红字英文论文模板

红字英文论文模板

　　The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850, is an American novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and is generally considered to be his magnum opus. Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston, it tells the story of Hester Prynne, who gives birth after committing adultery, refuses to name the father, and struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. Throughout the novel, Hawthorne explores questions of grace, legalism, sin and guilt.

　　[edit] Plot summary
　　The Scarlet Letter. Painting by T. H. Matteson. This 1860 oil-on-canvas was made under Hawthorne's personal supervision.
　　The Scarlet Letter. Painting by T. H. Matteson. This 1860 oil-on-canvas was made under Hawthorne's personal supervision.[1]

　　The novel begins in 17th-century Boston, Massachusetts, then a Puritan settlement. A young woman, Hester Prynne, is led from the town prison with her infant daughter in her arms and the scarlet letter “A” on her bosom. The scarlet letter "A" represents the act of adultery that she has committed and it is to be a symbol of her sin – a badge of shame – for all to see. A man in the crowd tells an elderly onlooker that Hester is being punished for adultery. Hester's husband, who is much older than she is, sent her ahead to America while he settled some affairs in Europe. However, her husband never arrived in Boston. The consensus is that he has been lost at sea. While waiting for her husband, Hester has apparently had an affair, as she has given birth to a child. She will not reveal her lover’s identity, however, and the scarlet letter, along with her public shaming, is her punishment for her sin and her secrecy. On this day Hester is led to the town scaffold and harangued by the town fathers, but she again refuses to identify her child’s father.[1]

　　The elderly onlooker is Hester’s missing husband, who is now practicing medicine and calling himself Roger Chillingworth. He settles in Boston, intent on revenge. He reveals his true identity to no one but Hester, whom he has sworn to secrecy. Several years pass. Hester supports herself by working as a seamstress, and Pearl (her daughter) grows into a willful, impish child, who is more of a symbol than an actual character, said to be the scarlet letter come to life as both Hester's love and her punishment. Shunned by the community, they live in a small cottage on the outskirts of Boston. Community officials attempt to take Pearl away from Hester, but, with the help of Arthur Dimmesdale, an eloquent minister, the mother and daughter manage to stay together. Dimmesdale, however, appears to be wasting away and suffers from mysterious heart trouble, seemingly caused by psychological distress. Chillingworth attaches himself to the ailing minister and eventually moves in with him so that he can provide his patient with round-the-clock care. Chillingworth also suspects that there may be a connection between the minister’s torments and Hester’s secret, and he begins to test Dimmesdale to see what he can learn. One afternoon, while the minister sleeps, Chillingworth discovers something undescribed to the reader, supposedly an "A" burned into Dimmesdale's chest, which convinces him that his suspicions are correct.[1]

　　Dimmesdale’s psychological anguish deepens, and he invents new tortures for himself. In the meantime, Hester’s charitable deeds and quiet humility have earned her a reprieve from the scorn of the community. One night, when Pearl is about seven years old, she and her mother are returning home from a visit to the deathbed of John Winthrop when they encounter Dimmesdale atop the town scaffold, trying to punish himself for his sins. Hester and Pearl join him, and the three link hands. Dimmesdale refuses Pearl’s request that he acknowledge her publicly the next day, and a meteor marks a dull red “A” in the night sky. It is interpreted by the townsfolk to mean Angel, as a prominent figure in the community had died that night, but Dimmesdale sees it as meaning Adultery. Hester can see that the minister’s condition is worsening, and she resolves to intervene. She goes to Chillingworth and asks him to stop adding to Dimmesdale’s self-torment. Chillingworth refuses. She suggests that she may reveal his identity to Dimmesdale.[1]

　　Hester arranges an encounter with Dimmesdale in the forest because she is aware that Chillingworth knows that she plans to reveal his identity to Dimmesdale, and she wishes to protect him. While walking through the forest, the sun will not shine on Hester, though Pearl can bask in it. They then wait for Dimmesdale, and he arrives. The former lovers decide to flee to Europe, where they can live with Pearl as a family. They will take a ship sailing from Boston in four days. Both feel a sense of release, and Hester removes her scarlet letter and lets down her hair. The sun immediately breaks through the clouds and trees to illuminate her release and joy. Pearl, playing nearby, does not recognize her mother without the letter. She is unnerved and expels a shriek until her mother points out the letter on the ground. Hester beckons Pearl to come to her, but Pearl will not go to her mother until Hester buttons the letter back onto her dress. Pearl then goes to her mother. Dimmesdale gives Pearl a kiss on the forehead, which Pearl immediately tries to wash off in the brook, because he again refuses to make known publicly their relationship. However, he too clearly feels a release from the pretense of his former life, and the laws and sins he has lived with.

　　The day before the ship is to sail, the townspeople gather for a holiday and Dimmesdale preaches his most eloquent sermon ever. Meanwhile, Hester has learned that Chillingworth knows of their plan and has booked passage on the same ship. Dimmesdale, leaving the church after his sermon, sees Hester and Pearl standing before the town scaffold. He impulsively mounts the scaffold with his lover and his daughter, and confesses publicly, exposing the mark supposedly seared into the flesh of his chest. He falls dead just after Pearl kisses him.[1]

　　Frustrated in his revenge, Chillingworth dies a year later. Hester and Pearl leave Boston, and no one knows what has happened to them. Many years later, Hester returns alone, still wearing the scarlet letter, to live in her old cottage and resume her charitable work. She receives occasional letters from Pearl, who was rumored to have married an European aristocrat and established a family of her own. Pearl also inherits all of Chillingworth's money even though he knows she is not his daughter. There is a sense of liberation in her and the townspeople, especially the women, who had finally begun to forgive Hester of her tragic indiscretion. When Hester dies, she is buried in "a new grave near an old and sunken one, in that burial ground beside which King's Chapel has since been built. It was near that old and sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle. Yet one tombstone served for both." The tombstone was decorated with a letter "A", and it was used for Hester and Dimmesdale.

　　[edit] Major themes
　　Nathaniel Hawthorne
　　Nathaniel Hawthorne

　　[edit] Sin

　　Sin and knowledge are linked in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Bible begins with the story of Adam and Eve, who were expelled from the Garden of Eden for eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. As a result of their knowledge, Adam and Eve are made aware of their disobedience, that which separates them from the divine and from other creatures. Once expelled from the Garden of Eden, they are forced to toil and to procreate – two “labors” that seem to define the human condition. The experience of Hester and Dimmesdale recalls the story of Adam and Eve because, in both cases, sin results in expulsion and suffering. But it also results in knowledge – specifically, in knowledge of what it means to be human. For Hester, the scarlet letter functions as “her passport into regions where other women dared not tread,” leading her to “speculate” about her society and herself more “boldly” than anyone else in New England.[2]

　　As for Dimmesdale, the “cheating minister” of his sin gives him “sympathies so intimate with the sinful brotherhood of mankind, so that his heart vibrate[s] in unison with theirs.” His eloquent and powerful sermons derive from this sense of empathy.[2] The narrative of the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale is quite in keeping with the oldest and most fully authorized principles in Christian thought. His "Fall" is a descent from apparent grace to his own damnation; he appears to begin in purity. He ends in corruption. The subtlety is that the minister is his own deceiver, convincing himself at every stage of his spiritual pilgrimage that he is saved.[3]

　　The rosebush, its beauty a striking contrast to all that surrounds it – as later the beautifully embroidered scarlet A will be – is held out in part as an invitation to find “some sweet moral blossom” in the ensuing, tragic tale and in part as an image that “the deep heart of nature” (perhaps God) may look more kindly on the errant Hester and her child (the roses among the weeds) than do her Puritan neighbors. Throughout the work, the nature images contrast with the stark darkness of the Puritans and their systems.[4]

　　Chillingworth’s misshapen body reflects (or symbolizes) the evil in his soul, which builds as the novel progresses, similar to the way Dimmesdale's illness reveals his inner turmoil. The outward man reflects the condition of the heart.[4]

　　Although Pearl is a complex character, her primary function within the novel is as a symbol. Pearl herself is the embodiment of the scarlet letter, and Hester rightly clothes her in a beautiful dress of scarlet, embroidered with gold thread, just like the scarlet letter upon Hester's bosom. [2] Parallels can be drawn between Pearl and the character Beatrice in Rappaccini's Daughter. Both are studies in the same direction, though from different standpoints. Beatrice is nourished upon poisonous plants, until she herself becomes poisonous. Pearl, in the mysterious prenatal world, imbibes the poison of her parents' guilt.

　　[edit] Past and present

　　The clashing of past and present is explored in various ways. For example, the character of the old General, whose heroic qualities include a distinguished name, perseverance, integrity, compassion, and moral inner strength, is said to be “the soul and spirit of New England hardihood.” Now put out to pasture, he sometimes presides over the Custom House run by corrupt public servants, who skip work to sleep, allow or overlook smuggling, and are supervised by an inspector with “no power of thought, nor depth of feeling, no troublesome sensibilities,” who is honest enough but without a spiritual compass.[4]

　　Hawthorne himself had ambivalent feelings about the role of his ancestors in his life. In his autobiographical sketch, Hawthorne described his ancestors as “dim and dusky,” “grave, bearded, sable-cloaked, and steel crowned,” “bitter persecutors” whose “better deeds” would be diminished by their bad ones. There can be little doubt of Hawthorne’s disdain for the stern morality and rigidity of the Puritans, and he imagined his predecessors’ disdainful view of him: unsuccessful in their eyes, worthless and disgraceful. “A writer of story books!” But even as he disagrees with his ancestor’s viewpoint, he also feels an instinctual connection to them and, more importantly, a “sense of place” in Salem. Their blood remains in his veins, but their intolerance and lack of humanity becomes the subject of his novel.[4]

　　[edit] Public response

　　The Scarlet Letter was published in the spring of 1850 by Ticknor & Fields, beginning Hawthorne's most lucrative period.[5] When he delivered the final pages to James Thomas Fields in February 1850, Hawthorne said that "some portions of the book are powerfully written" but doubted it would be popular.[6] In fact, the book was an instant best-seller[7] though, over fourteen years, it brought its author only $1,500.[5] Its initial publication brought wide protest from natives of Salem, who did not approve of how Hawthorne had depicted them in his introduction "The Custom-House". A 2,500-copy second edition of The Scarlet Letter included a preface by Hawthorne dated March 30, 1850, that he had decided to reprint his introduction "without the change of a word... The only remarkable features of the sketch are its frank and genuine good-humor... As to enmity, or ill-feeling of any kind, personal or political, he utterly disclaims such motives".[8]

　　The book's immediate and lasting success are due to the way it addresses spiritual and moral issues from a uniquely American standpoint. In 1850, adultery was an extremely risqué subject, but because Hawthorne had the support of the New England literary establishment, it passed easily into the realm of appropriate reading. It has been said that this work represents the height of Hawthorne's literary genius; dense with terse descriptions. It remains relevant for its philosophical and psychological depth, and continues to be read as a classic tale on a universal theme.[9]

　　The Scarlet Letter was also one of the first mass-produced books in America. Into the mid-nineteenth century, bookbinders of home-grown literature typically hand-made their books and sold them in small quantities. The first mechanized printing of The Scarlet Letter, 2,500 volumes, sold out within ten days,[5] and was widely read and discussed to an extent not much experienced in the young country up until that time. Copies of the first edition are often sought by collectors as rare books, and may fetch up to around $6,000 USD.

　　On its publication, critic Evert Augustus Duyckinck, a friend of Hawthorne, said he preferred the author's Washington Irving-like tales. Another friend, critic Edwin Percy Whipple, objected to the novel's "morbid intensity" with dense psychological details, writing that the book "is therefore apt to become, like Hawthorne, too painfully anatomical in his exhibition of them".[10] 20th century writer D. H. Lawrence said that there could be no more perfect work of the American imagination than The Scarlet Letter.[11]

　　[edit] Allusions

　　* Anne Hutchinson, mentioned in Chapter 1, The Prison Door, was a religious dissenter (1591-1643). In the 1630s she was excommunicated by the Puritans and exiled from Boston and moved to Rhode Island.[4]
　　* Martin Luther (1483-1546) was a leader of the Protestant Reformation in Germany.
　　* Sir Thomas Overbury and Dr. Forman were the subjects of an adultery scandal in 1615 in England. Dr. Forman was charged with trying to poison his adulterous wife and her lover. Overbury was a friend of the lover and was perhaps poisoned.
　　* John Winthrop (1588-1649), first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
　　* Richard Dawkins' Out Campaign is represented with the Scarlet Letter A emblem.

　　[edit] Film, TV and theatrical adaptations

　　Main article: Film Adaptations of the Scarlet Letter

　　1995 film poster
　　1995 film poster

　　* 1917: A black-and-white silent film directed by Carl Harbaugh with Mary G. Martin as Hester Prynne
　　* 1926: A silent movie directed by Victor Sjostrom and starring Lillian Gish and Lars Hanson.
　　* 1934: film directed by Robert G. Vignola and starring Colleen Moore
　　* 1973: Der Scharlachrote Buchstabe a film directed by Wim Wenders in German
　　* 1979: PBS version starring Meg Foster and John Heard
　　* 1994: A rock musical, "The Scarlet Letter" written by Mark Governor is produced in Los Angeles.
　　* 1995: The Scarlet Letter, a film directed by Roland Joffé and starring Demi Moore as Hester and Gary Oldman as Arthur Dimmesdale. This version is "freely adapted" from Hawthorne according to the opening credits and takes liberties with the original story.
　　* 1996: The film Primal Fear references The Scarlet Letter.
　　* 1996: The Marilyn Manson promotional video for the song 'Man That You Fear' obliquely references the novel.
　　* The Red Letter Plays (In The Blood produced in 1999, and F--ing A, produced in 2000) by playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, rewrote the story placing it in contemporary New York and Houston.
　　* 2001: A musical stage adaptation which premiered at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, by Stacey Mancine, Daniel Koloski, and Simon Gray.
　　* 2004: The Scarlet Letter is a Korean noir-thriller featuring an adulteress' monologue, that mentions a plan to raise her unborn child as Pearl in America, in a desperate plea to exit her obsessive affair.
　　* 2008: "shAme"[1], a rock opera by Mark Governor based on "The Scarlet Letter" premieres in Los Angeles. It is a major reworking of his 1994 stage musical that was also produced in Boston in 2000 and as a radio production in Berlin in 2005. The 2000 version was endorsed and presented by the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society.

　　[edit] References to the novel
　　Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (September 2008)

　　[edit] Literature

　　* The 1993 novel The Holder of the World by Bharati Mukherjee re-wrote the story, placing it in present-day Boston, Colonial America, and seventeenth-century India during the spread of the British East India Company.
　　* Deborah Noyes wrote a companion to this novel entitled Angel and Apostle with Pearl as the main character.
　　* Postmodern writer Kathy Acker borrows from The Scarlet Letter in her novel Blood and Guts in High School. Janie, the main character, identifies with Hester Prynne and intertwines their stories in a vulgar manner.
　　* In the novel Speak, Hairwoman, the English teacher, refers to The Scarlet Letter in her lesson. The novel's protagonist, Melinda Sordino, is a freshman in high school who is ostracized from her fellow schoolmates during the school year, much as Hester Prynne was ostracized by the Puritans in Boston.
　　* Maryse Condé's novel I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem, although set at the time of the Salem witch trials, also features the character Hester Prynne.
　　* The title of Jhumpa Lahiri's 2008 novel Unaccustomed Earth comes from a passage from the introduction to The Scarlet Letter: "Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth."

　　[edit] Culture

　　Richard Dawkins's Out Campaign for atheism uses a red scarlet "A" on webpages and clothing as an emblem of atheist identification. [12]

　　Tennessee has drivers convicted of DUI wear vests advertising this fact while on roadside litter pick-up duty. This is a badge of shame similar to the original scarlet letter.

《红字》的论文范文，要求两千五百字左右，论文形式，中文英文都可以

红字》的象征意义

关键词：红字 象征主义 中国论文 职称论文
摘　要:分析了《红字》中红字“A”丰富而深刻的内涵,指出作者通过塑造“小珠儿”的形象,增强了美与丑,善与恶的对比,寄托了作者对爱的绝对自由的向往。关键词:红字;A Pearl;象征主义
纳萨内尼·霍桑是浪漫主义时期美国最具天赋的小说家。他开创了美国文学史上“象征浪漫主义”的创作手法。作为生活在19世纪中期的浪漫主义作家,霍桑深受清教意识、超验哲学和神秘主义三种思想的影响,他对社会充满了怀疑,使得他的作品具有强烈的象征主义倾向。长篇小说《红字》是霍桑的代表作,作品以一通奸案为题材,通过描述小说人物的思想矛盾和生活遭遇来揭露黑暗的社会。霍桑在《红字》中艺术技巧独具匠心,特别是广泛地运用象征手法,像变魔术一样给予平凡的单词以不平凡的意义,给人以深刻的启示。《红字》中使用的象征手法有其深刻的思想根源和美学理论基础,体现了霍桑对“生命力受到压抑”的切肤之痛。鲁迅曾经指出“生命受到压抑而生的苦闷懊恼是文学的根底,而其表现手法乃是广义的象征主义”。霍桑的代表作《红字》正是在继承传统象征意义的艺术手法的基础上,开创了象征主义的新篇章。作为小说名字的“红字”贯穿于故事的全过程,并带有不同的象征含义,具有多义性和不确定性。随着故事情节的发展,红字“A”的内涵发生了由Adulteress到Able再到Angle的变化。这种象征的多义性和不确定性正是作者思想矛盾的反映,同时,作者一方面控诉清教对人性的摧残和压抑;另一方面又认同清教的道德观和教义。《红字》以17世纪北美清教殖民统治下的新英格兰为背景,取材于1642—1649年在波士顿发生的一个恋爱悲剧。故事一开始的场景发生在该镇监狱的门前,而这个场景的主角是海丝特·白兰,一个年轻、美丽的女人,她怀里抱着3个月大的女婴———珠儿,站在刑台上,等待政教合一的加尔文教(即清教)政权在大庭广众面前宣布对她的判决。那么,受审的女罪犯是什么人?她又犯了什么罪?故事开始于几年前,出身英国破落贵族家庭的白兰嫁给了一个畸形的年老学者。婚后,两人决定移居波士顿。途径荷兰时,丈夫因有事留下,妻子先独自来到波士顿,一住近两年。期间丈夫毫无音信。据传他在赶来的途中被印第安人俘虏,生死不明。在独居生活中,海丝特与当地牧师阿瑟·丁梅斯代尔相爱,生下了一个女婴。显然,她犯下了基督教“十戒”中的“一戒”,即通奸罪,为清教的教义所不容。她被投入监狱,法庭判她有罪,令她在刑台上站立三个小时当众受辱,并终身佩带一个红色的字母A(英文通奸Adultery的第一个字母)作为惩戒。但是作者霍桑赋予了在刑台上的“A”更深层的含义。对于压抑人民和毒害人民思想的清教而言,红字“A”为通奸的标记,事实上“A”不仅是海丝特深爱着的恋人Arthur Dimmesdale名字的第一个字母,也是法语中爱情Amour这个词的第一个字母。从字里行间中,读者可以品味出作者霍桑同情海丝特对爱的追求,甚至认为那是人的纯真本性,笔下洋溢出对海丝特的赞美之词:“斯特胸前红色的“A”字之精美仿佛不是屈辱的标志,而是艺术饰品。这个红色的“A”字是用细红布做的,四周用金色的丝线精心刺绣而成,手工奇巧。对于这个“A”字,霍桑设计的独具匠心,包含了丰富而华美的想象,配在她穿的那件衣服上真成了一件美丽的装饰品”。文中的描写给读者的感觉是海丝特仿佛不是一个“犯下无耻罪行的犯人”,而是一个怀抱圣婴的美丽端庄的妇人。随着故事的发展,霍桑不断地赋予了红字“A”更多更深层的含义。海斯特是一个向往纯真爱情,渴望幸福的女人。虽然她无法摆脱强加在她身体上的耻辱,但是她的内心深处的感情却激情澎湃,无法遏制。为了维持生计,她为别人刺绣。她的绣工巧夺天工,精妙绝伦。她精心地绣制各种美丽的“A”字。除了维持生计,海丝特别无所求,把寄托着她的青春,激情和才气的绣品换来的钱施舍给比她幸运的穷苦百姓。尽管她乐善好施,但是海丝特仍然没有摆脱精神的痛苦和世俗的磨难。但她始终没有消沉,反而变得坚强而成熟,依然反抗着清教并坚信着对丁梅斯代尔的爱情。时间是最好的证明,渐渐地她胸前所佩戴的红色字母“A”在众人的心中有了另一番含义:“没有人能够像她那样乐善好施,那样喜欢接济贫困者”;“那刺绣的红字闪射出非凡的光芒,给人以慰藉。在别的地方他是罪恶的标志,但在病房里却成为蜡烛。”虽然还有那些“执着的清教徒”认为海丝特的红字是耻辱的象征,但是更多善良的人们拒绝再用原来的意思解释“A”,他们说那个字的意思应该解释为“能干”(able)的意思。她以自己的美德赢得了人们的尊重和敬爱,她无尽的同情心和勇于献身的精神产生了巨大的力量,在众人眼中,红字“A”反而具有了天使的内涵———纯洁,美丽,善良,博爱。通过作者对红色字母“A”的驾驭,我们可以看出霍桑对主人公海丝特热情、善良、坚强、勇敢的天性的赞美。于此同时,我们也可以看出作者的另一个写作意图,通过美与丑,善与恶的对比,霍桑对清教徒的卑劣行径刻画的入木三分,痛斥得酣畅淋漓。“清教徒倡导勤俭、反对奢靡,无疑是净化社会的一剂良药,但是标榜禁欲,让世人过苦行僧般的生活,多少有些泯灭人性之嫌”。而主人公海丝特正是祭奠清教徒狂热宗教信仰的无辜羔羊。通过“A”的不断变化,作者为我们揭示了当时社会的真实图景。如果说红字A在清教徒的眼中是通奸的代表,那么赋予了象征意义的红字A就象征着善良、美好、坚强和勤劳。如果说小珠儿是永不磨灭的活着的红字的话,那么赋予了象征意义的小珠儿就象征着纯真的爱情、这个时代的曙光。Pearl(小珠儿)是这部小说中唯一的一个阳光人物,她像珍珠一样纯洁,像天使一样善良快乐。在四个主要人物中,只有小珠儿在道德上是完美没有残缺的,她象征着人性中最无暇的一面。小珠儿的出现并非是作者的心血来潮,读者从对海丝特女儿名字的设计上就可以体会到。她是海丝特和丁梅斯代尔的女儿。Pearl这个词来源于圣经,意思是“十分珍贵的东西”。在圣经中记载,上帝让一个商人卖掉所有的财产去买一颗珍珠,并告诉他这颗珍珠即是他的天堂。海丝特为这段爱情付出了沉重的代价,可以说女儿在她心中占据绝对重要的位置,是她的天堂。同时,霍桑在小珠儿情节上的设计也是恰到好处,独具匠心。小珠儿既是海丝特爱情的象征,同时也是她耻辱的象征,是活着的红字。作者总是会有意无意地描写小珠儿对红字近乎天生的热爱:小珠儿出生时第一眼看到的就是母亲胸前灿烂的红字A.而且小珠儿十分的喜欢,伸手去抓,“眼里总是含着奇怪的表情与特殊的微笑”。正是珠儿的存在才时刻提醒着海丝特和丁梅斯代尔他们曾经犯下的“罪行”,督促他们净化自己的灵魂改过自新。正是因为小珠儿的存在才使丁梅斯代尔有勇气在公众面前承认自己的“罪行”。可以说,小珠儿寄托了作者对美好生活,纯真爱情,和追求善良无暇的人性的向往。是作者的希望所在,也是社会的希望所在。总而言之,正是由于霍桑在《红字》中独具匠心的象征手法的运用,使《红字》成为美国第一部象征主义小说,也正是因为霍桑在《红字》中象征手法的成功运用,成就了《红字》在文学领域的重要地位。
参考文献
[1]　常耀信.美国文学简史[M].天津:南开大学出版社,2003.
[2]　任晓晋,魏玲.红字中象征与原型的
模糊性、多义性和矛盾性[J].外国文学研究,2000,(1):121-125.
[3]　於奇.新编美国文学选读[M].郑州大学出版社,2005
[4]　田俊武.霍桑红字人名寓意研究[J].外国文学研究,1999,(1):52-54.
[5]　胡尚田.论红字中的红字[J].四川外语学院学报,1999,(4):45-48.
[6]　约翰·罗尔斯.正义论[M].北京:中国社会科学出版社,1988.
A study of sym bolic m ean ingsof The Scarlet L etterZHANG W en-si(Fudan U n iversity,S hangha i 200433,Ch ina)Abstract:The author gives many rich and p rofoundmeanings of the scarlet letter A to contract beauty w ithugliness besides kindness and er,Haw2thorne reposes too much hope by molding the im age words:“the scarlet letter”;A Pearl;symbolism

红字英文参考文献

[1] Schubert : Leland Hawthorne[M] , The Artist University of North Carolina Press , 1944
[2] Turner, Arlin: Nathaniel Hawthorne [M] . Barnes & Nobel, Inc. ,1961
[3]Gerber, John C. ed. , Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Scarlet Letter:A Collection of Critical Essays[M] .New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc. ,1968 .
[4] Bercovtiti，Sacvan．The Office of The Starlet Letter[M]．Baltimore London:The Johns Hopkins University Press. 1991．
[5]Todd , Robert The Magna Mater Archetype in the“The Scarlet Letter”[J ]New England Quarterly 45

《红字》中海丝特·白兰的多重性格特征的英文论文。带摘要的

Although criticism of The Scarlet Letter for a long time took Dimmesdale as the central character, it has more recently reacknowledged what was well understood in Hawthorne's own time, that Hester is protagonist and center. The narrator allies himself with her and, despite occasional adverse judgments, devotes himself to her cause. His cause as narrator is to obliterate her obliteration, to force the reader to accept Hester's reading of her letter as a badge of honor instead of a mark of negation. The narrator forces us, just as Hester forces her Puritan townsmates, to see her as a good woman on her own terms. In contrast to the two distorted male personalities who counterpoise her-the one obsessed with revenge, the other with his own purity-Hester appears almost a miracle of wholeness and sanity. While these men struggle with their own egos and fantasies, she has real battles-to maintain her self-respect in a community that scorns her, to stay sane in solitude, to support herself and her child, to raise that child to normal adulthood despite so many obstacles. Curiously, though she has been cast out of society, Hester remains very much in the world, whereas Chillingworth and Dimmesdale at the very center of society, are totally immured in their self-absorption. In her inner integrity and her outer responsiveness, Hester is a model and a counterstatement.
Cautiously, Hawthorne advances the notion that if society is to be changed for the better, such change will be initiated by women. But because society has condemned Hester as a sinner, the good that she can do is greatly circumscribed. Her achievements in a social sense come about as by-products of her personal struggle to win a place in the society; and the fact that she wins her place at last indicates that society has been changed by her. Might there be in the future a reforming woman who had not been somehow stigmatized by society? Although in his later works Hawthorne was to answer this question negatively, in The Scarlet Letter the possibility, though faint, is there.

There is more to be said about Hester than space allows; let me confine myself to two points: first, the relative insignificance of her relation to Dimmesdale in comparison with her relation to Pearl-the supersession in her portrait of sexual love by maternal love. The downplaying of her passion for Dimmesdale means that--although she continues to love him, and remains in Boston largely on his account-her goodness and her essential nature are not defined by her relation to a man. Hawthorne does not cooperate in the masculine egotism that he excoriates in The Blithedale Romance by making Hester a mere event in the great sum of man. Hester is a self in her own right portrayed primarily in relation to the difficulties in her social situation, in relation to herself, and in relation to Pearl.

Through Pearl, Hester becomes an image of "Divine Maternity" (1:56). But though so signally a mother, she is not a "mother figure." By detaching her from the social milieu that defines and supports the concept of motherhood, Hawthorne is able to concentrate on the relation of Hester to her child without any social implications. In fact, society in this instance wishes to separate the mother and child. By giving her a recalcitrant daughter as child, Hawthorne has even more cleverly set his depiction of motherhood apart from Victorian ideology. What remains is an intense personal relation that expresses Hester's maternal nature in a remarkably role-free way.

But adult love, sexual love, has not been written out of the story by this emphasis, and this is the second point I would stress. At the end of the work Hester expresses the hope "that, at some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven's own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of Mutual happiness." The "angel and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman" who would show "how sacred love should make us happy, by the truest test of a life successful to such an end!" (SL:263). These are Hester's ideas rather than the narrator's, but he does not distance himself from her at this point. "Earlier in life, Hester had vainly imagined that she herself might be the destined prophetess." Hester could have had this vain imagining only during the very brief period of her secret affair with Dimmesdale, for once she was stigmatized she could have no further hope of living a life such as she describes. But during their affair, she felt that what they did had a consecration of its own-it was this consecration, then, that she wished to put to the test of a lifetime.

Therefore, what Hester means by "sacred love" is really "sexual love," and she looks forward to the time when sex and love can be united by men in one emotion, a time when somehow women can heal the split in the male psyche. As Freud, writing later in the century, was to observe the male inability to feel passion and tenderness toward the same "object," so Hawthorne not many decades earlier found the male's revulsion and fear of sex leading him to separate from women and incapable therefore of love. Hester's letter represents not merely adulterous sex but all sex, and the image of divine maternity becomes even more telling than it seemed at first. Every child testifies to the sexual experience of its mother and is, in a society that finds sex shameful, a shameful object. For Hester to try to return to Dimmesdale by "undoing" her letter is to return to him incompletely, in a manner that denies sex, denies her child. It is no wonder that Pearl objects.

What one senses here--though how opaquely!--is Hawthorne's tentative engagement with the subject of men and their mothers, his suggestion that the relation between men and their mothers was the deepest and most central core of their lives. The great liberation of The Scarlet Letter comes not only from its celebration of a woman, but of a woman who is centrally a mother (73-53).