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For what Adam and Eve had done, God drove Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and human beings are deserted by their God at the same time they betrayed their Lord God. This is the beginning of constant human suffering and also the beginning of death, the most terrible punishment for human beings. God promises human beings the hope that as long as they hold firm belief in their only god, as long as they sincerely repent they will be granted the grace into the heaven after they die. Redemption is the long journey human beings have to undertake in order to gain redemption from their God. The whole Bible—including The Old Testament and The New Testament—is a great structure, or we say a huge archetype, of human being’s being saved from sin.
The author first explores the Biblical archetypes of the four main characters in this novel. Then the author tries to find the effect The Bible has upon The Scarlet Letter from the angels of the plots development. Since there are two typical narrative structures in The Bible, the author of this paper thus makes attentive study on the narration in The Scarlet Letter through the perspective of the Biblical archetypal analysis.
Ⅱ. The Biblical Archetypal Analysis of the Characters
2.1 Hester Prynne
Hester Prynne, the heroine of the romance The Scarlet Letter, is the most important character because almost two thirds of the 24 chapters are focused on her and the whole novel begins with her appearance before the audience in the Scaffold in the market and receives the public’s humiliation as a punishment, and ends with her returning to the town and helping those who are unfortunate. Hawthorne embodies his “deepest creative impulses”, and makes her “the best and the most human-character” in the book, remarked by Nina Baym and Leland Person (Frye 72). Thus there exist many conflicting characteristics and self-contradiction in Hester Prynne. It is her conflicting characteristics that reveal various conflicting Biblical archetypes in her.
Hester Prynne can be traced back to the Biblical archetype of Eve—living in the Paradise and then falling, suffering and even attempting to get salvation all her life. The Bible tells us a story about Adam and Eve, who were expelled from the Garden of Eden because of their original sin. After they ate the apple of the tree of knowledge, they became able to tell the evil from the good. For Hester she came from a declining aristocratic family and then was sent to prosperous New England after her marriage with an old and learned scholar. Just like Eve in the Eden Garden. Hester lived an even life. However she violates The Ten Commandments by committing adultery just as Eve was tempted by the serpent and ate the fruit forbidden by the God. She is of an “impulsive and passionate” (66; ch. 2) nature and gets carried away with her adulterous passion which casts her beyond the pale of ordinary moral discourse. In the puritan community of the seventeenth century relationships between men and women were strictly banned and that was what made adultery such a bad sin in everyone’s eye. Religion seemed to govern everything and public discipline and punishment were sued to discourage everyone else from committing the crime of adultery. Being pregnant with Dimmesdale’s baby she found her sin was revealed and after that she was strictly banned and expelled by the whole community. At that time, everything in Boston was strict and everyone was expected to follow the laws which make Hester’s sin such an excellent example for those who don’t hold firm beliefs at that time.
Besides that, there are something else in common in the experience of both Eve and Hester after their sins. For disobedient Eve, God commands his punishment, “will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you” (King 5). Ever since then Eve began her sufferings. To the heroine Hester she sinned and according to “traditional Puritanism, this act shut her off from paradise” (Kesterson 63). After the revealing of her sin, Hester’s life was full of adversity and agony. Having been imprisoned for a time, she was asked to wear the scarlet letter A on her chest to be publicly condemned. Under the heavy weight of a thousand unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her and concentrated on her bosom. She feels her heart has been “flung into the street for them to spurn and trample upon” (64; ch. 2). She felt strongly the psychological horror in being publicly humiliated.