爱情与责任的碰撞--《红字》和《廊桥遗梦》中女主人公命运抉择的分析

论文总字数：31533字

摘 要

爱情是世间最美好的情感，而婚外恋是人性追求爱情与社会要求建立秩序相冲突的产物。《红字》和《廊桥遗梦》这两部小说都是围绕“婚外恋”这一情节展开的, 并反映出在不同的时代背景下人们的爱情观和责任观。本文拟通过分析两部作品中女主人公展现的性格，婚姻及命运抉择, 表现出女主人公们对待爱情和家庭责任方面复杂的心理纠结，探讨当爱情与传统伦理道德相抵触的时候，人们应该追随爱情，还是守候家庭的矛盾。对爱的渴望既是人性，也是社会发展的必然要求。无论社会如何发展，人类都需要法律和道德约束，毫无底线地追求自由放纵情欲的结果必然使人类走向毁灭，因此，如何平衡爱情与责任，人类解放和社会秩序是我们需要永远思考的问题。

关键词：红字；廊桥遗梦；命运抉择；爱情与责任

Contents

1. Introduction………………………………………………………………1
2. Literature Review…………………………………………………2
3. A Comparative Study of the two great works………………………...3

3.1 Hester and Francesca’s marriage experience………………………….3

3.2 Differences in social and moral background………………………........4

3.3 Hester’s choice in romantic love………………………………………6

3.4 Francesca’s separation with Kincaid for family responsibility……...7

1. The Collision of Romantic Love and Realistic Responsibility………...7

4.1 The collision in The Scarlet Letter………………………………………8

4.2 The collision in The Bridges of Madison County…………………………8

4.3 The solutions to the collision of love and responsibility…………………9

5. Conclusion………………………………………………………………..10

Works Cited………………………………………………………………...12

1. Introduction

The Scarlet Letter is the most famous work of American writer Nathaniel Hawthorne. It is the first novel based on the historical and social conditions of the United States, with a rich American folklore. It is also the first work in the United States to win the world"s reputation. This romantic literary work is endowed with a strong realistic psychological description and excellent artistic by its great vitality and enduring charm. The background of the novel is about the New England life in the colonial period. It tells the story of a woman who was bound by unreasonable marriage and was convicted of the crime of adultery prohibited by Calvinism. It exposed the dark phenomena of colonial society under the political and religious unity.

The author of The Bridge of Madison County, Robert James Waller，is not only a famous American writer, but also a famous photographer and musician. The Bridge of Madison County, which came out in 1992, has caused a huge sensation in the United States at the time, and for a long time it ranked first in the bestseller list of New York Times. In the years later, The Bridge of Madison County has swept the world and created an extremely large circulation in the world. In 1995, "The Bridges of Madison County" was made into a Hollywood movie, which was popular all around the world. The reason why this novel is popular in the United States and even the world, not only because of the romantic love story in the novel, but more importantly, it brings a series of thoughts on love and responsibility, marriage and even values. In the face of love and responsibility, passion and marriage, dreams and reality, how should we choose, this is a question that every reader should consider further.

Being two productive writers from different times, both Robert James Waller and Nathaniel Hawthorne have contributed much to literature assiduously and faithfully. After careful reading of their two great works, this paper finds that these two novels enjoy some similarities. Both of them referred to the plot of the extramarital love of the female protagonist. However, they have made the different choice in conquering it. Therefore, in this thesis, this paper attempts to conduct a deep research about the two females’ choices and then makes a comparison between them.

This dissertation falls into five chapters. Chapter one is an introduction to describe the background of both two works briefly. In chapter two, the current research status of The Scarlet Letter and The Bridges of Madison County are reviewed. Chapter three is a comparative study of the characters and marriage experiences reflected from females in the two novels. In order to show the similarities and differences between the two works clearly, the author works to present them from three perspectives. The heroines face the same situation, but they make different choices. Chapter four presents the collision between the romantic love and the realistic responsibility. The last part is a conclusion. We finally find that the social background and their own experiences have an inevitable impact on the choices of the heroines. In recent years, people pay more attention on the relationship between love and responsibility. It sets people thinking how to realize and grasp the essence of love and marriage, and what to do with the relationship between love and duty better.

2. Literature Review

The Scarlet Letter is an outstanding American novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. He is considered as the leading American native fictionist of the 19th century. The story began in the seventeenth century Boston, which was under Puritan command. Hester Prynne was sent to America in advance by her husband---an old and ugly scholar. However, for many years, he himself didn’t arrive. Obviously, it’s possible that he had been lost in the sea. While waiting for her husband, Hester and a young local minister called Arthur Dimmesdale fell in love with each other. They committed adultery secretly. Because of Hester’s pregnancy, the secret was finally discovered by the locals and her husband. Hester and Dimmesdale loved each other. But their love was forbidden in that strict society. It’s sinful. Due to this fact, Hester was punished by the society with a letter A on her chest, which was considered to be an evil, a shame.

In more than one century, The Scarlet Letter has been one of the most frequently analyzed works of American literature, ranging from subjects to writing skills, even to social significances (Luo 77). For instance, Melville, in his book Hawthorne and His Moses, describes Hawthorne’s soul as “shrouded in blackness” (Herman 59); In China, Li Shuping argues that The Scarlet Letter penetrated deeply into the tragedy of the human nature (Li 42).

Robert James Waller, who is a contemporary American writer, created the well-known novel The Bridges of Madison County in 1992. One day in 1965, Francesca was alone at home, and the last cowboy, Robert Kincaid, parked his car at her door and asked her about the location of the Madison Bridge. He was a National Geographic photographer and came to Madison County in Iowa to photograph the seven covered bridges.Then the whole story between two protagonists all happened within the following four days. However, Francesca couldn"t leave the children and the worldly happiness, Robert eventually went on his own way. A few days later, the two had a brief glimpse at the door of the supermarket. At that time, Francesca forced the urge to go with Kincaid, and the rain of the day became their tears.

Many experts and scholars have shown their great interest in the novel and the classic movie of the same time. They made a further study of The Bridges of Madison County and published a series of papers and essays from different perspectives, such as psychoanalysis, rhetorically and cultural studies. In 2001 The Appreciative Analysis of The Bridges of Madison County, Wang Xiu Ying gives an analysis from angles of Rhetoric, Postmodernist, Modernism, and Realism reflected in the novel. Zhong Lin analyzes the Francesca Johnsons emotional experience, she points out the choice of heroine made by the power of her reason is humans great victory.

Although many scholars at home and abroad have studied The Scarlet Letter and The Bridges of Madison County, there are few articles comparing the female protagonists of The Scarlet Letter and The Bridges of Madison County.

3. A Comparative Study of the two great works

So far as the two female protagonists Francisca in The Bridges of Madison County and Hester in The Scarlet Letter are concerned, although created by writers from different times, they are sure to have something in common in their marriage experience and so on. It will be further discussed in this chapter.

3.1 Hester and Francesca’s marriage experiences

The Scarlet Letter happened in Boston around the mid-17th century. Hester’s marriage was decided by his parents. Before coming to Boston, Hester"s parents married her to the old hypocritical scholar Roger Chillingworth when she was in England. After marriage, her husband was almost fully engaged in academic research and had no passion for life. To facilitate his research work, he also let Hester settle alone in the America firstly, and he intended to reunite with her after completing the work. In this unreasonable marriage, Hester was lonely and painful.

The female protagonist of Waller"s best-selling novel, The Bridges of Madison County, has a similar marriage experience with Hester. Francesca lived with her husband and two children on a farm in Iowa owning to an Italian war bride. Francesca was born in Naples, Italy. Her family was a traditional middle-class. Unlike Hester, Francesca was more rebellious than Hester. In the girlhood, she had a passionate relationship with an open-minded university art professor. However, this relationship ended up being opposed by parents with deep traditional beliefs. Out of the pursuit of freedom and happiness and the yearning for a good life, Francisca married the veteran Richard and moved to the United States to settle in a farm in Madison County, Iowa. However, there’s a big gap between her life and the dream she pursued at the time. Although her husband, Richard, was honest and simple, he was inclined to keep his mind. From his attitude toward Francisca"s marriage to work, he could see his masculine inclination. When talking about her work with Kincaid, Francesca said: “I am not the same as you. My degree is comparative literature. When I arrived here in 1946, Winterset could not find teachers. I married the local who once was a veteran, which made me accept as a teacher. But Richard didn"t like to let me go out to work. He said that he can feed us, so I quit my job and become a full-time housewife.” He believed that men’s support for the family is a matter of righteousness, and women should only take children at home, take care of the family, and be a full-time housewife. (Guo 92) Such a marriage made Francesca"s pursuit of freedom not satisfied. The marriage between Francesca and Richard lacks a sense of foundation, so “she is more like a business partner than others”.

3.2 Differences in social and moral background

The Scarlet Letter is a well-recognized novel that explores ethical issues, whether it is the social background it contains—the Boston in the 17th century neo-colonial period, or its writing background—the 19th-century American real society, the social moral standards does not recognize the behavior of Hester Prynne, her understanding of the concept of family marriage, her betrayal of her husband violates the traditional ethical order and recognized moral rules. The story in the Scarlet Letter took place in Boston around 1650, and the residents were the first generation of immigrants who settled between 1620 and 1630. They were all Puritans who were persecuted by James I in England. They were holding the ideal of creating a world of happiness in the New World. So they were called “the godfather of the pilgrimage”. The Puritans in Britain initially resisted the autocracy of the Pope and the corrupt atmosphere of society. They focused on reason, rejected emotion, promoted ideal, and banned desire. Later it became so extreme that not only heresy was persecuted, but even women were imprisoned for smiling in the streets and children were flogged for playing.

By the advent of the private property，women have always been in a low status.(Luo 80) This is another social reason. So Hester’s tragedy is also caused by women’s low political status. She lives in a society where there is no equality between men and women. Pearl’s birth declares Hester’s guilt publicly. As a woman, Hester has no prerequisites to hide her guilt like Dimmensdale. This fairytale love ending was difficult to exist in the harsh Puritan cultural environment of the time. The sin committed by Hester Prynne is not to cause much harm to others, but to undermine the accepted social ethics rules. If it is not restrained and punished, it will ruin social ethics. So the religious rights authority let the woman to wear “A” for life to show punishment.

However, since the mid-to-late 19th century, especially in the 20th century, there has been a high degree of development of Western capitalism and the complex social problems it brings new scientific and technological revolutions, and two world wars, which have led to the discussion of Western ethical thoughts. The branches that are greatly influenced by the humanities are mainly people-oriented, focusing on the fate. The ethical view holds that human nature is the unity of human and social attributes and the nature of human behavior, which is ultimately determined by social attributes. As a part of society, he inherits and enjoys all human civilizations, but also bears the inherent responsibility. The social role or position requirement is the responsibility of the person. (Freud, 58) It is precisely because of this sense of social responsibility and family responsibility in the depths of human nature that the hero and heroine in the Bridges of Madison County did not lose their senses when confronted with a sudden love, and did not abandon the glory of humanity at this level.

In a narrow sense, Richard lived in a typical traditional-culture village. It was a remote place which could only impress on villagers the dullness, boredom and routine caused by its locality and traffic condition interactions and limited horizon. What the people there talked about were the weather, food price and new-born babies as well as sport events. There is no romance, eroticism, and Richard had all the characteristics which a typical local person shall possess. During that time, recognition of one"s infidelity to husband was seen to be unacceptable by the society. In other words, women should be loyal to her family. Each such kind of extramarital behavior was refused by the village people. At the beginning of the story, when Kincaid went to buy something in the shop, people began to talk about him “when he had walked in the cafe and asked for a Coke to take out, it was a little after noon. Like an old Wild West saloon when the regional gunfighter appeared, the busy conversation had stooped for a moment while they all looked him over. He hated that, felt self-conscious; but it was the standard procedure in small towns. Someone new! Someone different! Who is he? What"s he doing here” (Waller 77), even Francisca regards her meeting with Kincaid in the Roseman Bridge as “something dangerous”, so for Francisca, to make her love affair public was extremely difficult in that time.

3.3 Hester’s choice in romantic love

Hester is a pioneer who bravely pursues individual liberation and freedom of love. Hester Prynne, who had never tried love in marriage, had a bold and wild desire. She dared to believe in herself and believe in the rights and strength of her love. She thought that her marriage with Chillingworth was “a wrong and unnatural relationship”. It was a sacrifice of love. In order to avoid the embarrassment of this life as much as possible and gain new meaning in life, Hester broke away from all the constraints of the teachings of the Puritanism and obeyed the call of the nature of human life (Gan 67). She bravely and desperately fell in love with the gentle, talented young priest Dimmensdale, and had the crystallization of love – Pearl (Littlefield 405). Apparently, she committed a precept in the Ten Commandments of Christianity, namely the crime of adultery, which is not tolerated by the teachings of Puritanism.

Under the strict dogma of Puritanism, Hester Prynne, with the symbol of a shame “A”, showed the crowd in the scaffold for “forgetting the God”, and was cast aside and cursed by everyone. In order to gain a new life, Hester chose to publicly admit her sin and make penance for it. She took the baby with her, endured shame and cold eyes of others, and lived a lonely life by the creek, isolated from the world. She lived in a small house far from the community, relying on her hardworking to support herself and her children. She felt abandoned by the society. “In all her interactions with society, there is nothing that makes her feel that she belongs to this society. Every gesture, every sentence, even silence that the people who come into contact with her means, and often shows that she is excluded.” She silently endured all kinds of unfair treatment and tried to make up for her sins with her own good deeds. Such an approach is a punishment for her infidelity and a warning to the world, alerting people that adultery is the original sin of human beings, and human beings should learn to control their own desires.

3.4 Francesca’s separation with Kincaid for family responsibility

Compared with The Scarlet Letter, the decision of the heroine in The Bridges of Madison County is unexpected. Francisca and Kincaid understood each other because they had so much in common. In front of Kincaid, Francisca had no need to wear her mask which she had to take when dealing with family chores. They only stayed together for four days, after it they departed for responsibilities. But their love is eternal. So in a sense, their love is much more reasonable. Even before their death what they think is not to try to see each other for the last time, but to try to meet in another world. That is, to cremate their remains and scatter their ashes at Roseman Bridge, where they start their true love. While living, they have to separate, after death, they can be together, until now nothing can prevent them from being together their love is immutable.

However, because her responsibility lies in her family, she can only choose the real life. In the United States at the end of the 20th century, Francisca’s strong sense of responsibility for her husband, son, and family made her give up traveling with Robert at a crucial moment and chose to stay on the farm. Although she believes in Robert"s words: In a universe of ambiguity, this kind of certainty comes only once, and never again, no matter how many lifetimes you live.(Waller 112) However, Francesca did not hurt the innocent children, hurt her husband, and hurt the feelings of her neighbors in the town because of her passion. The love with Robert is so beautiful; it is a kind of liberation from all the secular ideas, restored to the original nature of human beings, pure and original. But between love and responsibility, she chose the latter rationally!

4. The collision of romantic love and realistic responsibility

Many researchers have found that love is limited by many realities. Love and marriage, lust and reason are often intertwined, and human freedom and social ethics sometimes conflict. At this time, the hero and heroine often face the dilemma of family and love: on the one hand, the family members whose feelings are already dull but have responsibility and righteousness, and on the other hand, the love that burns with raging fire.

Love should be the most basic, strongest and most hidden emotion of human beings. It infiltrates into the subjective consciousness of human beings, becomes the potential power of the human spiritual world and purifies the spiritual world of human beings. The deviations of love from marriage itself, as well as the existing problems of family marriage mode with the development of society, have made the human beings already a complex marriage showing various development trends and forms. If one side is a harmonious and happy family, and the other side is a vigorous love, how will people choose?

In terms of human beings, love and responsibility are indivisible, and love must be based on responsibility. If we ignore all responsibilities and indefinitely expand our love, the proliferation of instinct would be the ending. Without self-restriction, human could be no different from animals, and human society will be difficult to sustain. Philosophically, the relationship between love and responsibility is the relationship between emotion and reason. Rational suppression of feelings is painful, but this is the price that humans must pay, and the sensibility without rational constraints can only make people become more profitable, and the entire human race and even the entire society will be in a state of disorder and truly return to the era of obscurity.

4.1 The collision in The Scarlet Letter

As Lawrence said in his love, mortals always deceive themselves into thinking that love is fundamental. In fact, love is not fundamental, but branches and leaves. The real fundamental is to transcend love. It is a naked and isolated existence, that is, an independent self. Hester, the protagonist in The Scarlet Letter, wants to pursue not only love, but also more about getting rid of her husband, social status, etc. In Hester"s consciousness, she must achieve her own personal happiness, completely failing to take into account the impact on her husband, the family and the society as a whole. She is nirvana, but her influence on the whole society is enormous. It is extremely irresponsible to the family and society. From the perspective of biological evolution, she represents the retrogression of history.

4.2 The collision in The Bridges of Madison County

In contrast, the Bridges of Madison County has brought us more thoughts, and the choice of Francesca at a crucial moment is full of tragic colors. She considers more of her own responsibilities to her husband and her children, not her own personal happiness. Her orthodox morality is what today"s society calls for, and it is undoubtedly a refreshing agent for the real society of "commotion and embarrassment" at that time. Therefore, with such a stable family cell, the whole society can be stabilized. Aristotle believes that the purpose of tragedy is not itself, nor the state of acceptance of the audience, but rather a kind of wisdom, a kind of teaching, and how the audience can recognize and practice "temperance" life. It is in the novel that Francesca"s influence is also huge: her children are deeply shocked by the mother"s emotional experience and responsibility for the family. They sympathize with and understand their mother, and she also begins to cherish her family and abandoned the intention to sloppy divorce.

For things that have never been gained, people think more about its beautiful aspects. Therefore, in literary works, people especially like the beauty of love, but rather the tragedy of Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu, Romeo and Juliet, which are true love and not together. Francesca ends her life in the endless thoughts. The thoughts are painful, but they are also happy. The forty-two years of unforgettable thoughts are not entirely loved for others, but mainly the trepidation of their own souls. Unforgettable is not the good of others, but mainly the time of that life is beautiful because of nostalgia. As a wife and mother in her family, she has beard her family responsibilities; as a lover, she used her life to miss; and as a person in society, she promoted social morality.

4.3 The solutions to the collision of love and responsibility

The facts show that no matter what kind of extramarital affair, there is the same ends, either sacrificing love for a compromised marriage, or falling into a difficult situation. Or as Xie Youshun concluded: “Either bye at the center of morality and sexuality, or lost in the enjoyment of everyday life.” However, each of us exists in a complex and realistic social relationship. We cannot talk about love from the environment in which we exist, and we must not simply break away from the various roles we play in this environment. At the same time, love and responsibility are not opposing, love itself is also a kind of duty. However, love that is not in conformity with social ethics will inevitably contradict responsibility, and we must make a choice. In today"s society where speed and efficiency are all concerned, people are easy to love, easy to divorce, and even have the phenomenon of “flash marriage” and “flashing away”. A considerable number of people in marriage have lost the courage and consciousness to bear marriage and family responsibilities, so Francesca"s choice of love and responsibility is more worthy of our generation of young people to relish and ponder!

If we want to reduce the tragedy and lethality of extramarital affairs, cushion the emotional and spiritual damage caused by the tragedy of extramarital affairs, make the person who has suffered from extramarital affairs have an objective and calm attitude to solve the problem, it is necessary to have a very thorough understanding and a more rational analysis of the relationship within the family. And educate the encounters of extramarital affairs to treat their emotions seriously and correctly, and to remind them to treat extramarital affairs very consciously and responsibly. They can alleviate and avoid the bitter consequences of tragic conflicts in this field of social life by using these methods, such as improving self-cultivation, enriching their life, cleaning up mental junk in time and so on. They should establish a psychological defense system that can adjust the balance of psychology, constantly improve cultural literacy, resilience, positive attitude, and try to be a noble, rather than a despicable, distorted person. It will be very useful to foresee the tragedy of extramarital affairs may occur in society in the future.

5. Conclusion

The two great works, The Bridges of Madison County, created by American writer Robert Waller and The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, all relate to female’s extramarital love in some aspects. As have been mentioned in the previous parts, the situation reflected from the two works share many similarities. Both Francisca and Hester married their husbands because of other reasons and met the lovers when their husbands were not around. Of course their differences were apparent. Hester chose the romantic love while Francesca separated with Kincaid for family responsibility. In today’s society, we have to face many choices in our lives, and the contradiction between free love and moral responsibility is eternal. When we face the choice of love and responsibility, can we give up the intoxicating love and take up our own responsibilities decisively and courageously like Francesca in The Bridges of Madison County? It is no doubt that Francesca provided us with a more rational answer.

In short, this article hopes that the interpretation of women"s choices in the two extramarital affairs works can play a positive and meaningful role in real life. To alert people, love is wonderful, but at the same time we should not discard morality and responsibility because of impulsive impulses. It is a constraint and sublimation for us. The research in this paper still has some shortcomings in general, because the scope of the final selected research is small, and the number of studies is limited, so the argument may be insufficient. In addition, since the research object is women who are derailed in marriage, the angle of discussion is mainly from the perspective of feminism and humanity.

Works Cited

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