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Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter: Feminism

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Words 1344
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Taylor Kelley
AP English 4
Mrs. Almack- 2nd Period
1st Six Weeks
The Scarlet Letter; Feminism Feminism is the social, political, and economic equality of women. There are many types of feminism but the three that I am going to talk about are Amazon Feminism, French Feminism, and Equality Feminism. The Feminist Literary Theory is the complex theory that combines all of the branches of feminism into one when analyzing a piece of text. This theory is what a lot of feminist authors; Nathaniel Hawthorne, use to appeal to the female population. Amazon feminism is a branch of feminism that strives to show the power of the women in reaching the ultimate goal of women equality to women. Some authors that use amazon feminism when writing would be …show more content…
However, he does not use feminism through his point of view but more of through Hesters’ point of view as a character. Nathaniel wrote the Scarlet Letter during a time when feminism and feminist were at the peak. During the 1840’s which is when the Scarlet Letter was written the first ever Women’s Rights Convention was held at Seneca Falls in 1848. Hawthorne also places Hester within a Puritan setting which makes the female vs. male equality even greater in difference because Puritanism was a male dominate religion, which means, that the society of the Puritans was a Patriarchal …show more content…
At the beginning Hester is the only one that is being “punished” for committing the sin of adultery. She is marked with a scarlet “A” that is meant to outcast her from the rest of the community, but yet at the end of the book Dimmesdale is also marked with the “A” on the tombstone that Hester and him share. However, the “A” stands for two different things when it comes to the two different people, for Hester, it stands for adapting which means that she changed the way women were viewed, and for Dimmsdale it stands for adultery so that everybody could be able to know the truth about him and that he was the father of the child that was born from sin. This shows that even though both Hester and Dimmesdale were not equal in life, equality is beginning to set

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