Examples Of Misogyny In The Scarlet Letter

Misogyny, Conformity, and Obsession: A Feminist Criticism of The Scarlet Letter

“And do you not know that you are Eve? God’s sentence hangs still over all your sex and His punishment weighs down upon you, she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God… Woman, you are the gate to hell!” (Tarico). If even Quintus Tertullian, the “Founding Father of Latin Christianity” (Tarico), vehemently preached and ingrained the concept of womankind’s inferiority in society, how could Puritan women hope to shatter 2,000 years’ worth of unquestioned misogyny? Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne narrates the life of a Puritan woman, Hester Prynne, who experiences social rejection for committing adultery and continues to raise
For instance, after Roger Chillingworth confronts Hester about the identity of Pearl’s father, she asks him whether he plots “the ruin of [her] soul” (74), to which Roger Chillingworth responds that he cares “Not [for] thy soul… No, not thine!... His fame, his position, his life… will be in my hands. Beware!” (74). Although Hester violates sacred marriage vows in the process of committing adultery, Roger Chillingworth’s fury bypasses her for the “other man,” presuming that she forcibly surrendered to Dimmesdale’s advances because of the common belief that women struggle to “maintain their virtue [as] men… try to assault it” (Welter 155). Because “a woman [who] withstand[s] man’s assaults on her virtue… demonstrate[s] her superiority and her power over him” (Welter 155), Hester’s inability to reject sexual activity reinforces the imagery of female inferiority. Likewise, towards the end of The Scarlet Letter, Hester’s death establishes “a new grave… near that old and sunken grave… one tombstone served for both… [a] simple slab of slate… around… monuments carved with armorial bearings” (258). “Monuments” tower above Hester’s “simple” grave, crafting a state of insignificance which death permanently sets in a “slab of slate.” “Armorial bearings” – which typically consist of capes, shields, crests, and helmets – highlight the
For example, after fighting Governor Bellingham to keep custody of Pearl, Hester encounters Mistress Hibbins and refuses the witch’s offer to meet the Devil because she “must tarry at home, and keep watch over my little Pearl. Had they taken her away from me, I would willingly have gone with thee… ” (113). Pearl saves Hester from falling into “Satan’s snare” (114) by grounding her to society with duties of “motherhood… anchor[ing] her even more firmly to the home” (Welter 171). Without Pearl, Hester would have lacked a family member to serve and consequently ceased to exist in proper society. Going beyond familial duty, Hester returns to dwell in the community that condemned her, only to “give up her individuality” and “become the general symbol at which the preacher… might point… teaching the young to look at her… with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast… as the reality of sin…” (76). The scarlet letter “flaming on her breast” consumes Hester’s identity, making her sinful existence symbolic to the point of dehumanization. This state of dehumanization seems justified because “without [purity] she was, in fact, no woman at all, but a member of some lower order. A ‘fallen woman’…” (Welter 154). Being a “member of some lower order,” transforms Hester into a