On Calvinism in Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter

On Calvinism in Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter
ZHONGHAO Diao

Abstract: Hawthorne is a famous American writer. He wrote many excellent novels, which are popular among the readers at home and abroad. He lived in 19th century when Puritanism was still prevailing. And his family members were strict followers of Puritanism, who did lots of extreme misdeeds. This kind of family background had influenced Hawthorne a lot. These two factors both contributed to Hawthorne's writing style and themes. He believed that man was born with sin, and mankind was basically depraved. The doctrines of Calvinism have overlapped meanings with Puritanism, such as the concept of the original sin, atonement and so on. In a word, the big environment and the writer's background and experience both can account for a writer's themes and writing style.
Key words: Calvinism; Puritanism; sin; Hawthorne; Young Goodman Brown; Hester; Dimmesdale; Pearl; Chillingworth

摘要：霍桑是美国的著名作家， 他写了很多优秀的作品，在国内外读者当中深受欢迎。霍桑主要生活在19世纪，在当时清教主义盛行，并且对人们有相当大的影响力，清教主义与加尔文主义有很多相近之处，比如对原罪论的理解，对救赎论的理解等等。因此，在某种程度上,加尔文主义可以近似地理解为清教主义。霍桑的祖先是严格奉行清教主义的著名人物，并且他们做了很多耸人听闻的迫害异教徒的事情。为此，霍桑感到很有罪恶感。他认为人性本恶，这种罪是与生俱来的。当时的社会大环境，个人的身世背景和经历，这两个因素都共同影响着一个作家的写作主题和风格。因此，我们在分析和解读一个作家的作品时，必须将这两个因素考虑在内，结合起来，来帮助我们的理解。
关键词：加尔文主义； 清教主义； 罪； 霍桑；年轻的布朗； 海丝特； 丁梅丝代尔； 珍珠； 奇灵沃丝；

Chapter 1 Introduction
With the publication of The Scarlet Letter in 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne became famous as the greatest writer living then in the United States (as indeed some critics put it) and his reputation as a major American author has been on the increase ever since. [1] As his ancestors were famous followers of Puritanism, and also because of their notorious misdeeds, which were done out of their keen or rather mad enthusiasm for Puritanism, Hawthorne felt guilty for them. This kind of family background exerted a lot of influence on Hawthorne's character and writing style. Calvinism was the prevailing religious doctrine then in society. One of the most important doctrines of Calvinism is the original sin. Not surprisingly, this social atmosphere, this big environment, made contributions to Hawthorne's writing style. He is the most ambivalent writer, a consummate romantic in the American literature history. He has an unceasing interest in the interior of the heart of man's being. He holds Calvinism belief that human beings are basically depraved and corrupted. [2]

Chapter 2 The Brief Introduction of Hawthorne and his Major Works
2.1 The Family Background of Hawthorne
Hawthorne was born on the fourth of July, 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. In his youth the town was a port whose glory had gone. Some of his ancestors were men of prominence in the Puritan theocracy of the seventeenth century New England. One of them was a colonial magistrate: notorious for his part in the persecution of the Quakers, and another was a judge at the Salem Witchcraft Trial in 1692. Gradually the family’s fortune declined.
His father, a sea captain, had died of yellow fever in Dutch Guiana, when the boy was mere four years old, leaving the widow and the child behind to shift for themselves. When the news of his father's death came, Hawthorne's mother withdrew into her upstairs bedroom, coming out only rarely during the remaining forty years of her life. The boy and his sisters lived in almost complete isolation from her and from each other.[3] In 1821 Hawthorne went to Bowdoin College, where he had Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as a classmate. He also developed friendship with Franklin Pierce who was to become the 14th President of the United States.
From Bowdoin Hawthorne returned to Salem. For nearly twelve years, from 1825 to 1837 Hawthorne lived in solitude and seclusion in this idle town. Unlike his friend Herman Melville, who traveled widely and observed much in his youth, there was little actual experiences in his town as yet to serve as literary material. Hawthorne gathered his material by observing and listening to others. He roamed around the town, moving among old sailors on the decks, farmers from the countrymen clustered in taverns, and the old wives of the town at the market. He listened to all of them. Their talk was filled with New England lore, legend, and superstitions. He made annual excursions into Vermont and New Hampshire and absorbed hints for many stories on these jaunts. He also read the annals and chronicles of the Puritan World. He filled his notebooks and his thoughts with these scraps of impressions and memories, and after a few years began pouring them out as marvelously wrought tales.
During the period in Salem, Hawthorne had harvested the richness of his background. He read widely, became further acquainted with local history, and began to practice writing. His first attempt at novel writing, a book about his school life, proved to be a failure; his first tale appeared in print in 1830. The year of 1837 saw the publication of his Twice -Told Tales, a collection of short stories, which enjoyed critical attention. For a while he worked in the United States Custom House in Boston and later in Salem. Another collection of short stories, Mosses from an Old Manse came out in 1846. All these works, however, brought him the money which made him finally financially comfortable. The House of Seven Gables came out in 1851, to be followed by The Blithedale Romance in 1852 and The Marble Faun in 1860. During the four years (1853-1857) when President Pierce was in office, he was the United States Consul in Liverpool, England, and later traveled in Italy. He died in 1864. [4]
2.2 An Account of Hawthorne's Works
Young Hawthorne was intensely aware of the misdeeds of his Puritan ancestors, and this awareness led to his understanding of evil being at the core of human life, to that blackness in Hawthorne, as Herman Melville put it. There is a certain amount of truth in the statement that Hawthorne wrote some of his books like The Scarlet Letter and The House of Seven Gables as an attempt at expiating the sin of his ancestors. Hawthorne's view of man and human history derives, to a great extent, from Puritanism. He was not a puritan himself, but his Puritan ancestors had done the misdeeds. He believes that the wrong doing of one generation lives into successive ones and he was said to be often haunted by the sins of his ancestors. This intense awareness leads to his understanding of evil being at the very core of human life, which is typical of the Calvinistic doctrine that human beings are basically depraved and corrupted, hence, they should obey God to atone for their sins.
In many of Hawthorne's stories and novels, the puritan past is shown in an almost totally negative light, especially in his Young Goodman Brown and The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne is attracted in every way to the puritan world, even though he condemns its less human manifestations. On the one hand, it provides him with a subject, and on the other hand, with the puritan world or society as a historical background, he discusses some of the most important issues that concern the moral life of man and human histories.
Therefore, it is obvious that Calvinism in Hawthorne's works certainly has something to do with his family background, of which we can not ignore the influence on him in discussing this topic.
Young Goodman Brown is one of Hawthorne's most profound tales, and in the manner of its concern with guilt and evil, it exemplifies what Melville calls the power of blackness in Hawthorne's work.
Its hero, a naive young man who accepts both society in general and his fellow men as individuals with his regard, is confronted with the vision of human evil in one terrible night, and becomes thereafter distrustful and doubtful. Allegorically, our protagonist becomes an everyman named Brown, a young man, who will be aged on one night by an adventure that makes everyone in this world a fallen idol. However, the story is manipulated in such a way that we as readers feel that Hawthorne poses the question of good and evil in man but withholds his answer, and he does not permit himself to determine whether the events of the night of trial are real or the mere figment of a dream.
According to Hawthorne, there is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole life; but circumstances may rouse it to activity. A piece of literary work should show how we are all wronged and wrongers, and avenge one another. So in almost every book he wrote, Hawthorne discusses sin and evil. In Young Goodman Brown, he sets out to prove that everyone tries to hold the veil secret from one other in the way the minister tries to convince his people with his black veil. The birthmark derives home. Symbolically Hawthorne points out that evil is man's birthmark, something he is born with.