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Womanhood In The Scarlet Letter Essay

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What composes a woman? An even deeper question being what composes womanhood? As a matter of fact, being a woman is more than just the anatomy. Womanhood is a tricky concept. Women are portrayed as delicate beings, but are held to extremely high standards by society. One of the most famous stories “The Scarlet Letter” Is a story that begins in seventeenth century Boston. A woman who is accused of adultery displays the scarlet letter “A” on her chest. Displaying the scarlet letter is punishment for what she had done, along with the public shaming of course (Hawthorne). Setting aside the fact that the woman had committed adultery, she was displaying a side of womanhood that is rarely seen and by most considered unacceptable: Sexuality. Sandra Cisneros does this in her writing “Never Marry a Mexican”. Not only does she explore the sexuality concept of womanhood while straddling two cultures, but she explores love, vulnerability, and loss as well. Neva Cavataio describes the narrator of this story, Clemencia, as being constantly in extremes and constantly endeavoring the all or nothing of love and sexuality. She further explains that “Somewhere in Clemencia’s life, she decides to be the vamp rather than the wife. Her logic …show more content…

Cisneros emphasizes and reveals the sexual and emotional concepts of womanhood in this text. Things such as wage gaps, work, and basic feminism are the concepts of womanhood that aren’t revealed in this text. Over all Cisneros directly connects with women and explores womanhood in her writing through the narrator, Clemencia. The rejection Clemencia experiences throughout this text causes a change in her that is understood and experienced by most. At the end of the story Clemencia seemed to bounce back from her bitterness and embraced the more mature side of herself showing that she had grown wiser from what she had

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