The Scarlet Letter
Historical Context
The Transcendentalist Movement
The Scarlet Letter, which takes as its principal subject colonial venteenth-century New England, was written and published in the middle of the nineteenth century. Hawthorne began writing the novel in 1849, after his dismissal from the Custom-Hou, and it was published in 1850. The discrepancy between the time reprented in the novel and the time of its production has often been a point of confusion to students. Becau Hawthorne took an earlier time as his subject, the novel is considered a historical romance written in the midst of the American literary movement called transcendentalism (c. 1836-60).
The principle writers of transcendentalism included Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, and W. H. Channing. Transcendentalism was, broadly speaking, a reaction against the rationalism of the previous century and the religious orthodoxy of Calvinist New England. Transcendentalism stresd the romantic tenets of mysticism, idealism, and individualism. In religious terms it saw God not as a distant and harsh authority, but as an esntial aspect of the individual and t
he natural world, which were themlves considered inparable. Becau of this profound unity of all matter, human and natural, knowledge of the world and its laws could be obtained through a kind of mystical rapture with the world. This type of experience was perhaps most famously explained in Emerson's Nature, where he wrote, "I become a transparent eyeball; I am nothing; I e all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part and parcel of God." Even though Hawthorne was clo to many transcendentalists, including Emerson, and even though he lived for a while at the transcendentalist experimental community of Brook Farm, he was rather peripheral to the movement. Hawthorne even pokes fun at Brook Farm and his transcendentalist contemporaries in "The Custom-Hou," referring to them as his "dreamy brethren indulging in fantastic speculation." Where they saw the possibilities of achieving knowledge through mystical experience, Hawthorne was far more skeptical. Abolitionism and Revolution
More important to Hawthorne's literary productions, and particularly The Scarlet Letter, was abolitionism and European revolution. The, in Hawthorne's view, were episodes of threatening instability. Abolitionism was the nineteenth-century movement to end slavery in the United States. Though it varied in intensity, abolitionism contained a very radical strain that helped to form a climate for John Brown's capture of Harpers Ferry in 1859. (John Brown intended to establish a ba for arm
ed slave insurrection.) The rising intensity and violence of abolitionism was an important cau of the Civil War. Hawthorne's conrvative position in relation to abolitionism did not necessarily mean that he was pro-slavery, but he did quite clearly oppo abolitionists, writing that slavery was "one of tho evils which divine Providence does not leave to be remedied by human contrivances."
What Hawthorne feared were violent disruptions of the social order like tho that were happening in Europe at the time he wrote The Scarlet Letter. The bloody social upheaval that most interested Americans began in France in 1848. This, and other revolutions of the period, pitted the lower and middle class against established power and authority. While the revolutions eventually failed, they were largely waged under the banner of socialism, and it was this fact that caud concern in America; as one journalist wrote, as quoted by Bercovitch, here there were "foreboding shadows" of "Communism, Socialism, Pillage, Murder, Anarchy, and the Guillotine vs. Law and Order, Family and Property." Critics have recently pointed to Hawthorne's guillotine imagery in "The Custom-Hou" (where he even suggests the tidle "The Posthumous Papers of a Decapitated Surveyor" for his tale) and metaphors of his own victimization as some evidence of his sympathies with regard to revolution and social order.
The Puritan Colonies
The novel was written in the mid-nineteenth century, but it takes the mid-venteenth century for the events it describes (1642-49). The Massachutts Bay Colony was established by John Winthorp (who death is reprented near the center of the novel) and other Puritans in 1630. They sought to establish an ideal community in America that could act as a model of influence for what they saw as a corrupt civil and religious order in England. This n of mission was the center of their religious and social identity. Directed toward the
工业机器人教育realization of such an ideal, the Puritans required a strict moral regulation; anyone in the conmmunity who sinned threatened not only their soul, but the very possibility of civil and religious perfection in America and in England. Not coincidentally, the years Hawthorne cho to reprent in The Scarlet Letter were the same as tho of the English Civil War fought between King Charles I and the Puritan Parliament; the latter was naturally supported by the New England colonists.
Plot summary
The novel takes place during the summer in 17th-century Boston, Massachutts in a Puritan village. A young woman, named Hester Prynne, has been led from the town prison with her infant daughter in her arms and on the breast of her gown "a rag of scarlet cloth" that "assumed the shape
of a letter." It was the upperca letter "A". The Scarlet Letter "A" reprents the act of adultery that she has committed and it is to be a symbol of her sin—a badge of shame—for all to e. A man, who was elderly and a stranger to the town, enters the crowd and asks another onlooker what's happening. He responds by explaining that Hester is being punished for adultery. Hester's husband, who is much older than she, and who real name is unknown, has nt her ahead to America whilst ttling affairs in Europe. However, her husband does not arrive in Boston, and the connsus is that he has been lost at a. It is apparent that, while waiting for her husband, Hester has had an affair, leading to the birth of her daughter. She will not reveal her lover's identity, however, and the scarlet letter, along with her subquent public shaming, is the punishment for her sin and crecy. On this day Hester is led to the town scaffold and harangued by the town fathers, but she again refus to identify her child's father.[2]
The elderly onlooker is Hester's missing husband, who is now practicing medicine and calling himlf Roger Chillingworth. He ttles in Boston, intent on revenge. He reveals his true identity to no one but Hester, whom he has sworn to crecy. Several years pass. Hester supports herlf by working as a amstress, and her daughter Pearl grows into a willful, impish child—in Hawthorne's work, Pearl is more of a symbol than an actual character—and is said to be the scarlet letter come to
life as both Hester's love and her punishment. Shunned by the community, they live in a small cottage on the outskirts of Boston. Community officials attempt to take Pearl away from Hester, but with the help of Arthur Dimmesdale, an eloquent minister, the mother and daughter manage to stay together. Dimmesdale, however, appears to be wasting away and suffers from mysterious heart trouble, emingly caud by psychological distress. Chillingworth attaches himlf to the ailing minister and eventually moves in with him so that he can provide his patient with round-the-clock care. Chillingworth also suspects that there may be a connection between the minister's torments and Hester's cret, and he begins to test Dimmesdale to e what he can learn. One afternoon, while the minister sleeps, Chillingworth discovers something undescribed to the reader, suppodly an "A" burned into Dimmesdale's chest, which convinces him that his suspicions are correct.[2]
Dimmesdale's psychological anguish deepens, and he invents new tortures for himlf. In the meantime, Hester's charitable deeds and quiet humility have earned her a reprieve from the scorn of the community. One night, when Pearl is about ven years old, she and her mother are returning home from a visit to the deathbed of John Winthrop when they encounter Dimmesdale atop the town scaffold, trying to punish himlf for his sins. Hester and Pearl join him, and the three link hands. Dimmesdale refus Pearl's request that he acknowledge her publicly the next day, and a meteor m金融时报英文版
arks a dull red "A" in the night sky. It is interpreted by the townsfolk to mean Angel, as a prominent figure in the community had died that night, but Dimmesdale es it as meaning adultery. Hester can e that the minister's condition is worning, and she resolves to intervene. She goes to Chillingworth and asks him to stop adding to Dimmesdale's lf-torment. Chillingworth refus. She suggests that she may reveal his true identity to Dimmesdale.[2]
Later in the story, while walking through the forest, the sun would not shine on Hester, although Pearl could bask in it. They then encounter Dimmesdale, as he is taking a walk in the woods that day. Hester informs Dimmesdale of the true identity of Chillingworth and the former lovers decide to flee to Europe, where they can live with Pearl as a family. They will take a ship sailing from Boston in four days. Both feel a n of relea, and Hester removes her scarlet letter and lets down her hair. The sun immediately breaks through the clouds and trees to illuminate her relea and joy. Pearl, playing nearby, does not recognize her mother without the letter. She is unnerved and expels a shriek until her mother points out the letter on the ground. Hester beckons
Pearl to come to her, but Pearl will not go to her mother until Hester buttons the letter back onto her dress. Pearl then goes to her mother. Dimmesdale gives Pearl a kiss on the forehead, which Pearl immediately tries to wash off in the brook, becau he again refus to make known publicly their rel
ationship. However, he too clearly feels a relea from the preten of his former life, and the laws and sins he has lived with.
The day before the ship is to sail, the townspeople gather for a holiday put on in honor of an election and Dimmesdale preaches his most eloquent rmon ever. Meanwhile, Hester has learned that Chillingworth knows of their plan and has booked passage on the same ship. Dimmesdale, leaving the church after his rmon, es Hester and Pearl standing before the town scaffold. He impulsively mounts the scaffold with his lover and his daughter, and confess publicly, exposing the mark suppodly ared into the flesh of his chest. He falls dead just after Pearl kiss him.[2]
Frustrated in his revenge, Chillingworth dies a year later. Hester and Pearl leave Boston, and no one knows what has happened to them. Many years later, Hester returns alone, still wearing the scarlet letter, to live in her old cottage and resumes her charitable work. She receives occasional letters from Pearl, who was rumored to have married a European aristocrat and established a family of her own. Pearl also inherits all of Chillingworth's money even though he knows she is not his daughter. There is a n of liberation in her and the townspeople, especially the women, who had finally begun to forgive Hester of her tragic indiscretion. When Hester dies, she is buried in "a new grave near an old and sunken one, in that burial ground beside which King's Chapel has since been built. It
was near that old and sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle. Yet one tombstone rved for both." The tombstone was decorated with a letter "A", for Hester and Dimmesdale.
Character List
Hester Prynne A young woman nt to the colonies by her husband, who plans to join her later but is presumed lost at a. She is a symbol of the acknowledged sinner; one who transgression has been identified and who makes appropriate, socio-religious atonement.
（Hester Prynne is the central and most important character in The Scarlet Letter. Hester was married to Roger Chillingworth while living in England and, later, Amsterdam — a city to which many English Puritans moved for religious freedom. Hester preceded her husband to New England, as he had business matters to ttle in Amsterdam, and after approximately two years in America she committed adultery with the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale.
The novel begins as Hester nears the end of her prison term for adultery. While adultery was considered a grave threat to the Puritan community, such that death was considered a just punishment, the Puritan authorities weighed the long abnce and possible death of her husband in
their ntence. Thus, they ttled on the punishment of permanent public humiliation and moral example: Hester was to forever wear the scarlet letter A on the bodice of her clothing.
While emingly free to leave the community and even America at her will, Hester choos to stay. As the narrator puts it, "Here, she said to herlf, 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." According to this reasoning, Hester assumes her residence in a small abandoned cottage on the outskirts of the community.
While the novel is, in large part, a record of the torment Hester suffers under the burden of her symbol of shame, eventually, after the implied marriage of her daughter Pearl and the death of Chillingworth and Dimmesdale, Hester becomes an accepted and even a highly valued member of the community. Instead of being a symbol of scorn, Hester, and the letter A, according to the narrator, "became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too." The people of the community even come to Hester for comfort and counl in times of trouble and sorrow becau they trust her to offer unlfish advice toward the resolution of uptting conflict. Thus, in the end, Hester becomes an important figure in prerving the peace and stability of the community.）
escape是什么意思
Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale Dimmesdale is the unmarried pastor of Hester's congregation; he is also the
hoistfather of Hester's daughter, Pearl. He is a symbol of the cret sinner; one who recognizes his transgression but keeps it hidden and cret, even to his own downfall.
（Arthur Dimmesdale is the young, charismatic minister with whom Hester commits adultery. Unlike Hester, who bears the child Pearl by their affair, Dimmesdale shows no outward evidence of his sin, and, as Hester does not expo him, he lives with the great anguish of his cret guilt until he confess publicly and soon after dies near the end of the novel.
Dimmesdale is prented as a figure of frailty and weakness in contrast to Hester's strength (both moral and physical), pride, and determination. He consistently refus to confess his sin (until the end), even though he repeatedly states that it were better, less spiritually painful, if his great failing were known. Thus Dimmesdale struggles through the years and the narrative, enduring and faltering beneath his growing pain (with both the help and harm of Roger Chillingworth), until, after his failed plan to escape to Europe with Hester and Pearl, he confess and dies.）
Pearl Pearl is the illegitimate daughter of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. She is the living m皮皮鱼少儿英语
anifestation of Hester's sin and a symbol of the product of the act of adultery and of an act of passion and love.
（Pearl is the daughter of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. Necessarily marginal to Puritan society and scorned by other children, she grows up as an intimate of nature and the forest. Symbolically recreating the scarlet letter, Hester, in opposition to her own drab wardrobe, dress Pearl in brilliant, decorative clothing such "that there was an absolute circle of radiance about her."
Like most characters in The Scarlet Letter, Pearl is complex and contradictory. On the one hand, as the narrator describes, she "could not be made amenable to rules." At one moment in the novel, her disregard of authority takes the form of a violent game where she pretends to destroy the children of the Puritan elders: "the ugliest weeds of the garden [she imagined were the elders'] children, whom Pearl smote down and uprooted, most unmercifully." On the other hand, at a climactic point in the narrative, where Hester discards the scarlet letter on the floor of the forest, it is Pearl who dramatically insists that she resume the potent symbol. The form of her insistence is particularly important, for, against her mother's request, she does not bring the letter to Hester, but obstinately has Hester fetch the letter herlf. This moment demonstrates one of the central conflicted themes of the novel about the authoritarian imposition of law and the willing subjection to it, or even embodi
ment of it. In this scene Pearl becomes the figure of authority to whom Hester willingly, if symbolically, obeys. Pearl eventually leaves with Hester for Europe (though Hester returns), where, it is implied, Pearl stays and, with the aid of Chillingworth's inheritance, is married to nobility.）
散文赏析
Roger Chillingworth The pudonym assumed by Hester Prynne's aged scholar-husband. He is a symbol of evil, of the "devil's handyman," of one consumed with revenge and devoid of compassion.
（Roger Chillingworth is the alias of Hester's husband. The two were married in England and moved together to Amsterdam before Hester preceded Chillingworth to America. Chillingworth is a man devoted to knowledge. His outward physical deformity (a hunchback) is symbolic of his devotion to deep, as oppod to superficial, knowledge. His lifelong study of apothecary and the healing arts, first in Europe and later among the Indians of America, is a sincere benevolent exerci until he discovers his wife's infidelity, whereupon he turns his skills toward the evil of revenge.
Chillingworth is introduced near the very start of the narrative, where he discovers Hester upon the scaffold with Pearl, the scarlet letter upon her chest, and displayed for public shame. After surviving a shipwreck on his voyage to America, he lived for some time among the Indians and slowly made his way to Boston and Hester. Upon discovering Hester's "ignominious" situation, Chilling-worth decli
nes to announce his identity and instead choos to reside in Boston to find and avenge himlf on Hester's lover. When Dimmesdale becomes ill with the effects of his sin, Chillingworth comes to live with him under the same roof. Reneging on an earlier promi, Hester eventually disclos Chillingworth's identity to Dimmesdale. Soon after Dimmesdale publicly confess his sin and, as Chillingworth puts it, "Hadst thou sought the whole earth over there was no one place so cret, —no high place nor lowly place, where thou couldst have escaped me, —save on this very
scaffold!" Thus, his vengeful victory taken from him, Chillingworth soon dies, though not before leaving all of his substantial wealth to Pearl.）
Governor Bellingham This actual historical figure, Richard Bellingham, was elected governor in 1641, 1654, and 1665. In The Scarlet Letter, he witness Hester's punishment and is a symbol of civil authority and, combined with John Wilson, of the Puritan Theocracy.
Mistress Hibbins Another historical figure, Ann Hibbins, sister of Governor Bellingham, was executed for witchcraft in 1656. In the novel, she has insight into the sins of both Hester and Dimmesdale and is a symbol of super or preternatural knowledge and evil powers.
John Wilson The historical figure on whom this character is bad was an English-born minister who
arrived in Boston in 1630. He is a symbol of religious authority and, combined with Governor Bellingham, of the Puritan Theocracy.
rainaCharacter Analysis
1.Hester Prynne
谢谢 日语What is most remarkable about Hester Prynne is her strength of character. While Hawthorne does not give a great deal of information about her life before the book opens, he does show her remarkable character, revealed through her public humiliation and subquent, isolated life in Puritan society. Her inner strength, her defiance of convention, her honesty, and her compassion may have been in her character all along, but the scarlet letter brings them to our attention. She is, in the end, a survivor.
Hester is physically described in the first scaffold scene as a tall young woman with a "figure of perfect elegance on a large scale." Her most impressive feature is her "dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam." Her complexion is rich, her eyes are dark and deep, and her regular features give her a beautiful face. In fact, so physically stunning is she that "her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped.
"
brocade
Contrast this with her appearance after ven years of punishment for her sin. Her beautiful hair is hidden under her cap, her beauty and warmth are gone, buried under the burden of the elaborate scarlet letter on her bosom. When she removes the letter and takes off her cap in Chapter 13, she once again becomes the radiant beauty of ven years earlier. Symbolically, when Hester removes the letter and takes off the cap, she is, in effect, removing the harsh, stark, unbending Puritan social and moral structure.
bumperHester is only to have a brief respite, however, becau Pearl angrily demands she resume wearing the scarlet A. With the scarlet letter and her hair back in place, "her beauty, the warmth and richness of her womanhood, departed, like fading sunshine; and a gray shadow emed to fall across her." While her punishment changes her physical appearance, it has a far more profound effect on her character.
What we know about Hester from the days prior to her punishment is that she came from a "genteel but impoverished English family" of notable lineage. She married the much older Roger Chillingworth, who spent long hours over his books and experiments; yet she convinced herlf that
she was happy. When they left Amsterdam for the New World, he nt her ahead, but he was reportedly lost at a, leaving Hester alone among the Puritans of Boston. Officially, she is a widow. While not a Puritan herlf, Hester looks to Arthur Dimmesdale for comfort and spiritual guidance. Somewhere during this period of time, their solace becomes passion and results in the birth of Pearl.
The reader first meets the incredibly strong Hester on the scaffold with Pearl in her arms, beginning her punishment. On the scaffold, she displays a n of irony and contempt. The irony is prent in the elaborate needlework of the scarlet letter. There are "fantastic flourishes of gold-thread," and the letter is ornately decorative, significantly beyond the colony's laws that call for somber, unadorned attire. The first description of Hester notes her "natural dignity and force of character" and mentions specifically the haughty smile and strong glance that reveal no lf-consciousness of her plight. While she might be feeling agony as if "her heart had been flung into the street for them all to spurn and trample upon," her face reveals no such thought, and her demeanor is described as "haughty." She displays a dignity and grace that reveals a deep trust in herlf.
In this first scene, Dimmesdale implores her to name the father of the baby and her penance may be lightened. Hester says "Never!" When asked again, she says "I will not speak!" While this declaration relieves
