Abstract
Key Words
Hester; Camilla; love; comparison; feminist consciousness
摘 要
关键词
海丝特；卡米拉；爱情；对比；女权主义意识
Introduction
The Scarlet Letter represents the height of Hawthorne’s literary genius. The Puritan setting enables Hawthorne to portray the human soul under extreme pressures. Hester is the heroine of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. She makes the way to rebellion not only in her thought but also in her action. As a woman, she always wants to find consolation and enjoyment from her husband or lover. She admires and seeks for the ideal marriage. Hester is eager to gain brightness and freedom. But her heart is always full of contradiction and grief. The punishment of Puritanism and humiliation of the people make her merely crazy. It is a pity that Dimmesdale’s cowardice and Puritanism’s restraint lead her life to a tragic ending. In a sense, as a woman suffering from spirit sorrow, she is still loyal to Dimmesdale. She is a good model for the women of new generation. From her, people can know about the intrinsic meaning of true love.
Camilla, as a controversial Princess, lives in Modern English royal family. By comparison with Hester, she is also a rebellious woman to fight against the royal family and the public. Camilla is older than Charles and a spanorced woman, which makes it difficult for them to marry. But the intense love between them has spanned decades. It is a tale that has reached almost Shakespearian heights of passion, misery and betrayal. Their marriage thrusts them back into the spotlight which examines how they are kept apart by the royal family. But when the marriage between Charles and Diana ends, Camilla is regarded as a villain by the press.
Both Hester and Camilla are rebels, struggling against the loveless marriages. This paper mainly analyzes their views of love by comparison, from the aspects of their different backgrounds, characters, rebellious spirits, views of love and results. From their views of love, people can know the reasons to result in their different fates and results. It’s easy to find that Hester’s thought is full of religious mistrial atmosphere and fatalism. This kind of religious thought envelops her whole life. Camilla cannot give in English royal family and the public. Nothing can shake her belief—loves Charles very much.
I. The Different Backgrounds of Hester and Camilla
Different backgrounds signify different fates, just like Hester and Camilla. Although their backgrounds are so different, the attitude to seek true love is the same—breaking through traditional concepts and secular prejudices and seeking their true love.
A. The Influence of Puritanism upon Hester’s Poor Fate
Hester— the heroine of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, who values private self, pursuing personal freedom, humanity dignity, inspanidual rights and so on, gives a heavy punch upon puritan society. The letter “A” functions as her passport into religions where other women dare not tread. Hester has been portrayed as an intelligent and capable woman. It is the extraordinary circumstances shaping her that make her become such an important figure. She is the most controversial person. To a profound extent, she symbolizes a revolution.
As a woman, she indulges herself, on behalf of human vulnerability and sadness. For the secular, she commits adultery, but as a devout puritan, she has also run counter to the religious rules. Pearl is just Hester in miniature—craze, despair, emotional resistance and headstrong temperaments. She has been married, but she has never loved. When she and Dimmesdale make love, the organs of sense are wakening by love. She comes to realize the true meaning as a woman. Therefore, she is eager to seek her true love. Her rebellious attitude and courage for the world not only confess her indulgence, but also collect her love in her heart. Thus, human and religious contradictions become the focus. She is a devout puritan in essence, just because of great vitality, makes mistakes and has to suppress her desires. Dimmesdale and She don’t play frivolous game, her crime is the result of humanity’s extending, which doesn’t mean abandoning religion, just because humanity and religious doctrine conflict.
The novel exposes capitalist development, the brutal social codes, religious deceptions and moral hypocrisies in the nineteenth-century era. Hester is written in a high moral heroine in disguise. But English traditions and prejudices are engraved on their minds: weak in numbers, but strong in spirit.
Puritans live unrealistic lives that are horrifyingly rigid and that lead those to act definitely on the outside of love. They advocate being faithful with their rather gloomy outlook of life. Although Hawthorne doesn’t personally show the view of puritan life, the problem of sin is obvious in his works. The Scarlet Letter is an American classical literature, a psychological melodrama about the cruel and unusual punishment of original sin committed out of love. The novel suggests that American romanticism adapt to American Puritanism. The theme is that guilt or sin will be punished whether you face or hide it. It puts forward a question that whether Hester admits her sin or not, and her love is really sinful. The dominant concern in the novel is the moral, emotional, and psychological effect on the people in general and those implicate in it in particular. Puritanism is the ultimate reason that influences on Hester’s whole life.
American Puritanism stresses predestination, original sin, total depravity, and limits to gain atonements from God’s grace. It is based on the Biblical myth of the Garden of Eden. Hester’s adultery is viewed as a threat to the Puritan community in which she lives. As is known to all, sin and knowledge are linked in the Judeo-Christian tradition. The Bible begins with the story of Adam and Eve who are expelled from the Garden of Eden for eating of the fruit of the trees of the garden and knowing good and evil. Adam’s degeneration makes people have original sins, but it also gains God’s grace. God’s grace has double standard, parallel justice and charity, and love with the law. That is why Puritans wants Hester to wear “A”. Namely, we shouldn’t forget requirements of God’s justice while we gain God’s grace. Legal sanction is necessary, because Adam’s degeneration has already made rationality and emotion be parted. Thus it loses God’s integrity faith. It is difficult for novelist to identify some helpless relief. Hester and Dimmesdale’s story is like the story of Adam and Eve’s. After falling in love in an instant, there is the myth of human origin, and there is also evil. The experience of Hester and Dimmesdale recalls the story of Adam and Eve, because in both cases, sin results in expulsion and suffering. But it also results in knowledge, especially, in knowledge of what it means to be human. When Hawthorne chooses a potential human love to explore the “evil”, he has never let himself get rid of confusions and contradictions.
As Adam said: “This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man.” And to the woman he said: “Great will be your pain in childbirth; in sorrow will your children come to birth; still your desire will be for your husband, but he will be your master.” (Duan Qi, 1994, 55).
This opinion affects women’s status in society. Religion aggravates the inequalities between men and women, at the same time it supports men’s great atrocities to women. It is precisely because of women subordinate status which has been designated that they suffer from the gender discrimination. Religious prejudice and secular moral punishment let them pay a heavy price. Whatever they are ancestral sins, moral sins or social sins, Hawthorne’s works all dig deeply into the dark sides of human nature The Scarlet Letter scrutinizes early American puritanical society which shows how rigid, suffocating and hypocritical it could be. Hester rebels against the Puritan ethic and longs for real life, with genuine wholesome values based on love, not on controlling. Namely, she is the opposite extreme of the puritans.
B. Condemn From Royal Family and the Public towards Camilla
Camilla Parker-Bowles is the second wife of Britain's Prince Charles. She is in modern society, but as a woman, she still doesn’t completely control her life and her true love. She doesn’t still get rid of the secular’s prejudices and church pressures.
What’s more, the royal family is arrogant. A couple being separated is seen as the modern version of Romeo and Juliet. In front of the royal family, history doesn’t progress. However, what is it that makes a man love a woman so much? Believe it or not, it has little to do with sex, even though that is more than likely fantastic. It has to do with comfortable feeling together, making each other laugh and please, and sharing the same interests and hobbies. It has to do with complementing and consolation each other, each half making the other one whole, being soul—mates. Great sex is a by—product of such a relationship. After all, Charles loves Camilla very much. The hostility toward Charles and Camilla doesn’t influence on their relationship.
The public hate Camilla, which don’t influence Camilla’s status in Charles’s heart. However, most people who have an opinion about the future king of Great Britain are very anti-Camilla. She seems to be blamed for the breakup of Charles and Diana’s marriage. She is perceived to be a home wrecker. However, Charles later admits that he and Camilla has been romantically involved .After Diana died in 1997, Camilla becomes Charles's steady companion and partner, amid much public chatter about the propriety of their behaviors and Charles should become king.
Meanwhile, in fact, the purposes of Charles marrying Diana have nothing to do with love. If love happened it was incidental. It has to do with an aging Prince being prodded by mother to marry so the monarchy would around for future generations. To be blunt what the future king of Britain needs is a virgin. And not to impugn the characters of English women, but hot looking and poised virgins from the upper crust families aren’t exactly in great supply. A virgin bride is the only way to ensure the royal genes are carried on to the next generation. There is also the obvious concern that the King or Queen wouldn’t contract sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis, which is quite common through much of human history. Camilla fails to qualify in the virginity department. Charles has spent over 30 years dating her and has wanted to marry her, but she is off the list of royal marriage partners because she isn’t a virgin. Apparently, there are concerns that her blood isn’t blue enough. Charles could be a future King and marry a proper British virgin or could abdicate, marry the woman he loves.
Camilla’s ordinary appearance and age don’t seem appropriate for a romantic woman. She is distorted by the tabloids endlessly, so she has been casting into the limelight. The public are driven by their own dreams, and think that love should be that women have beautiful appearance, men should have handsome looks. The public allow that old men and young women have romantic love; the middle-aged men and ladies have romantic love, but look down upon the romantic love that men are younger than women. This describes the status inequality between men and women.
Above all, it is known that Hester and Camilla experience the social unequal treatments. They are eager to break through the inequality and live a happy life. They are the good models for the women in new generations.
II. Differences in Character between Hester and Camilla
As a whole, Hester and Camilla are both brave women with strong characteristics and self-esteems. From them, people know that women are eager to seek freedom and happy marriage, but the social pressures and patriarchy system detain their passive hearts. As women in different eras, they have something in common—perseverance and inner charming.
A. Hester’s Guilty Feelings
Hester is a lovely and imaginative young girl when she is married. She needs being loved and accompanied, and longs for a rich and colorful life. But her husband never realizes her feeling and makes her entrap into solitude. So she falls in love with Dimmesdale, from then on, plants the origin of their subsequent sorrows and tortures. According to the moralists, although she is a degraded woman, her so—called degradation should be attributed to her tragic marriage. Apart from that, Puritanism is another cause to her poor fate. The Scriptures demand death for adultery, and the Puritan laws closely follow the Biblical pattern. The Puritan “fathers” stress fidelity in marriage and the sacredness of the family. Thus, the “laws” between by Hester and Dimmesdale are the seventh commandment of Decalogue, and Hester’s crime of adultery can only be punished by death. In Hester’s opinion, even though their marriage ends in a failure, Chillingworth is still her husband and it is immoral to have an intimate relationship with another man. So at an accidental sight of her lost husband, she dares not to face him and is frightened to be asked about the identity of the baby’s father, for she realizes that if she tells the name of the baby’s father, her husband must take revenge against him. That is to say, Hester is a brave and controversial woman. On one hand, she longs for the romantic love. On the other hand, she dares not incompletely betray her husband.
She is a sexy woman with oriental women’s characteristics. As a young and beautiful girl, but get married to a physique abnormal man, she cannot feel the love. After her husband disappeared, the young pastor—Dimmesdale intrudes into her lonely life. She falls in love with him. To her, many unsuspected tendencies of her impulsive and passionate nature are revealed to her. The “oriental characteristics” of her temperament, her ardent love of beauty, her native energy and capacity,—such elements need a strong and wise person to curb and guide them, scarcely disguised by the light of her innocent and womanly charm. Hester, as a social outcast, finds no invitation to repentance in the law that crushes her. The only alter native it offers her is abject self-extinction, or defiance. Man has marked Hester’s sin by a Scarlet Letter, which has such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy could reach her. Although she sets herself apart from society, she doesn’t have the innocent that allows her to do or say anything without a good excuse.
B. Camilla’s Confidence
Camilla is a socialite by birth and by nature, born into the English elite circle in 1947, like other girls of her station, is groomed for a place in society. Camilla is athletic and enjoys the outdoors and traditions like hunting and fishing. She isn’t particularly clothes-conscious but she always exudes a sexy confidence over men. She never spends much time on her hair or her nails which are always rather stubbly and bitten and dirty. But Camilla is definitely a success in her circle. Charles and Camilla experience a longstanding relationship that continues on- and-off. Finally, Charles is marrying Camilla.
Camilla doesn’t have good looking and grace of the late Princess Diana, but one thing is for sure, unlike the relationship Charles had with Diana, Charles truly loves Camilla. Not many of us are willing to pursue the same woman for over 30 years. Camilla is a blunt, down-to earth, and humorous person. According to her way of living, she is an absolutely confident woman. No matter wherever she always stands up, the strength of a magnet and invincible confidence in her appearance is largely made up disadvantages. She is full of fun in her life. Wherever she is in, she is confident in herself. She is willing to help others, and deeply loves Charles. Her fearless character seems anything goes without saying that she could not yield anything. She is pregnant with a potentiality which may burst out at any time. In her generation, a few people are like Camilla. She is bold, blunt, but is different from the other women at her period. She leaves profound impressions on many people, such as: confidence, dignity, pride, sense of security, a sense of trust, treats each other as equals.
III. Rebellious Spirits
A. Hester’s Three Main Rebellions
1. Insistence on the Guardianship over Pearl
Hester has never abandoned the consideration for freedom in her lonely life. She changes herself from a passionate and emotional woman into a thoughtful woman. She commits a crime, but her honest attitude relative to the male images of hypocrisy in the novels wins people’s sympathies. When the Governor questioned Hester: “What canst do for the child?” Hester, laying her finger on the red token, answered: “God gave her into my keeping and I will not give her up.” With the help of Dimmesdale, she insists on the guardianship over Pearl. And ever since then, her position has changed from a passive one to a positive one. She is a woman with highly challenging and rebellious spirit. She can boldly go to Dimmesdale, said: “What we have done is sacred dedication.” She is also a woman concerning and adapting reality, her ideas dissolves in the real attitude to tolerance of the real life.
2. Disclosing of the Hypocrisy of Chillingworth
Hester is a lonely, rebellious or even radical female image. She not only considers about women’s unequal status, but also shows her inner anger, repression and emotional loss. She becomes the personification of truth, kindness and beauty, her action is sure of love under the oppression of the feudal regime and full recognition of human rights and freedoms. Hester once hides her husband’s true identity, but when she realizes that there is a force damaging Dimmesdale’s sense of peace other than his conscience alone, she meets Dimmesdale in the forest and tells him that the physician is her husband and what he has done is for revenge. Her lover cannot forgive her at first, but he says he forgives Hester finally. In her tremendous loneliness and suffering, she goes to confess her sins, and she gradually forms a tolerant and kind-hearted broad-mindedness. The immoral love cannot make her stop, the human hardship and suffering also cannot crush her, and the present attack still cannot destroy her. She would rather live independently than bow down to men.
3. Encouraging Dimmesdale Fleeing away with her
After she returns from prison, she stands the stigma “A” and keeps the secret of her lover’s name. She raises the baby. After seven-year hard life, Hester doesn’t give up the pursuit of happy life and true love. Her heart is still full of affection for Dimmesdale. She dreams and plans to flee away with him. People should know her passion is alive from the conversation in the forest. She doesn’t repent her real “sin” and doesn’t feel humiliated for wearing the letter “A”. As a woman, suffering from spirit sorrow, she is still loyal to her lover. It’s very valuable.
B. Camilla’s Rebellion
Feminist’s demands for equality have blurred the distinctions between the sexes, creating situations where men are able to dominate women because of their more aggressive and forceful natures.
Rachel Trickett says: “Women, without some code of deference or respect, become increasingly victims” (Mao Fenghua, 2005, 11).
Camilla never gives up fighting for the secular, and she continually loves the Prince. The hostility from the British people cannot crush her. For their true love, she is willing to pay the entire price. World is progressing, Camilla is progressing too.
Camilla always keeps touch with Charles, and she is always Charles’s mistress. Facing condemns from the public and royal family, she doesn’t show the strong struggling. Because she loves Charles, that is the most important.
As women, they should comply with their husbands even if there is no love between them. But Hester and Camilla set the good examples for the new women. They dare fight for the secular for their love and dare pursuit their true love. The era is different, but the essence of struggling is the same: expecting the true love. Love is sweet, but the progress is so hard.
IV. Views of Love by Comparison
Different people have different opinions towards love. Hester and Camilla aren’t the exception.
A. The Influence of Feminism upon Hester’s Attitude to LoveBecause of human fragility and sadness, Hester goes into the beautiful trap. In a sense, she ruins two men. She bears so strong punishment in her life, for her love, she pays for the extraordinary cost, such as: suffering insult, persecution, torture and loneliness. It is no easy task. Her dignity and personality is openly trampled. She affords the tremendous punishment, which doesn’t match her fault. Puritan demand for the pure belief but it should not fall into the rigid dogma of abstinence, and should be concerned about the religious essence.
The feminist tendency in The Scarlet Letter has also got people’s attention for many years. From the heroine Hester described by Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter, she seems to be a miniature of a resistant, “a Feminist Angle”, a strong woman looking forward to the equality between men and women.
Hester has permeated with the feminist consciousness that she is a pioneer who seeks freedom, inspaniduality liberation and true love. She is a person with strong perseverance and faithful love. Although she is sentenced by the rulers, she has struggled indomitably for defending their justice and truth, for defending their innocence and purity. She continually is in pursuit of her true love, and considers her love as sacrosanct. Due to the loyal love and specific perseverance, she refuses to tell the identity of her lover and would prefer to confront the harsh reality. With the protection of the lover, to seek the great love, Hester uses an unimaginable courage to support herself. She endures all the pains at present and hasn’t disclosed the name of the baby’s father. Facing to all the difficulties, she hasn’t shown the slightest retreat. The secular society also surrendered the “raped woman” for the first time. “It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates.” (Hawthorne, 2001, 87)
On one hand, love is an eternal topic of mankind and is always one of the best feelings in human life. Their love is in a difficult situation, the novel considers the puritan brutal regime in North America in colonial times as its background. Hester, as committed adultery, she has been thrown into the prison by the puritanical regime, a red character wearing symbolize her stigma in her whole life. Meanwhile, she is despised and discarded by the people for wearing the letter “A”. Love is human nature, but according to Christian doctrine, Adam and Eve eat the fruit of wisdom in the Eden, and then know the sexy happiness and they reproduced the human beings instead of depending on the God, which is a kind of “original sin”. Her pure evil is just because of her sincere love, which has never been crime. Not human nature may make people crime, just because evil tempts the fragile human nature and makes human beings go towards the degeneration and evil. Hawthorne’s feminist tendency is very clear. The recognition for love and religious concepts of consciousness express his unspeakable difficulties everywhere. Although he hates unreasonable marriage, he dare not affirm the “illegal love” and be sure that lovers will be married.
On the other hand, when feelings and responsibilities conflict, Zeus didn’t hesitate to choose responsibilities, which become the methods men do during the male-dominated society, and also become a collective unconsciousness, accumulated in the process, lead to the worst instincts of human. Their love raises Dimmesdale, rather than discrediting him. He doesn’t actually desecrate the religious belief. Their love from motivation to action is not profane. Their love is pure and scared in the sense of the secular and religion.
B. Camilla’s Active Attitude to Her Love
Camilla is a confident woman and deeply loves Charles. Her maturity and rationality wins Charles’s heart. How many people are willing to spend 35 years waiting to marry the person they love? Of course on the grand scheme of things their relationship is nothing but piffle. Maybe it is a tragic life for most people that are willing to spend more than 30 years waiting their true love. Charles should consider his sovereign in the future, instead of his true love. They shouldn’t have to go through life projecting a false version of themselves because of hundreds of years of tradition. It is difficult for them that they get rid of the constraints of royal family. What is more, it is more difficult for them that they marry people they love. The reason that women can attract Charles is not their good looks, just because of their feelings together. It is hoped that Charles and Camilla finally live a happy life and can enjoy a life of bliss together.
People should salute Camilla for her courage in marrying Charles, in spite of her weird and dysfunctional family. Most women are likely to refuse this marriage, because they cannot afford the pressures and responsibilities. But Camilla would stand for it which suggests she loves Charles for marrying the woman he loves, even though his mother disapproves. It doesn’t seem like courage but in the weird world of the royal monarchy what he does require a lot of courage.
For most men, they like to choose beautiful women as their girlfriends or wives. They may spend much time in dressing their wives up. Camilla never spends much time on her hair or her nails, but she attracts Charles. Therefore, Camilla and Charles look unique. They represent what we are not familiar in our times in the world: they represent the sincere feelings, representing sincere understanding, representing the sincere love that is not the trend of the times. It is said that the first love is the most profound and strong and will even affect person’s whole li
fe. So do Camilla and Charles.
As For Camilla, it is believed that love is the force that makes them realize on an emotional level that we are not alone. Love demonstrates that everything that is meaningful in their lives is in the context of a relationship. Whatever she is or is not in the minds of the public, she’s no fresh-faced young girl in her twenties out to rob a wealthy old man. But Charles loves her very much, for some strange reason that alone is a comfort to him.
V. Different Results
Hester and Camilla are in different eras, of course, their experiences are different. Hester doesn’t yield to social pressure and is indifferent to the Puritan moral law and “punishment”. Her silence itself is a speechless protest against the harsh society. However, she cannot completely get rid of religious restraints. She is not a firm rebel because of her compromise. Camilla, as a new generation woman, bears a lot of condemns from the public and royal family. However, she has a firm conviction —loves Charles very much. Nothing can shake her belief. She cannot yield to the public and royal family. So their results are different.
A. Hester’s Tragic Result
This novel openly ends in tragedy, for the secret of Hester and Dimmesdale becomes public knowledge when the minister reveals his adultery and openly accepts Hester and Pearl, who have long suffered in silence. Ironically, Hester is “freed” by the confession, no longer bearing the Scarlet Letter alone. Dimmesdale is also freed, although he dies after the confession, he is finally freed from the guilty of his inner sin. And she dreams some day that women can enjoy equal status with men. Although Hester is strong, brave, hardworking, good, she finally dies in insult, ridicule and indifference. It reveals the inferior status of women in cruel hypocrisy puritanical society. Surviving hardships and the tragic fate, also reflects Hawthorne’s thoughts: he advocates feminism and deeply sympathizes with women who seek romantic love.
Seeking the true love and longing for happy marriage is reasonable requests. However, she is punished by puritan regime for her whole life, wearing a red in public. The church hard life and the rigid dogma restrain Dimmesdale’s hearts for a while. His human nature is to revive, when he sees Hester with slender body, beautiful appearance almost close to human perfection and deep black eyes. Then he defeats the “spanine”, making love with her, but religious spirit as the opiate poisons his soul. A deep-rooted religious idea in his mind has stifled the desire for love and happiness. Their love is regarded as “an affront to the sacred law.” Since he considers himself as a sinner, he should be punished. But he dare not openly afford his responsibility. He is afraid of wearing the character “A” together and fears that God doesn’t forgive him. Therefore, they groan with pain and struggle in despair.
Dimmesdale’s spirit will always be useless remorse for the pain and evil. After suffering from the tortures of soul, he feels exhausted and has become a victim of religious poison. Hester inner confusion, suspicion and craziness have also stirred her head. Due to torture of inner world and external environment, they are doomed to have a tragic life.
He is willing to challenge for the secular and religion! He would like to escape with Hester. They are eager to be in pursuit of the love and enjoy the love, but they fear loss of the paradise. However, he repents in public at last. That is to say, he overcomes prejudices, hypocrisies and so on.
From the fate of Hester and Dimmesdale, people may learn that it avails not the sinner to live a life of saintly deeds and aims, but to be true; not to scourge himself, to wear sackcloth, or to redeem other souls, but openly to accept his shame. The poison of sin isn’t so much in the sin itself as in the concealment; for all men are sinners, but he who conceals his sin pretends a superhuman holiness. All sin is based on selfishness; but the supreme abdication of self, postulated by voluntary and unreserved self-revelation, leaves no further basis for sin to build on. As a result, the sin doesn’t destroy her inward spirit, instead, she gathers her strength and courage, and flourishes the letter “A”.
B. Camilla’s Winning of the Respect and Marrying Charles
Camilla ends in a comedy, because she marries Charles. She makes more efforts to seek her true love. At the same time, Charles never really stops loving Camilla. He refuses to give her up. Through her marriage and his own, they still manage to have their lovers’ relationship. It is believed that their love ranks right up there with the big stories of the centuries.
Whether the recent years of careful planning and control of publicity surrounding this couple have paid off, or whether the public give in to the romanticism of a royal wedding, Camilla’s public approval has improved. She is finally getting to marry the love of her life, Charles. She has waited thirty-five years to make their union legal. Perhaps the most surprising result is that Camilla wins respect in England. Camilla is slammed endlessly by the press for unpolished appearance, but she has been setting style trends.
Conclusion
According to Hester’s and Camilla’s attitudes towards love by comparison, people can know their similarities and differences towards love. They are rebels with unhappy marriages, eager to seek the true love. They are good models for women in new generation.
Hester is a firm and persistent woman who seek freedom, equality, and passion, while she is fettered by religious spirit. She rebels against the Puritanism by an action marked with natural dignity and force of character, as if by her own “free will”. Her rebellion in this phase is argued in a high level. In her era, Hester should have kept adherence to her husband, even she hasn’t a bit love for her husband. But Hester shakes off Puritanical bondage and loves. She doesn’t control her desires intentionally and does everything that she thinks to be worth. The love between them is undoubtedly a violation of both God’s law and social law, but it does not violate the natural law. It is not sinful thing for them to love each other. On the contrary, the Puritan New England is depicted as an intolerant society and the strict moral codes would only lead to cruelty and tragedy. That is a suppression of humanity. In her opinion, their love is full of dignity and grace. But it is a pity that they cannot spend their rest life staying together, which is a tragic result.
As for Camilla, she is internationally known, living the life of a celebrity surrounded by intrusive public interest that makes her the subject of abuse and admiration all at the same time. She is also a rebel. In modern England society, the British royal family cannot permit Princes marrying a spanorced woman. Furthermore, Camilla is older than Charles. The royal family pays more attention to the Prince’s future and the next generation’s blue blood. Nevertheless, Camilla still overcomes all kinds of difficulties and finally marries Charles after more than 30 years. Camilla wins respect from royal family and the public, which is a beautiful ending.
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