Patriarchy In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

Within the past year, the treatment and perceptions of women have been challenged due to the various marches and movements. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s romance, The Scarlet Letter, presents how women were viewed in a Puritan society, falling into a rigid dichotomy of either being the “saint” or “sinner.” This is otherwise known as the “Madonna/Whore complex,” which is explored through the life of the novel’s protagonist, Hyster Prynne. Her struggles and experiences through this dichotomy ultimately affect her both physically and emotionally as it represses her femininity.

Alison Easton’s essay, “Hawthorne and the question of women,” approaches how Hawthorne’s texts interact with gender construction and gender binaries from the nineteenth century. Easton frequently connects Hawthorne’s personal life experiences (such as his marriage in 1842) and larger social happenings in America (urbanization) to his writing. This essay traces how marriage, class, public/private sphere, femininity, and gender constructions shift, change, and complicate throughout Hawthorne’s works. Easton uses the ideas concerning “True Womanhood,” 19th century feminism (comments from Margaret Fuller repeat in the essay), and the looming “Woman Question” to analyze Hawthorne’s short stories and novels. Her main argument is that gender concerns were rapidly changing and shifting in the 19th century

New Historicism Literary Analysis Essay Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter was influenced heavily by the time era it was written in. To achieve a fuller understanding of the work as a whole it would be best to start by analyzing the time era in which it was written. There are many historical facets that can be explored to help determine some of the underlying meaning in The Scarlet Letter .

The culture of society has generally reflected the wishes and demands of those in power, which has, for ages, leaned towards corruption and self-preservation. Yet, every once in awhile, society is able to rise above those who have control and determine its own fate. This is an uncommon occurrence as these ideas, especially the ones that have enough force to generate a following, are suppressed by those in power and are disregarded by those still under an illusion of contentment. One idea that has been continually brought to the forefront of these conversations is the idea of total equality, a concept that is especially dangerous to society’s puppet masters and seen as a boy crying wolf by the general populace.

What aided me to grow and flourish above all factors this year were the Socratic seminars. Firstly, these seminars were an equipment in assisting me in understanding a work. Take Waiting for Godot for example. Before the discussion I had no prior knowledge of the concept that the character of Godot could symbolize God or that in the play 's symbolism could be nonexistent. It also allows unknown concepts, questions, and any confusion to be answered.

Have you ever made a decision but never considered the consequence? In the novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays Hester Prynne in as "an image of Divine Maternity" in chapter two. Hawthorne contrasts the virgin Mary, when she became pregnant and conceived Jesus by the Holy Spirit. Mary and her child were holy.

In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne the relationship between males and females in the society is set and strictly followed. Males are the dominant and superior power and females are inferior. The men of the society controlled the public positions in the religious, political, social aspects of life. For example Mr. Dimmesdale who was a reverend and Roger Chillingworth who was a physician were widely respected by the public for their work. Women were not public figures, but completed the domestic work which was typically not widely acknowledged.

Taking Into Perspective Hester Prynne  Feminists are people who are passionate about bringing gender equality into the society that we live in. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne is portrayed as a beautiful woman who is charged of being an adulteress, despite this fact, she was able to persevere and endure the shame and the humiliation of her sin. In a feminist perspective, women are constantly being abused by the over-arching society, influenced by men. As a feminist writer, Adrienne Rich points out in her essay, “When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision” that men derive their “charisma” from exerting power over women and being able to be in control.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, revolved around the life of the protagonist, Hester Prynne, a woman shunned by society due to her sinful rendezvous with a man other than her husband whom was later revealed to be a beloved minister, Arthur Dimmesdale. As a result of the affair a child named Pearl was conceived. A token of red shaped into the letter “A”, the scarlet letter, became embroidered onto Hester’s chest symbolizing her misdeed while reminding society of her offense. Hawthorne addresses the struggles that women during the 19th century were confronting and exhorts his position on immoral actions: with evil comes great virtue. In this case, Hester represents a virtue character to balance the evil.

As the crowd watches, Hester Prynn, holding an infant, walks down from the prison door and makes her way to the scaffold, where she is to be publicly condemned. Both The Scarlet Letter and The Crucible were intended to teach and instruct through didactic texts. The authors conveyed this through bringing attention to specific details and the decisions of the characters in their writing. Three lessons that were included in both the play and the novel were the overcoming of the stereotypes and bias of characters in The Scarlet Letter, the corruption of not only the ones who govern, but also susceptible to even the common citizens in The Crucible, and the perspective of faith and morality of the characters in the story who determine good versus evil through irony. First in The Scarlet Letter, we were taught by Hawthorne about overcoming the initial stereotypes and biases of specific characters in the novel including himself.