Feminist Trapped In Puritan America When one thinks about feminism, they may think of women’s suffrage in the 1900s or women fighting to end the wage gap and gender equality today. Few would expect that an example of feminism could be found in The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne (a man) in 1850, through the protagonist, Hester Prynne, in seventeenth-century Massachusetts. The novel follows Puritan Boston when faced with a case of adultery involving forward-thinking Hester Prynne. Pondering Hester’s
Experimental literature allows the creation of new mythological stories and cultural aspects. In writing The Scarlet Letter in 1850, the American psychological novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne was willing to study the Puritan society. He was an observer of the moral life in America during the 19th century. His vision of the Puritan’s behaviors is almost ironic: « It may seem marvellous that,
As Nathaniel Hawthorne began to pen The Scarlet Letter, the gender roles of America started to change in ways that had never been seen in its history. Just two years before the publication of Hawthorne’s novel, women from all walks of life had gathered in Seneca Falls, New York to discuss their rights. This conference served as the foundation of the feminist movement and was the culmination of years of small steps for women in their quest for further rights. This fight for additional rights started
hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny. Frederick William Robertson. Seventeenth century Puritan civilization: Boston Massachusetts. The narrator depicts Puritan society as drab, confining, unforgiving, and narrow-minded that unfairly victimizes Hester. In The Scarlet Letter, the Puritans appear as shallow hypocrites whose opinion of Hester and Pearl improves only when they become more of an asset to the community, most notably when Hester becomes a seamstress and Pearl inherits a fortune from Chillingworth. The novel
The Unambiguous Letter A Throughout the Scarlet Letter there are assorted contrasting views of the A seen by the community. In Puritan society, the letter A was quite plainly defined as an adulterer. Hester’s outlook about the A is what gives it numerous meanings. After working with the Sisters of Mercy group, the Puritan people begin to distinguish the A as her ability to help others. The night that Governor Winthrop died and Dimmesdale stood upon the scaffold, it was said that a vague A could
It examines the human ability to truly understand the spiritual and psychological fields, that are behind the facts considered by mutual agreement, sins. Hester's is forced to wear a scarlet letter as a mark of her sin upon her breast for life, as a punishment. It may seem harsh and unusual. But the punishment is extraordinarily tolerant in comparison to the Biblical and legal punishments at the time. The Bible used by the Puritans states