

Feminism in the Scarlet Letter

Thesis Statement: The article discusses how the actions of the protagonist Hester Prynne and her personaal changes can be seen from the feminist viewpoint

Table Of Contents

  • Introduction:Historical background against which the novel is set and the role of women in that time
  • Hester Prynne’s situation at the beginning of the novel and its subsequent change
  • Hester’s inner strengh and her and Dimmesdale’s behaviour contradicting their gender roles
  • Place of women in the male-dominated Puritan society and Prynne’s defying it
  • How Hester reaches a “higher point” and her independence in the novel
  • Conclusion: The way Hester’s “sin” helped her understand inner principles of the society and become independent from it
  • Work Cited



Hester Prynne’s situation


Socially Hester Prynne’s place in the Puritan community and her attitude towards Puritan authority changes throughout the novel. “The predominating quality of Puritan life was hard, good sense, a good sense which could value the realities of life while it rejected the frivolities, a good sense to which buttered cakes, water tight boots, and a pretty, or a kind husband could endear themselves” (Trollope 204). Hester does not submit herself to male authority or the laws made by men, only to her own inner laws.

Gender roles

When Hester is brought on the scaffold as one of her punishments, so the public can judge and criticize her, she still doesn’t reveal the identity of the minister. “In the middle of the town, on the public scaffold, under gaze of all men” (Trollope 208) . This shows her defiance to male authority, because she refuses to tell authority, whom her companion is, but still stands strong in front of everyone looking at her with shame in their eyes. During the novel Hawthorne plays around with characteristics of gender as he switches male and female traits of character.

Dimmesdale’s lying to the public and to himself is a greater sin than his adultery” (Johnson 207). Arthur Dimmesdale is shown as a minister who is torn between the Puritan society and doing what is morally right, and accepting that he is the father of Pearl. Letting Hester take all the blame for their affair and not stepping up, this is stereotypically not manlike, while Hester takes charge, and makes most of the decisions, she is the one who decides to go to Boston, and makes all the arrangements. Hester is the stronger one out of the two of them, it is like Hester and Dimmesdale have traded places.

Puritan society

“Though the very shame is eating into his soul, he lives through the seven years of the novel, a witness of her misery and solitude, while he himself is surrounded by the very glory of sanctity” (Trollope 205), this change in gender eventually starts to show physically on both Hester, “Some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman”(ch. ), and Dimmesdale whose Health gets worse throughout the course of the novel, “Though the reader as well as the community thinks of only Hester as a wearer of the scarlet letter, we know early on that Dimmesdale, the minister so beloved in the village, also wears the same letter on his heart, that he has committed adultery with her, and that the tombstone with the armorial “A” on it is Arthur Dimmesdale’s tombstone as well” (Johnson 207).

This proves that men are not definable without the absent/objectified presence of women (Barlowe 2). Hester is not only the stronger one, but also the morally right one. There is a lot of inequality between Hester and the Puritan community in The Scarlet Letter. As Simone de Beauvoir said, “Man is self, and woman other,” (Barlowe 2). Hester commits adultery and gets pregnant which is a physical sign that men are not connected to the act in any type of visible way. Hester as a woman in a strict Puritan community takes all the blame, Dimmesdale as a man, does not get punished by man-made laws. The Scarlet Letter remains entirely male-dominated, both in terms of its compromising population and its attitudes and assumptions” (Barlowe 2).

It is male-dominated because the authority is run by males, and the wives have no say in any decisions, because they are believed to be weak, so men make all the decisions while women have no choice but to agree with the decisions. By committing adultery Hester defies her husband, who she is still legally married to. When her husband [Chillingworth] arrives back in Boston, she promises him not to reveal his true identity.

After seven years, when she sees what Chillingworth is doing to Dimmesdale she decides not to keep quiet anymore, here is where she regains her full independence. “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” (ch. 17). Hester Prynne was determined to show the Puritan Society that she wasn’t weak and wasn’t going to let them take advantage of her. Hester never gave up as hard as it was she kept on fighting till she won the battle.

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Hester reached a higher point because, she overcame tough obstacles brought by men, and proved to everyone that even though she is a woman, she can still be strong and independent. In the end Hester finds her independence from Roger Chillingworth just like she finds her independence from male authority in the Puritan community. From her sin, Hester became aware of the inequalities within the Puritan Society, and wanted to make a change, hoping that women would be able see the equality that she was unable to experience living in her Puritan community.

He has Hester learn, finally, that a woman estranged from normal experience in whatever way cannot see her own problems in perspective; she recognizes at last ‘the impossibility that any mission of divine and mysterious truth should be confided to a woman stained with sin, bowed down with shame, or even burdened with a life-long sorrow’ (ch. 24) (Doubleday 828). Without her sin, she would have never gained so much independence from male authority and independence for herself and Pearl.

Work Cited

Barlowe, Jamie. The Scarlet Mob of Scribblers: Rereading Hester Prynne. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University, 2000.

Doubleday, Neal F. “Hawthorne’s Hester and Feminism. ” Jstor. 11 March 2008.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York, New York: Bantam Dell, February 2003.

Johnson, Claudia Durst. Understanding the Scarlet Letter: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents. Westport, Connecticut. Greenwood Press, 1995.

Trollope, Anthony. “The Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne. ” North American Review. New York, New York: Norton, 1961.

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