Femininity In The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter and Easy A are the stories of women who defy their societies. Hester, of The Scarlet Letter commits adultery but refuses to reveal Dimmesdale or Chillingworth in order to both men from public humiliation. Hester is forced to bear the burden of her punishment alone, while her partner is held up as saintly. Olive, of Easy A, pretends to sleep with various boys in order to protect them from bullying and to boost their social statuses and inadvertently gives herself a bad reputation in doing so. Because both Hester and Olive defy their society’s views of femininity, they are ostracized by their unforgiving and judgemental societies as sinners; however, both women are actually saints who through their good deeds improve their

In such a liberal part of the country, one would expect the treatment of men and women to be equal, but Olive reveals it to be not so. When she and Brendan are believed to have done the exact same thing, Olive is shunned and bullied while he is regaled as a hero and as the pinnacle of social norms. Beyond this hypocrisy, Olive shows the hypocrisy of the Jesus group at her school, and Marianne even admits hypocrisy when she says “Jesus tells us to love everyone.I mean, even the whores and the homosexuals, but it 's just so hard.” The contradictions of the social system of Ojai high school continue to be exposed by Olive when she is mocked by day for acting slutty, but it is revealed that most of the school, and the town is watching when she said she was going to take her clothes off. This captive audience watches as Olive retells her pretending to sleep with Brendan and other, and then her covering for Mrs. Griffith, and Olive gradually gains redemption in their eyes as her intentions for acting in a way that was seen as so horrific were revealed.

Hester and Olive are both punished, and for a time society blinds itself to their goodness in order to brand them as sinners. The title of Easy A symbolizes this aspect of society by showing how easy it is for each woman to get their respective ¨A¨, when it is near impossible to get rid of them. Had Hester and Olive sold out the men they were protecting, they may have avoided the public “A”, but the private “A” of personal guilt could have been much more painful for them, as it was for