Michael Stavropoulos ([email protected])
Mr. Torrance (email me just so i know my)
English III (homeworks being used)
2 December 1997
Feminism In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The
Scarlet Letter
`”In Heaven’s own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish the
whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness.” (p.263)
Can Hester Prynne’s struggle with the Puritan patriarchs be seen as a woman’s
struggle for emancipation and in what sense does Hester liberate herself socially,
psychologically, economically and sexually?
Socially, Hester’s place within the Puritan community changes throughout the
romance, and so does her relationship towards the Puritan patriarchal authority. Hester
does not defy all authority. The authority she does not adhere to is automatic male
authority and the laws made by men. In the long run, Hester does not submit to anyone or
anything but her own inner laws. This can be seen as the realization of true emancipation.
There is, however, some ambiguity in the way Hester appears to react to male authority
and the way she actually does react. The narrator presents Hester as submissive and
well-aware of her guilt in accepting her punishment. However, the act of adultery itself, in
the scene in the governor’s hall where she stands up for herself and her right to raise Pearl,
The Essay on Hester In A Puritan Society
The Puritans, in Nathaniel Hawthornes The Scarlet Letter, were a group of people who were shaped by English experience and complete involvement in religion. The Puritan society molded itself and created a government based upon the Bible and implemented it with force. The crime of adultery committed by Hester generated rage, and was qualified for serious punishment according to Puritan beliefs. ...
and the forest-scene are evidence to the contrary. In the end “the world’s law was no law
for her mind.” (p.164)
Hester’s isolation, imposed upon her by the Puritan patriarchs, means she has to
give up the most important things a seventeenth century woman’s life revolves around;
marriage and a home. Yet her place outside of the community is also the cause of her
psychological liberation from the stern Puritan norms. “The tendency of her fate and
fortunes had been to set her free. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where
other women dared not tread.” (p.199)
Hawthorne plays with the characteristics of gender. He plays with the narrator’s
and the reader’s perception of men and women by switching male and female traits of
character. Throughout the text, Dimmesdale develops a sensitivity and a submissiveness
which are not at all manlike, while Hester takes charge of the situation. She is the one who
decides they will leave Boston, and she is the one who is going to make all necessary
arrangements. It is as if Hester and Dimmesdale have switched roles. Hester is, without
question, the stronger one. Dimmesdale even calls her his “better angel.” (p.201) This
mental alteration in the two main characters is complemented by a physical alteration.
Dimmesdale’s health is on the decline throughout the romance. Hester gradually becomes
unattractive to men. “Some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had
been essential to keep her a woman.” (p.163) If she is no longer a woman, what is she? She
has adopted some very masculine qualities, which can be interpreted as a sign of
psychological emancipation.
The fact that Hester lives under a higher law is another proof of her psychological
liberation. She refuses to sell out and lower herself by revealing the name of the father.
She takes the punishment because she cannot lower herself. Dimmesdale, on the other
The Essay on Dimmesdale Vs Chillingworth One Hester Minister
Dimmesdale vs. Chillingworth Near the end of the novel, Arthur Dimmesdale tells the following to his fellow adulteress Hester concerning Roger Chillingworth: "We are not, Hester, the worst sinners in the world. There is one worse than even the polluted priest! That old man's revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart." He is referring to ...
hand, is untrue because he refuses to confess his crime. His worst sin is betraying his love
for Hester. This proves that, in the eyes of the narrator, men and women are on a different
level. Hester is not only the stronger one, but also the morally better one. This connects to
nineteenth century ideas about women as morally superior to men.
There is a lot of inequality in The Scarlet Letter. Traditionally adultery was a
worse crime for a woman than it was for a man. Moreover, when a woman gets pregnant
it is a physical sign that makes the promiscuity a known fact. Men are not connected to the
act in any visible way. Hester pays a different price because she is a woman. Hester, as a
woman, takes all the blame, while Dimmesdale, as a man, does not get punished, at least
not by man-made law. This illustrates the inequality between the two.
Hester is very self-sacrificing. There seems to be a pattern in her relationships with
men who cannot give her as much as she gives them. Her marriage with Chillingworth was
characterized by inequality from the start. Chillingworth illustrates this by stating: “And
so, Hester, I drew thee into my heart, into the innermost chamber, and sought to warm
thee by the warmth which thy presence made there!” (p.74) The relationship was not only
unequal, but Chillingworth also married Hester under false pretenses: ” mine was the first
wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my
decay.” (p.74-75) The narrator affirms this view by stating:
“Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the
utmost passion of her heart! Else it may be their miserable fortune, as it was Roger
Chillingworth’s, when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all
her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of
happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality.” (p.176)
Hester’s marriage obviously could not bring her fulfillment, but neither can her relationship
with Dimmesdale. (Larson 183)
By committing adultery, Hester defies her moral obligations towards her husband.
The Term Paper on Women In The Revolution
I. Womens Roles in the Revolution A. Family Enterprises 1. Women took over 2. Succeeded Despite a. inflation b. British Occupancy c. absence of important supplies 3. gave women self-confidence 4. proved that women could make a living by themselves B. Army Camps 1. Women came to be with soldiers a. were fed by military b. were cared for by military 2. The women: a. cooked b. cleaned c. sewed d. ...
When he arrives in Boston, however, she affirms her submissiveness to him by promising
to keep quiet about his true identity. After seven years, when she sees what Chillingworth
is doing to Dimmesdale, she will no longer keep quiet. Hester decides to go against
Chillingworth’s wishes, and thereby achieves full independence from her husband. “She
determined to redeem her error, so far as it might yet be possible. Strengthened by years
of hard and solemn trial, she felt herself no longer so inadequate to cope with Roger
Chillingworth . . . She had climbed her way, since then, to a higher point.” (p.167) So in the
end she is not submissive to Chillingworth, just like she is not submissive to the Puritan
authorities in the long run because she adheres to a higher law.
“The scarlet letter had not done its office.” (p.166) It was supposed to reduce
Hester and put her in her proper place, but instead it has made her a revolutionary. The
inequality she experiences causes Hester to speculate on the existing balance of power. It
makes her want to find alternatives to traditional patriarchal society. This is another aspect
of her psychological liberation. “She assumed a freedom of speculation . . . which our
forefathers, had they known of it, would have held to be a deadlier crime than that
stigmatized by the scarlet letter.” (p.164) Hester foresees a revolution concerning gender:
“She [a woman] discerns, it may be, such a hopeless task before her. As a first
step, the whole system of society is to be torn down, and built up anew. Then, the
very nature of the opposite sex, or its long hereditary habit, which has become like
nature, is to be essentially modified, before woman can be allowed to assume what
seems a fair and suitable position. Finally, all other difficulties being obviated,
woman cannot take advantage of these preliminary reforms, until she herself shall
have undergone a still mightier change; in which, perhaps, the ethereal essence,
wherein she has her truest life, will be found to have evaporated. A woman never
overcomes these problems by any exercise of thought. They are not to be solved,
The Essay on The Evolution of Hester’s Scarlet Letter
In the novel, The Scarlet Letter, the protagonist, Hester Prynne, is forced to publically wear her sin on her sleeve. She committed adultery, which was a sin that was highly chastised by the Puritan society. The Scarlet Letter that Hester wore first symbolized the burden and humiliation that accompanied the sin. Throughout the novel however, the meaning of the letter changed to parallel Hester’s ...
or only in one way. If her heart chance to come uppermost, they vanish.”
(p.165-166)
Hester is a revolutionary in a world that is not ready for revolution, which is why
she becomes its apostle on a small scale. The narrator states that it is Hester’s “firm belief,
that, at some brighter period, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven’s
own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between
man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness.” (p.263)
Another form of revolution which takes place within Hester’s own life is a
revolution concerning her economic status. Hester’s place outside of the community forces
her to become socially and economically self-reliant. This self-reliance could be perceived
as a sign of emancipation, if it were not for the fact that the source of her self-reliance was
a very feminine one. (Fiedler 63) “It was the art – then as now, almost the only one within
a woman’s grasp – of needle-work.” (p.81) This can be seen as another sign of the narrator’s
ambiguity.
Yet another expression of sexual revolution can be found in the act of adultery
itself. Hester chooses to sleep with Dimmesdale out of her own free will, and in doing so
she defies both her moral obligation towards her husband and the Puritan law. The
connection between sexuality and womanhood is an important theme in The Scarlet
Letter. Sex, however, is nowhere mentioned in The Scarlet Letter and the narrator tries to
distance Hester from her act by presenting her as dignified and overcome by feelings of
guilt. Her behavior when she is in the forest, however, proves that Hester does not feel as
guilty as she appears to:
“The stigma gone, Hester heaved a long, deep sigh, in which the burden of shame
and anguish departed from her spirit. O exquisite relief! She had not known the
weight, until she felt the freedom! By another impulse, she took off the formal cap
that confined her hair; and down it fell upon her shoulders, dark and rich, with at
The Term Paper on The Scarlet Letter Revisited: A Study of John Updike’s S The Scarlet Letter Revisited
In an interview 1 with Prof. Sukhbir Singh (Osmania University, Hyderabad) John Updike explained what he called his “Hawthorne novels”. Updike’s three later novels – A Month of Sundays (1975), Roger’s Version (1986) and S (1988) – comprise his “Hawthorne novels”. Each of these novels displays amazing intertextual resonance with Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, and are thus known as “The Scarlet ...
once a shadow and a light in its abundance, and imparting the charm of softness to
her features. There played around her mouth, and beamed out of her eyes, a
radiant and tender smile, that seemed gushing from the very heart of womanhood.”
(p.202)
When she is in the forest, Hester is liberated from her sexual repression. She is also
liberated from her feelings of guilt, which she emphasizes by stating that what she and
Dimmesdale did “had a consecration of its own.” (p.195)
As becomes clear from the examples used above, all aspects of The Scarlet Letter
are colored by ambiguity. The scarlet A might as well stand for ambiguity or ambivalence.
The narrator, who is not the same person as the author, is very ambiguous in his telling of
the story. I think this is because his own nineteenth century views on womanhood interfere
with his perception of the history. He seems to perceive seventeenth century women as
strong, bold and altogether man-like, in contrast to nineteenth century women, who he
perceives as delicate, frail, submissive and morally superior to men. (Gerber 39)
“The age had not so much refinement, that any sense of impropriety restrained the
wearers of petticoat and farthingale from stepping forth into the public ways, and
wedging their not insubstantial persons, if occasion were, into the throng nearest
to the scaffold at an execution. Morally, as well as materially, there was a coarser
fibre in those wives and maidens of old English birth and breeding, than in their fair
descendants.” (p.50)
He seems to be struggling, throughout the romance, with the question whether
Hester is a heroine or an anti-heroine. He describes her as follows: “She was lady-like,
too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those days; characterized by a certain
state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace, which is
now recognized as its indication.” (p.53) Because of this ambiguity of the narrator, it is
The Term Paper on Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne
Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne The evils and goods of mankind are illustrated in the novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne The Scarlet Letter. The author was assured that every human being is mainly composed by good or evil and by the opposite in part. The novel depicts the lives of four persons who live in a small Puritan town. The main heroes of The Scarlet Letter were Pearl, Hester Prynne, Robert ...
hard to determine whether The Scarlet Letter can be called a feminist romance. It is also
hard to determine whether the ambiguity of the narrator is a representation of
Hawthorne’s own insecurity, or a pose he assumes. Given his personal life, in which he
was familiar with the work of Margaret Fuller, who was also an acquaintance of his. In her
time she was considered, by her followers, a prophetess of sexual revolution. In addition,
Hawthorne’s use of both sexual and economic liberation in his romance seems to be
deliberate. Therefore, Hester can be seen, not only as a symbol of liberation from
man-made law in general, but also as a symbol of women’s liberation from male dominance
in particular.
Works Cited
Fidler, Leslie. Love and Death in the American Novel. Rev. ed. New York:
Stein and Day, 1966.
Gerber, John C. Twentieth Century Interpretations of the Scarlet Letter. New York:
Spectrum, 1968.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York:
Washington Square Press, 1966.
Larson, Charles R. Arhtur Dimmesdale. Boston:
A&W Publishers, 1983.
