A Study Of Hawthorne's Religious Ideas Reflected In The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of the most outstanding American romanticists in the nineteenth century as well as one of the founders of the American literature. As for his masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter is generally regarded as the highest achievement in his literary career. Since its publication, it has attained much attention in American literary field. The thesis aims to conduct a detailed study of Nathaniel Hawthorne's religious ideas reflected in The Scarlet Letter.Through the archetypical analysis and psychological portrayal of the characters, this paper attempts to prove that the three main characters are full of conflicting thoughts. The characterization of them represents many conflicting Biblical archetypes, and those archetypes reflect Hawthorne's attitudes towards both the good and evil sides of Puritanism. Through portraying the development of psychology of the characters, Hawthorne emphasizes the process of the characters'conflicting minds. It reveals that he discloses the cruelty of Puritans, the torment to people's spirit, and the hypocritical morality of Puritanism. The conflicting archetypes and his ambiguous attitudes reveal that when criticizing the cruelty and inexorability of the Puritanism, Hawthorne also employs its doctrine to value his characters. The deep analysis of the religious ideas of Hawthorne is made to reveal the real reasons for the conflicts. On the one hand, being influenced by his ancestors and affected by the social surroundings, Hawthorne inevitably has some Puritanical traits; on the other hand, he disagrees with the Puritan theocracy and condemns it severely. Therefore he is a Puritan who rebels against Puritanism.In conclusion, although Hawthorne is an inheritor and critic of the American Puritan tradition, he is preoccupied with the conflict between good and evil and his perception of the inescapable condition of evil nature in human being.