Hester Prynne In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the protagonist Hester Prynne is used by Hawthorne to break away from the feminine norms of women during the Puritan period. Although Hester Prynne embodies stereotypical feminine traits, she also embodies masculine traits that were unseen in women of the period. Women of the time were typically considered the “domestic workers,” doing things such as cleaning, cooking, sewing, and much more. An article by NPR accurately puts Hester’s controversial personality into perspective, citing that Hester is “the embodiment of deep contradictions: bad and beautiful, holy and sinful, conventional and radical” (Seabrook). Hester is contracted to sew gloves for Governor Bellingham. The gloves are of no ordinary type. In fact, they are a “pair of gloves, which [Hester] had fringed and embroidered to [Bellingham’s] order, and which were to be donned on some great occasion of state” (Hawthorne 72). Hester creates a pair of magnificent gloves, the sort only created by someone adept with a needle for Bellingham to wear to some essential meeting of the state. This example reinforces the patriarchal ideology because Hester is performing what would be considered “domestic labor,” which is something women of the period were expected to do. However, when Hester arrives at the homestead of Bellingham, she proceeds to act in a way unsuitable

Hester responded, quite uncouthly, “Nevertheless, I will enter” (Hawthorne 75). Because of