Abstract

Hawthorne is considered as one of the most important American novelists. Deeply influenced by Puritanism, Hawthorne devotes himself in exploring moral and the evil issues through most of his novels. The thesis aims to find out Hawthorne’s contradictory religious thoughts reflected in The Scarlet Letter. It focus on the three main leading characters with dual personalities so as to reflect the contradiction of Hawthorne’s religious thoughts. In short, Hawthorne always tries to convey his own contradictory ideas through his works. His attitude toward Puritanism is ambiguous, which makes the main characters in The Scarlet Letter ambiguous, too.

Key words: Puritanism; Contradictory thoughts; The Scarlet Letter

摘    要

    霍桑被公认为美国杰出的小说家之一。由于深受清教主义思想的影响，霍桑
 在他作品中探讨了大量的有关于道德与邪恶的问题。  本文试图通过红字这部小说研究霍桑宗教思想的矛盾性，重点在于通过对三个主要人物的研究来揭示出霍桑宗教思想的矛盾。总之，霍桑总是试图在他的作品中传达自己的矛盾思想，他对清教主义的态度是模糊的，也造成红字这部小说中主要人物性格的模棱两可。

关键字：清教主义，矛盾思想，《红字》

1. Introduction
1.1 Introduction to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s achievements and his status
Nathaniel Hawthorne was regarded as one of the most famous and important writers in American literature because of his creation of so many important works, which had huge impact on other writers. Among others, Herman Melville respected Hawthorne as the "American Shakespeare". Hawthorne was also one of the first American writers to explore the hidden motivations of his characters. In his whole life, Hawthorne has written 10 novels and about 100 short stories. As we all know, Mosses from an Old Manse earned Hawthorne the attention of the American literature. His other works, such as The Minister’s Black Veil, The House of Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun continue to enjoy enormous prestige in American literature. While, his famous Scarlet Letter is filled with disputation, but it has a lasting influence on the following writers. For example, Hester Prynne has been seen as a pioneer feminist in the line from Anne Hutchinson to Margaret Fuller, a classic nurturer, a sexually autonomous woman, and an American equivalent of Anna Karenina. The influence of the novel is apparent in Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady (1881), in Kate Chopin's The Awakening (1899), and in William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying (1930).