The Endless Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter written by American novolist Nathaniel Hawthorne is a classical novel in the 19th century. Its unique style——"romance" allured a vast number of readers and its classical features boast itself as a masterpiece in the literature history. This article tries to analyse the novel by three modern theories——psychoanalysis, feminism and new historicism.Accordingly, construct a multi-dimensional perspective of The Scarlet Letter and explore the classical meaning within the novel.The introduction section describes the relationship between the novel and canonicity, and briefly systemize the current research of Hawthorne.Although we embrace a host of studies on Hawthorne, there is still no unified and systematic exposition of the canonicity.What I should do is to explore Hawthorne and his writings to a broader context and probe the contemporary significance of the writings.The first part discusses the main ambivalence Hawthorne shown in the text. Under the careful analysis, Hawthorne reflects the most contradictions when he described the female characters.Personally,he held that everyone had the right to love and to be loved, however,the burden of Puritanism made him full of contradictions.In terms of moral and emotion,reason and desire,the contradictions deeply lay in the description of the heroine and her daughter and the relationship around them, such as with the priest,the doctor,the Governor and others. While from the psychoanalytic view, Hawthorne not only loved and also hated women. His ambivalence to desire and love may be rooted from his unique growth experience. Meanwhile, facing reality and fantacy, conservation or progression, Hawthorne still showed the contradictions clearly.The second chapter relates A as a clue to Hester's tragic experience,the child's growth and the role of all walks of life. A is functioned as a hint.Resorting to modern theory (signifier and signified;sign and significance),we can realize the deep meaning of A.Hence we can discover the symbolistic, systematic meaning of several signs as metaphors.The third part investigates the historical context inside and outside. On the one hand, The Scarlet Letter shows the distinct mark of history; on the other hand, a specific political and religious life in a unique historical period have affected the creation. The text further explore the complex relations between the text and politics, the text and history. As a consequence,we assert that Hawthorne, while not a politician, but was full of political awareness.He hoped that he could understand the truth of the world by analysing the past, the present and the futureThe last part of the general description probes Hawthorne's effect on later writers, especially for the U.S. writer Paul Auster, which further demonstrates the classical importence of The Scarlet Letter in the contemporary literature.