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head’ (representing cold intellect) and the ‘heart’ (human affection). The spelling of the family name remained Hathorne until young Nathaniel inserted the “w”. We can imagine how the history of family deeply affected him. After he finished his college, he stayed at his hometown Salem for twelve years. During this period, he collected much information in Puritan period, which is one source of his creation.
Based on first-hand information from the history of his hometown and family, Nathaniel Hawthorne had a profound knowledge of Puritan life. Therefore, it is not difficult for readers to learn this experience in all his novels. So the author thinks one of his achievements is that his works enable us to learn the Puritan history after three centuries.
Because Nathaniel was deeply influenced by Puritanism, he criticized the fanaticism and bigot to religion. His ability to create vivid and symbolic images that embodied great moral questions was well manifested in the story. The telling of a tale was a way of inquiring into the meaning of life. Hence, he mainly discussed not only the problem of morality and sin, but also described the evil of human nature and advocated to root out the evil and purify soul so as to get the final forgiveness by doing good works and confession.

2. Hawthorne’s social experiences
Hawthorne lived in the period when US capitalist economy rapidly expanded and social structure changed tremendously. Progresses in the field of science and technology, had not brought improvement in social morality, instead it caused intense relations between the person and person. Hawthorne was confused at the incisive struggles between the US north part of capitalist and south slave-owner at that time. He did not approve Transcendentalist’s “the human has the divine nature”, nor believed that Utopian socialism the social reform plan would have any actual effect. He attributed the cause of unreasonable phenomena in the capitalist society to wickedness, and attributed the external world’s all evil phenomena to the “wicked human nature”, he held that “the intrinsic world, once purifies, many external evil can vanish voluntarily”. In the work, like his contemporary, Hawthorne advocated leading character to take the way of self- reparations. Sometimes he thought that his country has a bright future, and America is the hope of the entire human being, but he could not understand all sorts of rapid changes which took place during the developmental-time capitalism. He did not know how human could have the possibility to attain a newborn, bringing The Scarlet Letter something of gloomy colour.

B. The symbolic meaning in The Scarlet Letter
1. The symbolic meaning of the scarlet letter “A”
The scarlet letter “A” almost penetrates the novel’s each scene, linking nearly all characters in the novel, it sticks on Hester’s attire, engraves after she died on the tombstone, punctures in Dimmesdale’s body, even appears mystically in the sky. Undoubtedly, the most important symbol that is carried throughout the novel is the scarlet letter “A”. As the story develops, the meaning of the letter “A” changes: it initially symbolizes the immoral act of adultery, it is a kind of criminal and humiliation because as Hester walks through the street, she will be looked down upon as if she is some sort of demon from hell that commits a terrible crime. And then the letter stands for Hester’s