committed in our life-time. Christianity believed that Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, which violated the will of God and were expelled to the Garden of Eden. This would be the root of all the bitterness. In traditional Christian teaching, the first sin, an action of the first humans, is understood to be the cause of “original sin”, the living individual of the disempowering effects of a sin “originally” committed by the first man in the first hours of the race’s history. John Calvin defined the original sin in his Institutes of The Christian Religion as follows：Original sin, therefore, seems to be a hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature, diffused into all parts of the soul, which first makes us liable to God’s wrath, then also brings forth in us those works which scriptures calls “works of the flesh”. (Lan Hongmei, 2010:25)

So everybody has sins when he was born in this world, and people need purify their heart to get salvation. However, lust is one of the seven deadly sins of the original sins. The protagonist Hester Prynne had an extramarital affair with Dimmesdale who broke the puritanical law, which was against with the puritanical doctrines completely.

Crime is a portion of Puritanism, and the more important part is salvation. There are three sinners (Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth) in the novel to purify their soul to find a new life. Hester violated puritanical principle because of adultery. She did not collapse in the face of the contempt and desertion of people and society. On the contrary, she went on living unyieldingly. In this way, she related with society, and she let people know her and accept her atonement. Through needlework, people saw another aspect of Hester. Her positive attitude towards life made her life fill with hopes. Hester sought to obtain nothing beyond subsistence and brought up her daughter.

She perseveringly brought up her daughter Pearl, who was the sign of her sin. Hester lived by doing sewing and performing acts of charity. “Continually, and in a thousand other ways, did she feel the innumerable throbs of anguish that had been so cunningly contrived for her by the undying, the ever ——active sentence of the puritan tribunal”（Nathaniel, 2011:35）. This can illustrate that Puritanism must punish and tortured a rebel continually, and the sinned man is unforgivable. If one violates the doctrines of Puritanism, he needs to do some charities to acquire salvation so that he can have a new birth. That is to say, it is needlework that Hester find out a new living way to get salvation. She had no more desires but acquiring the subsistence to get a new birth.

3.2 Hester’s Diligence and Independence

Hester lived lonely without a friend on the earth who did not dare and was unwilling to care for them. She did sewing for her living. Expect for that expenditure in the decoration of her daughter Pearl, Hester bestowed all her superfluous money in charity, on wretches less miserable than herself, and who frequently insulted her. As the novel said, “she possessed an art that sufficed, even in a land that afforded comparatively little scope for its exercise, to supply food for her thriving infant and herself”（Nathaniel, 2011:32）. Hester admitted she sinned and accepted the punishment, but she did not lose heart to life and she got up the courage to face her life. She didn’t give up her life and herself through doing needle work. “Her needlework was seen on the ruff of the Governor; military men wore it on their scarves, and the minister in his band; it decked the baby’s little cap; it was shut up, to be mildewed, in the coffins of the dead”（Nathaniel, 2011:33）. She had passion for her life since she created many different kinds of needlework to contribute to people. In the puritanical society, they advocated to live in thrift and to survive by labor.

Her diligence enabled her to overcome and to conquer all the difficulties in the life. She not only pulled her out of the dilemma but also earned her respect of some people.

When the crime was exposed to the public, she was teased by the people all around her and was abandoned by the society, but she was a desperately independent woman to face everything. She scorned the puritanical ethics and the puritanical society. She took the punishment but never accepted those moral standards of the society which punished her. She was weak in some aspects, but she dared to believe in the possibility of changes in morality. She persisted in her attitude to love and believes in the strength of love; she revolted against her fate; she fought for her rights of survival. Human nature was the director in her life. Diligence and independence is the important key to the success no matter what you will do. She wandered without principles and guidance in ethical morality. Shame, despair and solitude had made her become stronger and stronger.

3.3 Hester’s Tolerance and Thrift

In the novel, “Or, —— can we not suppose it? ——guilty as they may be, retaining, nevertheless, a zeal for God’s glory and man’s welfare, they shrink from displaying themselves black and filthy in the view of them; because, thenceforward, no good can be achieved by them; no evil of the past be redeemed by better service”（Nathaniel, 2011:78）. For fear of losing his reputation and status, Dimmesdale had no courage to confess his guilt to the public. His coward left Hester lone in bitterness and contempt. Hester was really a tolerant woman, because she had enough courage to tolerate all the gossip and contempt from the people and the miserable community.

In The Scarlet Letter, we knew that Hester lived in thrift, including her clothing and living condition. “Her own dress was of the coarsest materials and the most somber hue; with only that one ornament,-the letter,-which it was her doom to wear. The child’s attire, on the other hand, was distinguished by a fanciful, or, we might rather say, a fantastic ingenuity…”（Nathaniel, 2011:33）In terms of Hester, living in thrift is just a way to reveal her salvation and introspection, but she does not treat her daughter in that way because her loves her deeply.

Tolerance can widen your stage to show your talent, thrift is always to promote for current people. So, whenever we are in what kind of society, thrift is always advocated and encouraged, which is a good virtue for people.

3.4 Hester’s Introspection and Atonement

Hester had a chance to get away from the pathetic place —— Boston, within the limits of Puritanism, and she could return to her birthplace, or to any other places in Europe after being released from the prison. Marvelously, she gave up the opportunity and stay in this place. “It may seem marvelous, that this woman should still call that place her home, where, and where only, she must be the type of shame”（Nathaniel, 2011:30）. This word can reveal that Hester wants to introspect her crime in the painful place after she was set free from to the prison. In the terms of Hester, she must stay in this place to introspect her crime so that can achieve her atonement.

“ But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked event has given the color to their lifetime; and still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it”（Nathaniel, 2011:30）. As the novel says, human beings maintain a view of fatality except for any one. This may be a way for Hester atonement and introspection her guilt. “Here, she said to herself, had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul, and work out another purity than that which she had lost; more saint-like, because the result of martyrdom.（Nathaniel, 2011:31）Hester tried her best to endure those punishments from others so that she could purify her heart and soul to get a new birth. One should take responsibility of what one did, especially, if one have made a mistake, one need accept some punishments to help one remember what wrong thing one did. Obviously, it is necessary for one to reflect and introspect on the thing one has done so that one can avoid making the mistake twice. In addition, developing a good habit of introspection after one has made mistakes and errors, which contributes to improve one’s moral quality.

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