分析《红字》中的女权主义
An Analysis of Feminism in The Scarlet Letter
Ⅰ Introduction
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) has been considered to be one of the greatest American writers in the 19th century and his masterpiece The Scarlet Letter has set an everlasting monument in his writing career as a major American writer. Since the publication of The Scarlet Letter in 1850, the novel, with its perceptive portrayal of the protagonist, the psychological realism, the delicate representation, the mysterious imagination, the multiple themes, the ambiguous connotations and the evocative use of symbolism, has aroused the interests of one generation after another.
The Scarlet Letter has been the center of critics for many years. Critics almost see every aspect of the novel and analyze it with many approaches. This thesis aims to use some feminist critical theories to examine Hawthorne's feminist consciousness reflected in the portrayal of the heroine Hester in The Scarlet Letter. Feminist literary criticism is a critical approach influenced by Women's Liberation Movement, which has gradually become one of the main streams in the critical world. Feminists point out that the whole western ideology sets up binary oppositions between male and female, subject and object. With the development of feminist movement, feminist critics formed their perspectives on the interpretation of novels by male writers so as to reveal misogyny assumptions which are widely pervasive in their works. Furthermore, feminists point out that the existence of binary oppositions in the society has resulted in the unfair hierarchy. In other words, as soon as one achieves superior status and the other is viewed as the inferior. Actually, man has dominated the superior status for centuries, and woman has suffered too much. As a result, feminists should deconstruct the binary oppositions to make women's identity restored. In this thesis, the writer is to adopt some feminist critical theories and some conclusions the critics have arrived at to explore Hawthorne's feminist consciousness embodied in The Scarlet Letter.
Feminism thoughts have exerted great influence on the society in which
