An Analysis of Feminism in The Scarlet Letter分析《红字》中(18)

分析《红字》中的女权主义

respectable minister of church; he was even not as brave as a woman. Hester endured the sin alone so as to protect Dimmesdale. By a comparative study of Dimmesdale’s cowardice, he was not as strong and vigorous as a man ought to be in the patriarchal society. The detailed description of his cowardice is offered by Hawthorne as the followings:

Crime is for the iron-nerved, who have their choice either to endure it, or, if it press too hard, to exert

their fierce and savage strength for a good purpose, and fling it off at once! This feeble and most

sensitive of spirits could do neither, yet continually did one thing or another, which intertwined, in the

same inextricable knot, the agony of heaven-defying guilt and vain repentance. Without any effort of

his will, of power to restrain himself, he shrieked aloud. (Hawthorne, 1999:111)

“It is done!” muttered the minister, covering his face with his hands. “The whole town will awake and hurry forth, and find me here” (Hawthorne, 1999:111). When he spoke out the truth on his vigil, he quickly covered his face with the hands in fear that the whole world would feel ashamed of him. When he summoned Hester and Pearl to stand with him on the scaffold, he felt “a tumultuous rush of new life, other life than his own, pouring like a torrent into his heart, and hurrying through all his veins” (Hawthorne, 1999:165). Coming back from the scaffold, Hester felt sympathetic towards Dimmsdale who was entitled to get help from her. After her long seclusion from society, it was hard for her to become accustomed to external standard of right or wrong, but Hester was clearly aware of the responsibility upon her in reference to the clergyman.

When Hester put forward the idea that they should flee to the remote Europe to put an end to the miserable life, Arthur Dimmsdale gazed into Hester’s face with fear, and a kind of horror at her boldness, who had spoken what he vaguely hinted at, but dared not speak. It has offered the evidence for the subversion of the male and female position. The man in the novel is not superior or powerful as the patriarchy defines man to be. Dimmsdale is rather cowardly and irresolute, even if the seeds for freedom and pursuit of happiness have already bred in his heart.

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