摘要

纳撒尼尔•霍桑是美国19世纪影响最大的浪漫主义小说家之一。霍桑主要的长篇小说有4部，即《红字》、《七个尖角阁的房子》、《福谷传奇》、《玉石雕像》。
本论文主要以新批评派的理论为基础，从细读式的文本分析方法出发，全面分析作品中主人公的命运，从而剖析作者在《七个尖角阁的房子》这部作品中体现的罪恶观。《七个尖角阁的房子》讲述了一个有关祖先谋财害命，其罪孽延续到后代的故事。本论文首先从诅咒着手，讲述佩钦家族的祖先掠夺土地，并为其后代招致诅咒的过程。然后具体分析其后代在诅咒下的命运。有贪得无厌，导致“突然死亡”的；也有终身饱受心灵煎熬，生活在孤独与黑暗下的；但小说的最后，两个家族的后代用爱解除了诅咒，使生活重新获得了希望。论文最后，总结霍桑在这部作品中体现的罪恶观。霍桑的大部分作品都反应了他对罪恶的思考，认为人生来有罪，但在这部作品中，作者安排了一个圆满的结局，认为诅咒是可以被爱解除的，罪恶最终会被爱的力量所战胜。

关键字：《七个尖角阁的房子》，罪恶，报应，诅咒，爱

ABSTRACT

Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of the famous romantic writers in America during 19 century. He has written four important novels in his life: The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance , and The Marble Faun.
In this thesis, on the basis of the perspective of New Criticism, the author will scrutinize the book, analyze cursed destinies of characters and then make a conclusion about Hawthorne’s sense of sin in The House of the Seven Gable. The novel tells a story about retribution. The story tells us that the wrongdoing of one generation lives into the successive ones. At the beginning, the thesis tells the generation of the curse. Then it analyzes the character’s fates under the curse. Some of them have “sudden death”. Some of them live lonely and bear spiritual suffering. At the end of the novel the two young people who belong to two hostile families fall in love with each other. The feud is restrained and the curse is over. Many works of Hawthorne express the theme of sin. However, in this book, Hawthorne makes an optimistic ending. He believes that, the curse could be stopped by love, so does the sin.

Key Words: The House of the Seven Gables, sin, retribution, curse, love

1  Introduction

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - 1864) was one of the famous American novelist and short-story writer in the 19th century, who was born in Salem, Massachusetts. His novels and tales are penetrating explorations of moral and spiritual conflicts. There are four significant novels in Hawthorne’s life. In 1842, he wrote the tales and sketches in the collection Mosses from an Old Manse (1846). In order to earn a livelihood Hawthorne served as surveyor of the port at Salem (1846 - 1849), where he began writing his masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter (1850), which is often considered the first American psychological novel. In the next year, he wrote The House of the Seven Gables (1851), which told a story took place in the New England of his own period. Then, Hawthorne completed The Blithedale Romance (1852), a novel based on his Brook Farm experience. And a visit to Italy resulted in the novel The Marble Faun (1860).