The Harmony In The Forest

The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne's masterpiece of psychological romance, is set in the seventeenth century New England and Hawthorne successfully depicts 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. And furthermore Hawthorne seems to try to show us an ideal harmony which the transcendentalists of his time as well as his other European contemporaries were looking for and under which human nature can find its full development. Such an ideal harmony seems to have little hope to exist in the real society, which is proved by the common failure of those experiments carried out by Hawthorne and his other contemporaries, but it exists almost perfectly in the wild forest. However, this important message of Hawthorne's has been generally ignored as a recent survey shows. And the result of the survey displays that most of the previous critics have focused their attention on its hidden theme, its marvelous styles, the images as well as the characters from the pure literary aspect, few critics have ever focused their attention on the writer's speculation over social reform. The present thesis, based on the achievements of previous critics, with the history of the Puritanism on the New Land as its start, considering the historical background of Hawthorne, from the angle of transcendentalism, by means of induction, deduction as well as comparison, attempts to make out the ideal harmony that Hawthorne wants to show, but has been generally ignored by the previous critics through the analysis of the image "forest" from the following five aspects: (i) Forest represents the harmony of the primitive life; (ii) Forest represents the harmony of the outside and the inside; (iii) Forest represents the harmony of maturation in both physicality and mind; (iv) Forest represents the harmony of God, Man and Nature ; (v) Forest represents the harmony of Utopian freedom...