Who Is The Sinner?

The Scarlet Letter, Resurrection and The New-Year Sacrifice are three great works by three great writers. The stories happen in different countries with totally different social backgrounds. Interestingly enough, they all deal with the same theme of sin, and all the three sinners are women. Is it something just happened by chance? Is it a coincidence? Or is there something we may call cross-cultural echoes in them? Striving to find the answer to these questions, we first of all make a comparative study on the different ages when the three authors live, and their writing motives as well. Hawthorne lived in an age when both the religion and politics had the power, and he himself had undergone poverty, losing jobs and being unjustly dismissed. Going through these sufferings, Hawthorne started to work on The Scarlet Letter. Tolstoy, the writer of Resurrection, lived in the time when Russia was totally in chaos, and when social conflicts became more serious. He became more and more unhappy about his own aristocratic class, and came to show his concern for the hard life of the working people and his concern about the changes in the society. And he discarded the aristocratic life style on his own initiative, and started to view things from the standpoint of the working people. With deep thinking, Tolstoy wrote the book桼esurrection. Lu Xun wrote The New-Year Sacrifice in the year 1924. At that time, although the Revolution of 1911 saw the overthrow of the monarchy, the Chinese people were still in a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society. Women were at the bottom of the society, so the women emancipation became one of the most important parts of revolution at that time. In The New-Year Sacrifice, Lu Xun portrays, with great enthusiasm and sympathy, the character of Xianglin's Wife, who is engulfed in the feudal ethical code. Then this essay also goes on to point out the similarities in the writing motives of the three authors.In the next part the essay gives a short retrospect of the unfortunate experiences of the three heroines. Hester in The Scarlet Letter was a young and fair lady, but she married a misshaped old man who was actually hypocritical and evil. Because there was no news from the husband at all, Hester fell in love with the young pastor, and was severely punished by the Puritan religion. In Resurrection, Malsova was a pretty and pure girl, but she was seduced by a so-called gentleman Nekhludoff and was abandoned by him. Then Maslova started to have a really miserable life, and became a prostitute. Later she was framed and condemned to a penal servitude. Xianglin's Wife in The New-Year Sacrifice was forced to marry twice and each time ended up to be a widow. No matter how hard she tried, she was forever considered as a sinner, and died in the sound of crackers indicating the boundless blessings for the rich in town.Then comes the comparative study focusing on the analysis of the different social backgrounds of the three heroines. The tragedy in The Scarlet Letter happened in the 17lh century in the New England which had the darkest and most brutal colonial rules. Hester was discarded by the society because she was pursuing her true love. She was punished to stand in the pillory and put in jail. She also lived a lonely life in the shame for seven years. In Resurrection, the story happened in the 19lh century when the conflicts between the newly born capitalism and the backward serf system. Prisons seemed to be the only place that working people could go. Maslova, the prostitute, was wronged as the murderer, and in the court were the dissipated, base and mean people who were deciding her fate. They carelessly sentenced her a four-year penal servitude. In The New-Year Sacrifice, Xianglin's Wife lived in a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. At that time, women were under the control of the state power, clan authority, religious authority and the authority of the husband. Since Xianglin's Wife was remarried, she was condemned as the unforgivable sinner. And she was told even after she died she would st...