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ad there been a papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have seen in this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire and mien, and with the infant at her bosom, an object to remind him of the image of the Divine Maternity” (Hawthorne, p. 56). Meanwhile, Hawthorne indicates from the life experiences of Hester that Hester bears great similitude with Virgin Mary. Just like Virgin Mary, Hester has an old, ugly and decrepit husband, who can not bring happiness and satisfaction to her and is only the nominal father of her child. Just like Virgin Mary, Hester gives birth to a child whose father remains a secret. Therefore, people around her are cruel and lack of sympathy to her. Just like Virgin Mary, after the child was born, it receives an interview from three senile and authoritative men-Governors Bellingham, clergymen Wilson and Dimmesdale. Just like Virgin Mary, Hester cannot live in the place and has to move to other places. In the novel, though Hester reflects the archetype of Virgin Mary, Hawthorne also introduces differences to reinforce the ironical effect. In The Bible, it was King Herold I who found the mother and the child would pose a threat to him and thus wanted to kill them, while in The scarlet letter, it is the townspeople who insult and even demand to execute Hester. The parallelism between Virgin Mary and Hester reveals to us that Hester, in Hawthorne’s eyes, should be deemed as a good woman in some aspects while the difference fully reveals that the harshness and cruelty of Puritan society.
     3. Conclusion
     There is no doubt that archetypal method, especially Biblical archetypes, is a good way for us to analyze characters and to explore into the complex meanings behind the text. Hawthorne fully employed some Biblical characters in The scarlet letter in order to achieve some artistic effects. However, what needs to be noted is that the artistic influences of Bible on Hawthorne are much more than what we discussed. From the archetypes embodied in the image of Hester, we already see that Hawthorne shows strong sympathy towards those under oppression. Moreover, Hawthorne does not simply copy or transplant the Biblical archetypes but reproduces and reshapes them in an artistic way.   Hawthorne, by means of using these archetypes, presents to us a vivid character of Hester, who is in quest of her self value in a society dominated by man.
     Through the allusion to the Biblical archetypes, he shows his strong opposition towards the harshness and hypocrisy of the Puritan community. His artistic technique of using biblical archetypes not only elevates the novel to the level of epic, but also makes the novel surpass the historic time and space and become a heavy problem that provokes us into deep thought—whether it is justified in suppressing one’s natural desire.

References:
Andrews & Elmer Kennedy. (Eds.). 1999. Nathaniel Hawthorne—The scarlet letter. Cambridge: Icon Books Ltd.
Frye, N. 1973 (1957). Anatomy of criticism: Four essays. New Jersey: Princeton. University Press.
Gerber, John. 1968. Twentieth century interpretations of The scarlet letter. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. 1996. The scarlet letter. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching & Research Press.
Holy Bible. 1989. Nanjing: Chinese Christianity Association. &n