Nathaniel Hawthorne And The Feminists: The Scarlet Letter

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The scholarly article that I read is “Nathaniel Hawthorne and the Feminists: The Scarlet Letter” by Louise DeSalvo. In the article, DeSalvo gives a short background of Nathaniel Hawthorne before he begins writing his novel The Scarlet Letter. After the death of his mother, Elizabeth Hawthorne, he began writing his novel. Elizabeth Hawthorne had become pregnant with her first child, Nathaniel Hawthorne, outside of marriage and she had been socially ostracized just like Hester Prynne. Elizabeth Hawthorne was also husbandless and she raised Nathaniel on her own on the fringes of society. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s mother’s death provided a kind of creative release and it gave him the idea to write The Scarlet Letter. Furthermore, with his wife’s help