Hawthorne's Contradictory Thoughts And Its Representation In The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an outstanding American romanticism writer in the 19th century, who was deeply influenced by Puritanism, Transcendentalism, mysticism as well as democratic thought at the same time. He was born in Salem, Massachusetts. From the date of his birth, a strong local traditional religious and cultural atmosphere influenced him; this historical time had been haunting him, which helped to develop his character of pondering and over-suspicious. Consequently, he often hesitated over the inheritance of original sin and Puritanism dogma, and always held a suspicious, critical, wait-and-see and imaginary attitude towards everything. He lived in the period of American Renaissance when Transcendentalism prevailed and mysticism was in the ascendant, which poured new spiritual strength into him, and then he started a depth-probe into human's condition and destiny. He realizes the Puritanism ethics constrained humanity and destroyed happy life of general people, but simultaneously unable to get rid of the old cultural tradition which influenced him since the childhood. He wanted to seek reasonable approaches to change human living conditions, and to pursue perfect ideal and morals, but in vain. As a result, Hawthorne, living in this historical transition period of time and such cultural environment, frequently got hesitated and perplexed.The perplexity, complexity and contradiction of Hawthorne's thoughts determined his fictions cover some subjects with more complex and contradictory implications besides those general ones. His works aim to seek "good and evil", "love and hatred", "crime and redemption" in humanity, and describe, as well as, the psychological evolution course of human ethics. Impacted by the social background, family history and personal experiences, Hawthorne's novels convey a strong sense of religious attribute. On the one hand, with the influence of the crime perspective of Puritanism, Hawthorne devoted himself in exploring moral and the evil issues, as well as the "sin" hidden in people's deep minds. He advocated that the crime should be cleaned and minds should be purified by good deeds and confessions so that people could get redemption. On the other hand, influenced by Transcendentalism and mysticism, due to the exclusion and massacre of paganism and Puritanism's oppression and devastation of humanity, Hawthorne's fictions are also filled with perplexity and hesitation, which are the extremely contradictory religious thoughts reflected in his writing.The present paper is composed of five parts. The first part, the introduction of the paper, mainly introduces Nathaniel Hawthorne's status in both American and the world literary history, reviews the domestic and foreign scholars' comments to Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter and the present research situation, and summarizes the purpose and significance of this paper. The second part is the first chapter, analyzing the Hawthorne's contradictory thoughts and the origin .The third part, namely the second chapter, elaborates the dual nature and opposition of the four leading characters from the perspectives of character images and the plot, and analyzes the complexity, perplexity and contradiction of the author's thoughts. The fourth part, the third chapter of the paper, analyzes the symbolism and Biblical Archetypes in the Scarlet Letter to get better understanding of Hawthorne's perplexity. The fifth part, the conclusion, is the commentary on Hawthorne's perplexity and contradiction.