The Biblical Archetypes In The House Of The Seven Gables And Hawthorne's Puritanism

The House of the Seven Gables, the second romance produced by Nathaniel Hawthorne after his masterpiece The Scarlet Letter, ranks among the recognized classics in American literature. Beginning with what appear to be provincial scenes, The House of the Seven Gables, further widens in breadth and profoundly explores human nature and society as a whole, just as most of Hawthorne's other novels and tales do. Not only does the thick Puritanical atmosphere in Salem history provide the background for the work, but it also offers us a wider perspective on the novel.Though the critics'opinions divide, most of them respond to the work affirmatively. Especially in the 1920s or 30s, the work was even accepted as "Hawthorne's best work". There exist many relevant researches abroad. However, it is not the case in China. In our country, compared to nearly 800 articles remarking on Hawthorne's first masterpiece The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables draws far less attention from the domestic researchers in the field of American literary criticism. Only less than 10 academic articles have appeared so far, among which there is only one written from the perspective of Puritanism, which is ill-matched with the status the work enjoys in the American literature history.In this dissertation, the biblical archetypes transplanted into the work will be analyzed by close reading The House of the seven Gables, through which Hawthorne's particular Puritanism will be further discussed from his views on God, society, man and nature. Therefore, from one aspect, the problem of which Calvinist tenets Hawthorne chooses to accept and which he chooses to reject will be solved in this thesis.The whole thesis is composed of five parts. Chapter One will be the research problem, a brief introduction of the novel and its artistic achievement, and previous studies on it. In the second chapter, the influence of Puritanism on Hawthorne will be discussed from three aspects:his Puritan lineage, his own growing experience and the influence of his family, and the socio-cultural background in his time. Chapter Three will discover the problem:the work contains plenty of biblical archetypes, including the images, characters and plots from The Bible. In the fourth chapter, Hawthorne's particular Puritan view on God, nature, man and society will be discussed by analyzing these biblical archetypes transplanted into the work. The last chapter is the conclusion:though Hawthorne is deeply influenced by Puritanism, he forms his own Puritanism through a meticulous meditation on human nature; Puritanism and the biblical archetypes provide better perspectives for the studies on the work, though much remains to be done in the further research.