论文-On the Feminist Consciousness in The Scarlet Letter.doc

Contents On the Feminist Consciousness in The Scarlet Letter 1 I. Introduction 1 II. Background of Hawthorne and His Faminine Consciousness 2 III. H awthorne’s Feminist Consciousness Embodied in The Scarlet Letter……………... ...3 A. The Theme of The Scarlet Letter…………………………………………………...3 B. The Analysis of Hester’s Character……………………………………………... …4 1. The Marginal Position of Hester 4 2. Subversion of Hester to the Social Subject 6 3. Hester’s Character ……………………………………………………………8 IV. Realistic Significance of Hawthorner’s Feminist Consciousness 11 V. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….. ..12 Bibliography 14 Acknowledgements 15 On the Feminist Consciousness in The Scarlet Letter I. Introduction The novel, The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne was published in 1850. This gloomy romance was set in puritan Boston in the mid-17th century. Although the story is ordinary, it is quite moving. A pretty girl Hester Prynne married with an aged English learned man, and they established their own family in Boston. But when he came over two years later, he found Hester was laughed at her illegitimate child and she refused to tell who her lover was. Then she was to be fated to wear a scarlet letter “A” as a label of her sin throughout her lifetime. The adulterer, Minister Dimmesdale dare not admit his sin in public. He flinched. But he was always abused by a sense of guilt. Chillingworth, Hester’s Husband, discovered who was the adulterer and made a merciless plan of revenge to abuse the Mininster mentally till his death. However, Hawthorne does not just describe the novel as a tragedy of love. Oppositely, he puts the characters into a special surrounding and gives them with a particular symbolic meaning, especially the description of Hester. This novel has a significant meaning during that period. It attracts various people from generation to generation by its parallel structure, poetical language, application of symbolic meaning and especially for