Literature Review 1.1 Previous studies on The Scarlet Letter The Scarlet Letter is the masterpiece of Hawthorne, an outstanding romantic novelist in the 19th century. This novel occupies an important position in the history of American literature with its ideological and artistic harmony. Hawthorne is both a successor and a critic of the Puritan tradition. On the one hand, he is deeply influenced by Puritanism, and he could not get rid of the religious superstitions such as "original sin", "redemption" and "destiny". On the other hand, He hates the domination by the Puritanism and he even doubts the Puritans have a huge prejudice against sin. Since this novel was published in 1850, the critics have never stopped paying attention to it. Quite a few scholars show great interest in the analysis of religious morality. Donald J. Greiner used the "sexual instinct" theory to analyze the psychology of the characters in The Scarlet Letter and found out that Dimmesdale clearly presented the conflict between religious belief and sexual instinct. Newton Irving pointed out that Hawthorne paid much attention to the sin according to moral concept of Puritanism and tried to expose the religious persecution to human beings, thus arousing people's perception of religion. Henry James said that Hawthorne was born in America to a religious family, so his own understanding of religion was complicated. In this novel, Hawthorne discussed the issues of "sin" and "penalty", which made characters in The Scarlet Letter often have dual personality and characteristic. And some scholars observed that Hawthorne showed his negative attitude towards patriarchy. Therefore, the researches on patriarchy are flourishing. Analyzing from patriarchy, Louise Bannister used an empirical approach to conduct in-depth and meticulous research on Hawthorne's childhood and living environment. At the end of the research, Louise drew a conclusion that Hester Prynne was the victim of the traditional patriarchy. Dakota Turner also analyzed from the perspective of patriarchy, she pointed out that the patriarchal society gave men too much authority, which moulded the character Dimmesdale a hypocritical and weak man; Chillingworth a cool-hearted man. To the advocates of feminism, Hester was an amazon. One of those advocates, Richard Chase once praised that The Scarlet Letter is a feminist brochure in the literary field, because Hawthorne shaped the strong image of women who lived on the edge of the patriarchal society. In the article "Comment on the heroine Hester in The Scarlet Letter", Yao wen and Zhao Wei said that women in The Scarlet Letter were unfairly treated by society and have been surviving by themselves all the time. In addition, Wang Yi believed that Hester's words and deeds were the reflection of women's liberation, pursuit of happiness, independence and freedom in early America, which promoted the development of feminism. 1.2 Symbol and Symbolism When it comes to what makes The Scarlet Letter so attractive, it must be the symbolism. It is Hawthorne#8217;s unique artistic technique that attracts scholars#8217; attention. Analyzing from symbolism, Zhang Tianfei, a celebrated Chinese literary critic, searched for the prototypes of the characters in the Bible and analyzed the symbolic meanings of each characters by comparing with each other. In his article ”Intertextual Reading of The Scarlet Letter and the Bible”, he clarified that Hester was Eve and the Virgin Mary; Dimmesdale was a combination of Adam and the scapegoat; Chillingworth was an evil who played the role of Satan. Yuan Wenliang said that Hawthorne skillfully selected words which can symbolize the characters#8217; personalities and putted them together to give every character a unique name, which must be the most direct way to reveal human psychological reality. Besides, Jia Yan made a study about the symbols written in the novel. In his paper ”On the Symbolic Meanings of the Main Characters in The Scarlet Letter”, he pointed out the heroine#8217;s name Hester Prynne contained the positive meanings of beauty, passion, rash, hasty, desire and so on. While the hero Arthur Dimmesdale whose initial AD stood for adultery, which has negative meaning. As we all know, symbolism is a manifestation of literary creation. Writers use the specific image to express the abstract meaning thus creating an infinite imagination space for readers. However, it can be seen that most researchers only focus on the shallow meanings of the characters but ignore that those characters are inextricably linked to the theme of the novel. It is obvious that the promotion of storyline includes not only four main characters, but also scene settings and the most important letter A. So in this paper, I will analyze following typical symbols: symbolic meanings of letter A, names of four main characters and three scene settings that are described in this novel. After understanding the specific symbolic meanings of these typical symbols, we will have a systematic exploration of symbolism. What#8217;s more, we can further dig the sin, moral hypocrisy and the dark side of human consciousness hidden in The Scarlet Letter.