美国文学期末论文

美国文学期末论文

( 2011届 )

题目：女权主义批评视角下的《小伙子布朗》人物

__浅析

学院：外国语学院

专业：英语

学生姓名：方梦婧学号： 08090204

指导教师：江玉娇职称：教授

合作导师：职称：

完成时间：2011年 1 月

成绩：

Outline

Abstract (3)

摘要 (3)

1. Introduction (4)

1.1 Nathaniel Hawthorne (4)

1.2 Y oung Goodman Brown (4)

2. Background

2.1 Puritan background (5)

2.2 The role of Puritan women (5)

3. Analysis of characters (5)

3.1 Y oung Goodman Brown (5)

3.2 Faith (6)

3.3 The old fellow-traveler............................................................ 错误！未定义书签。

3.4 Goody Cloyse.......................................................................... 错误！未定义书签。

4. Conclusion (7)

Work cited (8)

Feminist Criticism Perspective

Fang Mengjing

Abstract:Feminist Criticism, broadly defined, examines how literature and other productions reinforce or undermine the oppression of women. It developed on the basis of women’s liberation movement. It is the concern of feminists critics to probe the marginalization of women in economic, political, social and psychology terms. Feminism represents one of the most significant social and aesthetic revolutions of modern times.From a feminist point of view, Young Goodman Brown, which was universally acclaimed as one of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s best short stories and revealed the themes of the reality of sin, the secret sin as well as the hypocrisy of Puritanism and all human kinds, presents Hawthorne’s particular portraits of women go against the prevailing literary sexism of his day.

Key words: Faith,feminism, Puritanism, character analysis

女权主义批评视角下的《小伙子布朗》人物浅析

方梦婧

摘要：女权主义批评，概括地说，是检验文学和其他作品如何影响女性所受压迫的批评方法。女权主义批评是在妇女解放运动的基础上发展起来的。它所关注的是女性在经济、政治、社会和心理方面的边缘化问题。女权主义带来了一次极为重要的现代社会与审美革命。《小伙子布朗》以罪恶的现实，清教徒以及全人类的伪善等为主题，被公认为霍桑最优秀的短篇小说。从女权主义的角度分析，这部短篇小说体现了霍桑作品中女性角色塑造的特殊性——与当时文学中普遍流行的性别歧视背道而行。

关键词：费丝，女权主义，清教主义，人物分析

Feminist Criticism Perspective

Fang Mengjing 08090204

1.Introduction

1.1Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne is one of the American high Romantics, whose features are na?ve, experimental, conformist, self-conscious and imitative. In this period, writers put much more attention on individual and independence than before. He wrote Fanshawe, a novel based on his college life and it turned out to be a failure. His first collection of short stories Twice-Told Tales brought his name before the reading public.

He studied his family history and became intensely sorry for the misdeeds of his puritan ancestors. So he wrote the Scarlet Letter to expiate the sin, which made him the first American romancer. It is about a woman, Hester Prynne, who has committed adultery and has to bear a letter A on her breast as a lifelong sign for her sin. However, she continues her life of penance and becomes a model of endurance, courage, and victory over sin. It is the first symbolic novel in literary history. His other works include: The House of Seven Gables, The Snow Image, The Blithedale Romance. In his works, he showed his respect to female and individual’s nature. Unlike other writers of his time, Hawthorne revealed a kind of feminist tendency in his stories. It lies not only in his interest in the situation of female characters in his works, but also his appreciation of some good qualities in them, such as gentleness, motherhood, strong inner strength, self-reliance and so on. He generally used women not just as symbols of wholesome and goodness, but as possessing knowledge that approached that of the author and narrator. He also treated women with more realism and depth than did most other writers. Many women characters penned by Hawthorne engage in conflict with the men in their lives and all of them have the sympathy------to varying degrees------of the author.

1.2Young Goodman Brown

Young Goodman Brown is about a young man named Goodman Brown, who has been married only three months. He prepares to leave his home and his pretty young bride, Faith, to go into the forest and spend the night on some mission. Although Faith has strong forebodings about his journey and pleads with hum to postpone it, Brown is adamant and sets off. His business is evil by his own admission. It involves attending a witch’s Sabbath in the forest, a remarkable action in view of the picture of Brown, drawn early in the story, as a professing Christian who admonishes his wife to pray

and who intends to lead an exemplary life after this one night.

2. Background

2.1 Puritan background

The story is set during the Salem witch trails, at which Hawthorne’s great-great-father was a judge. Hawthorne was plagued by guilt by his ancestor's role. Holding a reflective attitude, he wrote the story in which he exposed ambiguity to question New England Puritanism. This hypocrisy that Hawthorne presents in his story is how he reflects on the hypocritical teachings of the Puritans.

2.2 The role of Puritan women

In Puritan society, the role women played was to raise their kids and teach them moral values. They would be taught about their agreement with God and stories and lessons of the Bible. They would cook, clean, and sew. These things were expected by Puritan women, but if they didn't do what they were supposed to do, they would be out casted by the society. Puritan women were highly obedient to their husbands and were very dutiful to their housework.

3. Analysis of characters

3.1 Goodman Brown

In this story, Goodman Brown determined to leave his home in Salem, Massachusetts on some mission that he will not disclose other than to say that it must be performed between sunset and sunrise. He sets off even though Faith pleads him to stay and he knows clearly that the journey is evil. In the end, as the one polluted, Brown turns to a filed husband and father. When he walks into the forest, he meets a man “in grave and decent attire, seated at the foot of an old tree”, whom Goody Cloyse refers later is in the very image of Goodman Brown, the grandfather of the silly fellow Brown. Here Hawthorne presented a frightening masculine figure that resembles his own father. From the feminist criticism perspective, Goodman Brown’s failure lies on his rejection of the feminine in favor of the father-figure symbolized by the Devil. Rejecting his wife’s sexuality, Brown gives up his adult sexuality in favor of a regression to the powerlessness at the mercy of a Terrible Father.

When he comes to the witch’s Sabbath in the forest, as the narrator tells us, he is the most frightful figure in the forest. It is a big shot to him to see Faith and her pink ribbon there. He returns home to rebuke and frighten his wife. We are told that he becomes a stern, a sad, a darkly meditative, a distrustful person. This ending is a huge and clear contrast to the beginning.

3.2 Faith

Faith Brown in Young Goodman Brown is not a three-dimensional character. Because her name is allegorical and her role in the story is small, we might be likely to overlook her significance. However, in fact, the story centers on her, more specifically, Brown’s rejection of her. Faith, as her name suggested, symbolizes the faith for good, pure, sacred and innocent. What’s more, she is the symbol of feminine power, which is opposite to the masculinity represented by Brown himself and the Devil figure. It is the latter that ruin the rest life if Goodman Brown. It is clear that good and evil are engendered qualities in the story. Hawthorne’s sympathies are thus with the women and not with the misconstrued masculinity of the rigid Brown.

In the short story, the pink ribbon of Faith which occurs five times merits our attention. Compared with the darkness and gloom in the forest, the pink is especially noticeable. Pink is the color between red and white. Red symbolizes the depravity while white means purity. So the pink color symbolizes neither complete depravity nor absolute innocent. This ambiguity has a rebellious color in a patriarchal society dominated by male. According to Puritan views, women are only a means of reproduction. They are in a subordinate position in the relationship between two sexes. In the stories, Faith chooses the way to the forest even earlier than Brown. It reflects her objection to the hypocritic Puritan teachings and conventions. Her chose is a symbol of the progress of feminism. Faith leaves her peaceful home town and rejected her faith means she refused to follow the God in Puritanism. Thus we can take the depravity in the Puritan’s eyes as the awakening of the secondary sex, as well as the challenge to the masculinity.

3.3 The old fellow-traveler

The old fellow-traveler symbolizes the devil in the story. We can see that from the description, such as “the only thing about him that could be fixed upon as black snack, so wrought that it might be seen to twist and wriggle itself like a living serpent”; and when Goody Cloyse sees him she calls him “the devil”. The father-figure shows some unstated allure to Brown and makes him reject his wife’s feminine and sexuality. The devil’s snaky staff can be seen as an appropriate phallic symbol. What’s more, the old fellow-traveler mentions that his having helped Brown’s grandfather persecuted Quaker’s women in Salem. The misconstrued masculinity is noticeable in this

fellow-traveler, whose purpose is obvious.

Nonetheless, when Brown doesn’t want to continue his trip, instead of dragging him go to the Sabbath, the devil just tells Brown to sit there and rest himself for a while, and he will like moving again. This description of the fellow-traveler means that the origin of Brown’s tragedy is not from the devil but originates from his won heart. More specifically, it is from the rejection of the feminine.

3.4 Goody Cloyse

Goody Cloyse is another important female character in this short story. She is called “good dame” by the narrator, from whom we know that Brown learned his religion from her. She is a very pious and exemplary dame and is still Brown’s moral and

spiritual advisor. When he wonders whether he is hurting Faith by continuing his wilderness journey, the devil produces Goody Cloyse to make Brown suspect women. She says she is attending the ceremony to see a man, while the men on horseback Brown overhears seem to be drawn there to see the women whom they expect. Thus sex is certainly at the heart of things. As her name suggested, Goody means hyposritic. Admittedly, she is ugly and hypocritic, but on the other side she is rebellious as Faith. Apparently, she is pious and exemplary in the eyes of Puritans and teaches others religion and traditional conventions. However, in fact she rejected the hypocrisy of Puritan society and Puritan teachings and seeks for the change of roles of women and a higher state in the male-dominant society. The huge contrast between the image of Goody Cloyse at night and in the day reinforces the awakening of the female.

4. Conclusion

In Young Goodman Brown, Hawthorne melts the ambiguity in the portrait of female characters. Influenced by Puritanism, he combines his typical methods of symbolism with reflective attitudes towards Puritan conventions and teachings. In the Puritan society, the status of women was low and poor. They had to do what they were supposed to do without any freedom to seek what they desired. By analyzing the female characters in Young Goodman Brown from feminism criticism perspective, we gain more knowledge about the characters as well as the theme of this short story penetratingly. The darkness of the forest symbolizes the male-dominant society, while Faith and Cloyse are the representatives of the rebellious fighters against the inequality between two genders and against the traditional Puritan conventions.

Works Cited

常耀信，《美国文学简史》，天津：南开大学出版社，2008年。

[Chang Y aoxin. A Survey of American Literature. Tianjin: Nankai University Press, 2008.]

陶洁，《美国文学选读》，北京：高等教育出版社，2011年。

[Tao Jie. Selective Reading in American Literature. Beijing: Higer Education Press, 2011.]

童明，《美国文学史》，北京：外语教学与研究出版社，2008年。

[Tong Ming. A History of American Literature. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. ]