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Gender Equality And Non-Conformism In The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne

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The Scarlet letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne can be regarded a work of feminist literature. It is a story about Hester Prynne and her daughter and the hardship Hester had to go through in the Puritan society. The Puritan society then overlooked humanity and Puritan rules were imposed on the people. The narrator in the novel depicts women’s low status and the hardship in the puritan society during the seventeenth-century. Hawthorne emphases a unique character of exceptional courage, gender equality, non-conformity and self-reliance associated with a woman in the time when the society was not in favor of.
A female with a complete different characteristics from the rest of the people in the society especially women is portrayed in the Hester Prynne exhibits characteristics which is almost opposite to the rest of the people. Although, she was very kind,the Puritan society considered her as an intruder and humiliated her because of the sin she committed. Hester Prynne was kept standing on the scaffold for three hours and made to wear the Scarlet letter A until she dies. She had to undergo through all the agony and embarrassment. Moreover, she does not reveal the name of her …show more content…

Hawthorn depicts Pearl as individualist escaping from the harsh Puritan society. She is described as wild rose, beautiful and did not abide the Puritan’s law. Hester let Pearl to be carried away by her own desire without any restrictions unlike other children in the society. She was wild and free being close with the nature. In fact, Pearl says her father is nature that terrifies puritan society. Nature symbolizes happiness, nourishing with love, protection and forgiving.Thus, Hawthorn describes Pearl as a beautiful child but Puritan children as dirty, naughty and ugly(Hawthorne, 1850).A child who is brought up by an independent woman away from the Puritan society has been seen as a completely different from the rest of the

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How does it change the reader’s view of the prison? 4. Many times Pearl is portrayed as innocent and full of light. Why does Hawthorne then describe her as witch-like and how does this relate to the theme of the human tendency to transgress?

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The definition of integrity in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is a firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values. A character with integrity is willing to sacrifice anything of sentimental or physical value, even their life or reputation, to defend the moral system they govern themselves by. It takes someone of strong character to possess integrity, because the temptation to give in is every so often immensely appealing. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne is a character of such integrity, because she upholds her promise with Chillingworth and refuses to flee from the punishment of the scarlet letter “A”.

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Her deeds were especially shocking as she was perceived as pest almost since she had to wear the scarlet letter as a reminder of her sin. Due to her deeds, the town is quoted as: “Many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification.” (168). During her early days of the wearing of the scarlet letter, she was shunned and shut out from normal activities; now, the townspeople believed her to be kind; they even changed what the “A” meant: “They said that it meant to be Able; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a women’s strength.” (168).

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Within Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, antagonist Hester Prynne is subjected to the opinions and treatment of 17th century’s Massachusetts Bay Colony as a result of her sinful act of adultery. In the Puritan colony, it was important to be faithful, both to thine spouse, and most importantly, to God. Hester’s adultery issued her public ridicule and shunning, and a physical reminder to be forever worn; an embroidered ‘A’ placed upon her bosom. The symbol served to alert all of her faithless act, “It had the affect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity and enclosing her in a sphere by herself” (page 74). Throughout the novel, Hester’s treatment is obvious, and she makes many efforts to not let her choice, and her illegitimate child Pearl, define her.

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We are all sinners, no matter how hard we try to hide our faults, they always seem to come back, one way or another. Written in the 19th century, Nathaniel Hawthorne shows us Hester Prynne and how one sin can change her life completely. Hester Prynne changes a great deal throughout The Scarlet Letter. Through the view of the Puritans, Hester is an intense sinner; she has gone against the Puritan way of life committing the highest act of sin, adultery. For committing such a sinful act, Hester must wear the scarlet letter while also having to bear stares from those that gossip about her.

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The Scarlet Letter is a popular novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne which is mainly read during one's high school years. The Scarlet letter is set during the sixteenth century in Boston Massachusetts where a young woman named Hester Prynne is publicly shamed by the Puritans. When Hawthorne was writing this novel he described the puritans as a sad, bland society which had a reliance on the consequence of sin. His description of the Puritan society was not fully opinion-based since the Puritans that came over from England did dress simply. This leads the reader to wonder how much of his personal opinion made its way into the story and how much is historical fact.

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This way of playing is very different from the way the other Puritan children played. Some of the townspeople called this witchcraft, and she was called witch-baby. Pearl was also very different from the other Puritan children in the way she acted. She did not follow the rules set for most Puritan children, and she did not act like them at all. Pearl does not fit in with the other children.

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The reader more evidently notices that Hawthorne carefully, and sometimes not subtly at all, places Pearl above the rest. She wears colorful clothes, which can be seen as a symbol of the scarlet letter, is extremely smart, pretty, and nice. He also shows her intelligence and free thought. One of Pearl's favorite activities is playing with flowers and trees. " And she was gentler here [the forest] than in the grassy- margined streets of the settlement, or in her mother's cottage.

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Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter focuses on a small Puritan town in Massachusetts during the seventeenth century. Through the use of setting, The Scarlet Letter reflects the romantic idea of society as a destructive influence on humanity while presenting nature as a transcendent experience. In the novel, the town and the forest serve as opposing settings that affect how the characters express themselves and interact with others. The town forcibly prohibits the expression of true emotion, while conversely, the forest serves as an escape from the harsh rules of Puritan society.

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The author says, “But Pearl, who was a dauntless child, after frowning, stamping her foot, and shaking her little hand with a variety of threatening gestures, suddenly made a rush at the knot of her enemies, and put them all to flight. ”(98-99) Pearl is evil to other kids, she tortures animals, she is a symbol of

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Nathaniel Hawthorne, a famous American author from the antebellum period, notices the emphasis on individual freedoms in the works by Ralph Waldo Emerson and other Transcendentalists during his residency in the Brook Farm’s community. In response to these ideas, Hawthorne writes The Scarlet Letter, a historical novel about Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale’s lives as they go through ignominy, penance, and deprecation from their Puritan community to express their strong love for each other. Their love, even though it is true, is not considered as holy nor pure because of Hester past marriage to Roger Chillingworth, and thus Hester gained the Scarlet Letter for being an adulterer. Hawthorne utilizes biblical allusions, such as the stories of

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In a traditional culture at the time, the female image was inferior to men in many different aspects. Women have an inferior intelligence compared to men, inferior role in society, and inferior status. Later on, women were respected more as wives and mothers. Women remained in homes, raising children, and “rescuing men’s souls and leading them to the holy paradise” (). In his writing, Nathaniel Hawthorne creates a new female-image, one that focuses on remaining a pure reputation.

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Amanda Vicente The Scarlet Letter Reading Response AP English Language Period J 16 August 2016 Journal Entry 1: Chapters 1-2 In The Scarlet Letter, the author sets a mood from the beginning of the book. The setting is old and beat up in front of an aged wooden prison with judgmental Puritans ready to tear a women apart. The Puritans are hypocrites and the author portrays that in the story.

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893 Words | 4 Pages

She didn’t mind that she did not connect with humans. She knows a joy that other Puritan children did not. She was mischievous and unpredictable because she was isolated and she thought the laws didn’t apply to her. Isolation made Pearl different from

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In the “Scarlet Letter,” Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays hypocrisy of the Puritan society, where the protagonist Hester Prynne face many consequences of her actions and the how she tries to redeem herself to the society. During the seventeenth puritans believe that it is their mission to punish the ones who do not follow God’s word and it is their job to stop those from sinning. Therefore, the hypercritical puritan society punishes Hester harshly for committing adultery, but in Hester’s mind, she believes that what she did was not a sin but acts of love for her man. Eventually, she redeems herself by turning her crime into an advantage to help those in need, yet the Puritan society still view her as a “naughty bagger.” (Hawthorne 78)

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