Feminism In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

The Scarlet Letter:
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter proves that feminism goes against all Puritan moral and religious grounds. Hawthorne’s purpose is to show how feminism goes against all Puritan moral and religious grounds in order to show the reader how Hester broke the moral and religious standards. Hawthorne supports his claim when Hester commits the sin and is not ashamed, when Hester makes decisions for Pearl and herself, and also when Reverend Dimmesdale comes to Hester’s aid in supporting her decisions.
The Puritan church had a rigid structure that represses individuals, especially women. Hester is breaking free of the puritan mold by defying the churches set rules. Hester first does this when she commits the sin of

After Hester is released from jail she moves Pearl and herself into an abandoned home on the outskirts of town. It is now up to Hester to provide for her family, much at the Puritan townspeople’s dismay. In Puritan society women did not make a living or make decisions for their family, this was the husbands job further causing Hester to be shunned. Hester even has to protect Pearl from being taken from her, “‘God gave me the child!’ cried she. ‘He gave her, in requital of all things else, which ye had taken from me. She is my happiness!- she is my torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here in life! Pearl punishes me too! See ye not, she is the scarlet letter, only capable of being loved, and so endowed with a million-fold of the power of ribution for my sin? Ye shall not take her! I will die first!’”(Hawthorne 101). Mary Dyer also made a very important life decision that went against the churches rules. Mary was the only member of the community to leave in 1638 when Anne Hutchinson was excommunicated and banished from the colony because her religious views differed from the rest of the colonies (National Women's History Museum). Mary was also then excommunicated from the colony because she went against the ways of the church. Mary made a very important and at the time wrong decision and she faced the consequences like