Loise Velazquez
Mrs. Cronan
AP English 11, Block 3
December 15, 2015
Feminism Rough Draft Often women in literature function as indicators of evil. Through the destructive, and sometimes malicious, actions of the temptresses, vice is introduced into a previously peaceful society. This employment of women as destructive forces is clear in the Bible; Eve is the cause of original sin and Delilah is responsible for cutting off Samson’s hair and causing his downfall. However, in The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne allows the reader to perceive a woman forming her own decisions without causing the society around her to fall into ruin. He allows Hester to embody modern day feminist qualities, specifically characteristics of the cultural feminist
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Moreover, when a woman becomes pregnant it is a physical sign that makes the promiscuity a known fact. Hester pays a different price from Dimmesdale, who's secret is hidden throughout the story, because she is a woman. This illustrates the inequality between the two. By committing adultery, Hester defies her moral obligations towards her husband. When he arrives in Boston, however, she affirms her submissiveness to him by promising to keep quiet about his true identity. After seven years, when she sees what Chillingworth is doing to Dimmesdale, she will no longer keep quiet. Hester decides to go against Chillingworth's wishes, and thereby achieves full independence from her husband. "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." (p.167) So in the end she is not submissive to Chillingworth, just like she is not submissive to the Puritan authorities in the long run because she adheres to a higher law. "The scarlet letter had not done its office." (p.166) It was supposed to reduce Hester and put her in her proper place, but instead it has made her a revolutionary. The inequality she experiences causes Hester to speculate on the existing balance of power and impel her to find alternatives to traditional patriarchal society. This is another aspect of her psychological liberation. "She assumed a freedom of speculation . . . which our forefathers, had they known of it, would have held to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatized by the scarlet letter."