An Analysis of Feminism in The Scarlet Letter分析《红字》中(16)

分析《红字》中的女权主义

habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire. I longed to kindle one” (Hawthorne, 1999:56). Chillingworth freely acknowledges that he has wronged her in the unsuccessful marriage and ruined her life. He confessed that “old as I was, and somber as I was, and misshapen as I was—that the simple bliss, which is scattered far and wide, for all mankind to gather up, might yet be mine. And so, Hester, I drew thee into my heart, into its innermost chamber, and sought to warm thee by the warmth which thy presence made there! We have wronged each other. Mine was the first wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay. Therefore, as a man who has not thought and philosophized in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot no evil against thee. Between thee and me, the scale hangs fairly balanced. But, Hester, the man lives who has wronged us both! Who is he?” (Hawthorne, 1999:56)

Those sentences appear to be an honest confess to his wronged wife. However, the truth is that Chillingworth is like a devil who strains every nerve to explore Hester's heart step by step. He first admitted his mistake in order to let down Hester's guard against him and at last managed to know who her accomplice who had added insults to him was. He has already expected the consequence of the wrong marriage, yet he chose to marry a beautiful woman to veil his own deformity regardless of the price of a young woman’s youth and happiness. From that point of view, Chillingworth is hypocritical and vain. In his eyes, a wife should regard the family as the center of whole life and his wife should be absolutely subordinated to him. When needed, he asked her to give him warmth; otherwise he left her alone without any considerations. The arrangement of Hester's marriage reflects a woman's secondary position in the seventeenth century; they are ignored and deprived of equal rights to marriage. By disclosing Hester's oppressed situation in the Patriarchal society, Hawthorne shows his sympathies to Hester's unfair treatment and his condemns to the laws of male-dominated society.

In the story, scaffold scenes are mentioned repeatedly. The scaffold scenes serve as a stage for Hester and Dimmesdale to display their personalities. In the first scene, Hester was forced to stand on the scaffold to expose her disgrace to the public, but

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