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Scarlet Letter: Transcendentalism And Women's Rights Movement

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The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is one of the most famous and influential novels written in American literature. The story takes place in the seventeenth century in the Puritan settlement of Boston where a young woman named Hester Prynne is punished after having a daughter with a man who was not her husband. Though, instead of hanging Hester they spare her life because of her beauty. She is then shunned and forced to wear a scarlet “A” (for adultery) on her breast for the rest of her life, while, the “unknown” man who Hester had an affair with moves on with a guilt-filled life. The novel is a classic romance with it’s countless symbols tossed throughout the book. From the “A” to the rosebush it’s hard not to go a single …show more content…

Within the 1800s the first convention to focus on the rights of women was held in Seneca Falls, New York in 1848 and in 1869 Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (Ann-Marie Imbornoni). Around the same time, the transcendentalist movement also took off causing many different scholars and writers to begin to writing essays and discussing ideas behind the movement. Both supported equal opportunities and rights for individuals. Although The Women’s Rights Movement was obviously more geared towards the equal rights of women, while the transcendentalist movement focused more on rights of everyone. The two movements did influence a lot of literature at the time and can explain many of the aspects in the scarlet …show more content…

Of course Hester Prynne is not the only example of a independent female within in the book. Both Pearl and Mistress Hibbins demonstrate similar strong female qualities. They both allow themselves to act with free will and to speak however they please. Neither one of the characters ever pauses or censers themselves for the sake of another. From a young age Pearl shocked the people of Boston because of what she would say. For example, when Pearl was asked where she came from she denied that she had a heavenly father. A statement that would have been considered very inappropriate and sinful, at that time. Mistress Hibbins functioned in a similar fashion, she, like Pearl always stated her thoughts whether people liked it or not. For example, when she would asked Hester to join her at her next meeting with the Black Man (devil) in the forest. Though, the modern concept of feminism we know today was not yet developed completely at the time when the book was written. These female characters, set a standard for women of the

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1344 Words | 6 Pages

The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, focuses on the life of Hester Prynne—the unlucky soul who is caught committing adultery and forced to live a life of shame and ignominy. The scaffold is not only the start of her predicament, but it is also the end of the once seemingly perfect Reverend Dimmesdale’s own guilt. The scaffold is the setting of a scene three times throughout the novel: the beginning, middle, and end. For such a lifeless object, it is difficult to recognize its significance in the novel; however, the scaffold is used by Hawthorne to portray the changing relationship between the characters, specifically Hester, Dimmesdale, and Pearl.

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631 Words | 3 Pages

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is commonly considered a classic, most likely due to it’s intense examination of the human soul. The Scarlet Letter is a novel about Hester Prynne, a woman who commits adultery and is therefore required to wear a scarlet ‘A’ on her chest, her lover, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, her legal husband, Roger Chillingworth, and her illegitimate child, Pearl. Throughout the novel Hester and Dimmesdale keep the fact that Dimmesdale is Pearl’s father a secret, and explores the consequences of their actions. Through the development of the previously listed characters Hawthorne provides great insight into the human condition, especially through the development of Dimmesdale.

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Anna describes how “dark and light…only one of two natures; godly and right, or Satanic and evil” which shows the audience that in that society. Along with these Puritan beliefs, female social roles within both texts hold these morals, and women in these Puritan societies have pretty strict and set roles in these communities. For instance in the Crucible, Proctor exclaims to Elizabeth “you will judge me no more” which indicates to Elizabeth that she has no right to stand up for herself, yet still defends him and denies that he committed adultery in court. This demonstrates that women still have to be respectful of their husband are scared to speak badly of them. Similarly in Year Of Wonders, “Men doffed their caps, and women curtsied, just as [they’d] always done simply because that was all they had always done” showing that this was just the norm for the society.

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692 Words | 3 Pages

In doing so, examine the feminist lens’s interpretation of the text. How are gender roles defined? Where to women fit into the text’s plot line. What do you notice about the women in this text? Is this congruent (similar) to society’s view of women, by today’s standards?

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2184 Words | 9 Pages

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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The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter written in the 1800’s is a novel about a Puritan society in the 1600’s. A Puritan is a religious person who believe that pleasure is evil. The novel is about a young, beautiful women named Hester Prynne. She has committed adultery and is forced to wear a scarlet letter A in shame. A baby girl resulted from the sinful act, named Pearl.

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The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in the 1850s, was based on a story in the 1640s. The Scarlet Letter is a story based around the main character Hester and the letter "A" which stands for adultery. Hester commits adultery with the town's puritan minister and now has to wear the letter “A” on her bosom because of her sin. With Hester’s sin, Hester has her daughter Pearl at a “great price” by Dimmesdale, the town minister. Nobody in town happens to know Dimmesdale is the father.

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The main document being addressed is The Solitude of Self by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Stanton was a major leader and supporter of women’s suffrage. She wrote different speeches arguing the importance and reasoning for women’s equality. Another speech discussed arguing for women’s rights was in 1848 at Seneca Falls. Stanton’s main argument was on equality of both men and women.

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Imagine living in a place where one small sin could define who you are for the rest of your life. That is what happened in The Scarlet Letter written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850. The novel is set in a seventeenth-century Puritan community in Boston, Massachusetts. A young woman by the name of Hester Prynne commits a small act of adultery and is shamed for the rest of her life, by wearing a scarlet letter “A” on her breast. The book is centered around the theme of justice and judgement.

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1458 Words | 6 Pages

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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Women and the Abolition movement of the Nineteenth Century. Although the Women’s Rights Movement started as a fracture in the Abolition Movement of the early nineteenth century, neither movement would have made nearly as much headway without women at their core. Most women involved in the Abolition Movement in its beginning were wives, daughters and sisters of prominent members of society in the Northern states. They were women who organized and formed local anti-slavery societies where they lived.

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796 Words | 4 Pages

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s, The Scarlet Letter, the protagonist, Hester Prynne is a Romantic Hero. Throughout The Scarlet Letter, we see Hester Prynne’s struggle in Colonial America after she is condemned by the Puritan society. She is sent to America by her husband, but he never returns, and Hester later conceives a child with the local minister. She is convicted with the crime of adultery, but refuses to identify the father, she is then forced to wear the Scarlet Letter. The novel captures her experience as she struggles to survive the guilt, sin, and revenge.

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542 Words | 3 Pages

Each female character is treated by men as a possession. However, there are also moments when they are presented as confident and challenge a male authority. This would have been exiting for Shakespeare’s female Elizabethan audience as women

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1360 Words | 6 Pages

Furthermore, Feminist Criticism provides a better view of literature because it shows that women can be powerful. When Emilia finds out that her husband has been plotting an evil plan she says,” Tis proper I obey him, but not now”(Othello V.2.195). Emilia refuses to help her husband after she finds the cruel intentions he has despite the expectation of women always being submissive to their husbands. Women also have a voice and feelings, they are capable of defying their husbands commands when they know what he expects is simply wrong. In a literary article,The Role of Women in Othello: A Feminist Reading states that,” Society weighs heavily on the shoulders of women; they feel that they must support the men and defer to them, even if the actions of the men are questionable” (Literary Articles).

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813 Words | 4 Pages

Adultery, Able, Angel. The Scarlet Letter is about a woman who can take a symbol that means one thing and changes it to mean the complete opposite. In this novel a woman named Hester Prynne had committed a sin of adultery and is forced to wear the letter “A” on her chest in remembrance of her sin. The story takes place in the mid 17th century in a Puritan town of Boston. The rest of the story is based upon trying to find out who the father of Hester 's baby is.

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