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The Scarlet Letter is his masterpiece of Hawthorne, which is set in colonial new England life. This novel talks about Hester, a young woman, by the unreasonable restraint of marriage, and who is imprisoned and isolated by people because of adultery, which exposes the cruel hypocrisy of colonial society under the rule of the theocratic regime. This novel mainly discusses about the sin and humanity's moral, philosophical problems.
1.2 Literature review
The Scarlet Letter, as the masterpiece of Nathaniel Hawthorne, posts an important role in the literature history. The book brings a variety of discussion around the world. There have been a lot of essays and passages talking about The Scarlet Letter, no matter from its aspects of symbolism, the analysis of characters, the theme of human nature or feminism. Although there is a heated discussion about the Scarlet Letter at home and abroad down the ages, there still remains a new point cut form the view about the contrast analysis of morality and spectators’ psychology. This paper focuses on the contrast comparison between morality and psychology by analyzing the characters as the point cut. According to the A Moral Thematic Interpretation of The Scarlet Letter(Li Shiqiang, 1999): With a detailed analysis of the portal of the positive characters as well as the negative ones in the novel, this article points out that the theme of the novel is eulogizing honesty and sincerity. The different arrangements of the fate of the heroes in the novel emphasizes its honesty theme. While The Analysis of Spectators’ Psychology in The Scarlet Letter(Jiang Dunjian, 2012) indicates that The Scarlet Letter describes the living condition that people regard religion rules as the only criteria and then lose their own ideas of right and wrong. Although he notes the living condition in his thesis, while he doesn’t reveal the real reasons why this kind of living condition. So there remains a space to be analyzed.
This thesis aims to approach the contrast analysis of morality and spectators’ psychology by using comparison. From a moral point of view, using this kind of comparison between Hester and spectators’ psychology to make the humanity stand out gradually.
1.3 Thesis structure
This thesis consists six chapters:
The first chapter is introduction, which includes Hawthorn and The Scarlet Letter, literature review, and thesis structure. The second chapter is the analysis of spectators’ psychology. I will analyze the spectators’ psychology from the following four aspects: The general psychology of collective spectators; Male spectators—male chauvinism, defeminnization; Female spectators—inhospitality, darkness of inner world; Children spectators—ignorance, hereditability. The third chapter is the causes of spectators’ psychology; I will focus on religion background and humanity weakness. The fourth chapter discusses about the analysis of Hester’s characteristics: The honest, The religion introspectiveness and pureness deeply take root in heart; and the tolerance of spectators’ inhospitality by self-kindness; And the fifth chapter is morality impacts on the spectators' psychology: Hester’s moral vacillation, which vacillates the religion barrier of spectators; Dimmesdale’s moral rebirth; Pearl’s moral purification, which act as source power. At the end of the thesis, there comes a conclusion.
2. Spectators' psychology
2.1 Collective spectators——apathy, ignorance
The Scarlet Letter reveals dishonesty and defeminnization of religion in the early Puritanism age in America. People lost themselves under the control of religion creeds, as they combine the inner world and religion spirits together. They regard religion rules as the only criteria, and worship it very much. Their characters are distorted. In the Scarlet Letter, although Hawthorn talks little about the collective spectators, he depicts their characteristics vividly by few words: ignorant, kindless, and unsympathetic. However, Hawthorn endows them with humanity as they are moved by leading characters’ kindness and honesty in the end of the novel.