《红字》中海斯特性格的分析英语毕业论文.doc

红字中海斯特性格的分析【关键词】海斯特?白兰；性格；反叛；个人主义；妥协I. IntroductionThe Scarlet Letter is generally considered to be Nathanial Hawthornes most successful book and one of the indubitable masterpieces of American literature. Hawthornes masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter tells a story of the earliest victims of Puritan obsession and spiritual ferocity. At Salem, a small town of New England in the colonial times, Hester Prynne, the heroine, is found out to have committed adultery. She is punished before the public and condemned to wear the scarlet letter “A” in front of her bosom throughout her lifetime.This paper intends to analyze Hester Prynnes characters in the following aspects. Hester is quite sinful because she disobeys God by committing adultery. She must keep adherence to her husband, even she has not a bit love for him. But loveless marriage makes Hester miserable and lonely. When she meets Dimmesdale, she falls in love with him. Then, Puritans deprive her of true love rights and punish her. Hester bravely struggles against the opposing forces. She is a women with a strong rebellious spirit.At that time in Boston, Puritanism plays quite important role in daily life. Puritans believe that God decrees in advance all things of each person for all time. Under the laws of the Puritan society, one can not unrestrained expression to their feelings and emotions. But Hester expresses her emotion momently. She defies hypocritical and vapid life in her own ways. In confronting the harsh puritan society, Hester shows her individualist spirit.The spirit of individualism and the deeply in pursuit of true love always support Hester. However, as a puritan, she also has immovable faith in God, she shows her compromise to the puritan society. As a wife, she is guilty to her husband. She shows her aspect of compromise. The whole thesis is concerned about Hesters character. This paper analyzes Hesters character through three parts. The first part concerns Hesters rebellion, including her rebellion against her loveless marriage and puritan society. The second part illustrates Hesters individualism, which includes the awakening of her individualism and factors of pursuing individualism. The third part presents Hesters compromise with the puritan society and Chillingworth.   II. Hester's Rebellion A. Hesters Rebellion against Her Loveless Marriage 1. Hesters Loveless MarriageHester spends her happy childhood with her parents. Later, she grows up to be a beautiful young lady with an extremely passionate nature. She marries a handicapped scientist,           Chillingworth. Chillingworth regards himself as “a man of thought, the bookworm of great libraries, a man already in decay, have the best years to feed the hunger dream of          knowledge.”1 In contrast, Hester is in her budding youth, Nathaniel Hawthorne describes Hester Prynne like this: “The young woman was tall, a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale, she had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam, and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of feature brow and deep black eyes.”2 She has an impulsive and passionate nature, whereas the husband devotes himself wholly to seeking the so-called truth in books. Chillingworth does not have an eye for Hesters youth and beauty. For the young and beautiful wife, passion and true love should be the basic principle and purpose of a holy marriage. The old and lonely husband is physically deformed. To make the matter worse, the husband indulges himself in alchemy and in medical research, totally neglecting his wifes inner minds for much of the time.Chillingworth marries Hester because he wants to light a household fire in his lonely and chilly heart. He shows no love to his young wife. It is he that has destroyed Hesters flower like youth, and indirectly leads to Hesters tragedy. As Chillingworth says “We have wronged each other. Mine was the first wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay.”3 So reader can deduce that Chilingworth is a selfish man who “is slightly deformed, with the left shoulder a trifle higher than the right.”4 He tries to use tricks and fraud to fill the gaps between him and Hester, but there is a kind of mental gap that can never be filled up. Two years before, he sends his wife to New England by herself before him, remaining himself to deal with some necessary affairs. Later, he goes to New England to meet his wife, but captivated by Indians. When he meets his wife by chance, she has committed a sin of adultery and stands on the scaffold for public shame. As regard to Hesters sexual transgression, the narrator of the novel attributes it to “human frailty”5 to which is an implicit reference to her reckless or unbridled passion. But the genuine reason that triggers Hesters sexual deviation lies in the injustice and unnaturalness of her marriage. 2. Pursuing True Love.Hester and Chillingworths marriage is a big mistake. When Hester goes to Boston by herself, she encounters with Dimmesdale, a learned, handsome young minister, who has a high position among ministers in town. Hester and Dimmesdale are attracting each other and falling in love with each other. But their love is forbidden during that time for it is sinful. Because she conceives a baby, her secret love is exposed in front of the public. She is put into prison and forced to wear a scarlet letter “A” on her clothes all her life.For so many years, Hester takes over all the punishment by herself. She accepts shame and punishment because of her love for Dimmesdale. Hester dares to pursue her true love bravely. On this point, it does not violate human nature but the law of Puritanism. Hereafter, during seven years hard life, Hester can take Pearl to another place. On the contrary, she decides to live at there because a man who she deems connected in a union that, unrecognized on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final judgment, and make that their marriage-altar, for a joint futurity of endless retribution. Hester withstands Puritans insolence and pursues a normal life. Hester generally keeps silent, accepts the insult from adults to children in the Puritan society, and is not hesitant to adopt deceitful measure to refuse to tell the name of her childs father for love and preventing Dimmesdale. As Dimmesdales psychological anguish deepens, Hester goes to Chillingworth and asks him to stop adding to Dimmesdales self-torment, but Chillingworth refuses. So Hester arranges an encounter with Dimmesdale in the forest and tells the true identity of Chillingworth to Dimmesdale. They decide to flee to Europe, where they can live with Pearl as a family. Unfortunately, at last, The day before the ship is to sail, Dimmesdale preaches his most eloquent sermon for the townspeople. Afterwards he impulsively mounts the scaffold with his lover and daughter and confesses his sin and hypocrisy at public gathering. He falls dead. When Hester dies, she buries next to Dimmesdale. They share a tombstone. B. Hester's Rebellion against the Puritan SocietyAt that time in Boston, everyone is expected to follow the laws. Because Puritanism plays a very important part in their lives, anyone who disobeys God is looked down upon. Puritans include people from the humblest to the loftiest ranks of English society, educated and uneducated, poor and rich. They oppose pleasure. Sometimes they are exaggerated, but it is true that their lives are disciplined and hard. Work is their way to express their faith and to show their hope for heaven. Puritans believe that God decrees in advance the fate of each person for all time. The Church and beliefs of Protestantism becomes all encompassing with the town of Boston. The puritans consider the Bible as the true law of God and provide guideline for Church and government.Although the Puritans are very strict in religious way, on the other hand they could be quite tolerant. The grade of tolerance is dependent to the extent of the appropriate thing. For example, they condemned the drunkard, but not the consumption of alcohol itself. And they do not taboo sexuality, as long as it is sexuality between husband and wife and not extramarital sexuality. But the strict Puritan code is far from tolerant. Relationship between men and women is very constrained and that are what made adultery such a bad sin in the eyes of everyone who in the community believe that their fate was controlled by God. Public discipline and punishment were used to discourage everyone else from committing the same crime or sin as the offending criminal did. The community is to follow the belief of God and to do their duties the best they could, yet are there to criticize and punish all who disobey the religion or laws.Under the laws of the Puritan society, Hester can not defend herself, but she has her own way of defying it. She shows her strength against the social institution. The jail officer draws her forward, yet, “on the threshold of the prison-door, she repelled him, by an action marked with natural dignity and force of character, and stepped into the open air, as if by her own free will.”6   she appears more lady-like than other times. Her beauty, calmness and pride are her weapons against Puritan society. The scarlet letter “A” is considered as a bandage of infamy, and she has to wear it on her breast forever. But Hester embroiders it in gold thread with a “gorgeous luxuriance of fancy”7 and it becomes an object of beauty.From the beginning, the readers can see that Hester Prynne is a young and beautiful woman who has brought a child into the world with the father unknown. She is punished by Puritan society by wearing the scarlet letter “A” on the bosom of her dress and standing on the scaffold for three hours. For Hester, the scaffold is a painful and discreditable place. The townspeople gather around to gossip and stare at Hester and her new born child. In the disorder of faces in the crowd, young Hester sees the face of a man she once is fiercely familiar with, who we later learn is her true husband, Roger Chillingworth. Her subjection to the crowd of Puritan onlookers is excruciating to bear, and Hester holds the child to her heart, a symbolic comparison between the child and the scarlet letter “A” implying that they are truly both intertwined. No matter what methods the governess use, Hester never says who is her lover. Because of it, she has to stay in jail for seven years and stands in scaffold three hours everyday in the period of the seven years. Hester is alone with her little pearl in her hands on the scaffold although her lover, Dimmesdale is in the crowd as well. But he does not tell the truth that he is that adulterer owing to his coward. Hester Prynne is alone confronting all the humiliation before the people of her community.Hester shows her rebellion against Puritanism to the community. This also can be approved by the following stages. One is “her strong protest against her daughter being taken away from her.” Another is “her standing out in helping her lover, the weakened priest Dimmesdale against the leech, Roger Chillingworth. Hesters bravely, in a large extent, brings much sunlight to the sober Puritanical society.” For one thing, she breaks a law for love of Dimmesdale. For another, she persists in loving him when he is in danger. In fact, one aspect of Puritanism is a Trinity with absolute power, controlling everything. Man has no real decisions to make things which concern the world around him, for God at His whim, will completely decide for him. There is hope through the sacrifice of the Christ. But not all people are to be saved. The Doctrine of the Elect states that God choose some for heaven and in the same manner, allows others to go to hell. One does not exactly know who is destined for heaven, but hold the generally idea that reverends are sent by God to help people. As in the case of Dimmesdale, the highly reputable Boston minister there is a strong feeling that some sainted individuals are certainly fated to go heavenward. In The Scarlet Letter, part of Dimmesdales torture is his knowledge of his own sin, which is not confessed, will keep him from heaven. Faithfulness between husband and wife is important. Certainly a woman destined for heaven would never commit adultery as Hester Prynne did. She could not do so if she wished to, because her conduct is determined ahead of time. Then too, Hester and Arthurs action are affected by predestination. Since Adam and Eva, man has lost the power to make decisions for himself, for the “original sin” disobedience to Gods will in the Garden of Eden. So man has lost the power of free will. God absolutely makes all the decisions.But Hester does not think so. She believes one has the right to determine their own destiny. In rebellion against Puritanism, she achieves her goal and comes to understand that the society is not fixed by God in immutable law but is subject to change. So at the end of the story, the author Hawthorne arranges Hester back to the town which shows that Hester wants to give the puritan society a big-show of her victory against the Puritanism. She also gives others more and more understanding of her love of life. Although the Puritan believes that man is saved by faith, rather than by work, which is also seen in The Scarlet Letter. Over and over again, Hester aids those around her who need help. She especially makes great efforts to nurse and sew for the poor. However, often this group repays her by taunting her with bitter words. And in the official estimation of the Puritans, it is impossible for Hester to advance her standing by helping others. According to the analysis above, the readers can reach a conclusion that there is no love between Hester and Chillingworth. Facing the loveless marriage, Hester bravely pursues true love. But it is illegal. She is punished by the puritan society. Confronting punishment and humiliation, Hester does not yield, but continually struggles against the evil forces. She rebels against her loveless marriage and puritan society in her own way. Hesters IndividualismA. The Awakening of Hester's Individualism The spirit of individualism and the deeply pursuit to love always support Hester. However, Hester has the courage to transgress the severe puritanical rules. Undeniably, Hester is a real rebel as she asserts her individuality in fighting against the repressive social mores of her time. To explain that further, Roger Chillingworth forces Hester into a “false and unnatural relation”8 before she is mature enough. She does not love him, but is frank with him. After this marriage Chillingworth leaves her alone. But his “unwillingness to forgive” and “his lack of charity after her disgrace.” Hester does not break down because of that, but her strength and her individual character grow. She loves Dim