Differences of Women’s View of Love Between East and West—Taking Moment in Peking and The Scarlet Letter as Examples

Abstract

Love is a wonderful flower in the garden of human emotion, which is an indispensable element in literary works. It not only represents the author’s writing intention, but also reflects a certain era. In the past thousands of years, there have been many literary works dealing with the theme of female love. Their influence on the society as a whole is immense, such as Cao Xueqin’s A Dream of Red Mansions, Hans Anderson’s The Daughter of the Sea and Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. These kinds of love-based works can always get readers a deep impression and are thought-provoking. From these works, we can see that love is embodied not only in behavior, but also in spirit. Based on the different views of love between China and the West, this paper analyzes the causes of the differences between Chinese and Western views of love through the outcomes of the female character’s love in the two works of Moment in Peking and The Scarlet Letter.