Hester Prynne And Feminism In The Scarlet Letter

Hester Prynne and Feminism Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, showcases Hester Prynne’s struggle as a single mother with an illegitimate child in Puritan society. Examples of her successes are discussed in “Hester Prynne: Sinner, Victim, Object, Winner” an NPR interview, and the essays, “A Representative of the New Female Image––Analyzing Hester Prynne’s Feminist Consciousness in The Scarlet Letter” and “When We Dead Awaken: Writing a Re-Vision”. Hester Prynne’s ability to rise above the odds in a society pitted against her is example enough of her contributions to feminism and her role as a representative of the new female image. Jacki Lyden, host of the NPR interview “Hester Prynne: Sinner, Victim, Object, Winner”, prefaces the
An important point Wang makes is the fact that Hester is not ashamed of her situation, rather “she takes pride in her token of isolation” (Wang). This is evident in the way Hester dresses her child, Pearl. “Her mother, with a morbid purpose [...] bought the richest tissues [...] and allowed her imaginative faculty its full play in the arrangement and decoration of the dresses which the child wore, before the public eye” (Hawthorne 61). The extravagant way in which Pearl is presented to the world is reminiscent of the ornate scarlet letter Hester wears. It seems as if Pearl is the living embodiment of said scarlet letter. Taking pride in her sin is just one small way Hester rebels against society. Her zeal for defying Puritan standards makes her an ideal candidate for representing the feminist image. Hester’s rebellious spirit isn’t only evident in her disregard for drab Puritan apparel, but also in her refusal to leave Boston. Instead of leaving the city for a new life with her child, she chooses to stay in an isolated house on the outskirts of town. By staying in Boston, she proves her community wrong by becoming a successful seamstress and being the sole provider for her small family– seemingly unheard of for a woman at the time. As Wang puts it,
Her essay focuses on the role of women in literature–poetry to be exact. She states, “No male writer has written primarily or even largely for women, [...] every woman writer has written for men” (Rich). Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter directly contradicts this. Rich goes on to say that women in literature are almost always beautiful, but their main conflict is the loss of beauty, youth, or life. Hester Prynne is beautiful, that fact cannot be refuted. She is described as “tall, with a figure of perfect elegance, on large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam…” (Hawthorne 37). But, unlike the essay says, Hester’s conflict isn’t the loss of beauty, youth, or life–but the potential loss of her daughter, and her odd relationship with Arthur Dimmesdale. However, when Arthur Dimmesdale eventually does die, Hester does not mope and mourn, instead she raises her daughter and keeps on with her own life. Hester used to depend on a man, Roger Chillingworth– but she overcame her dependency, and after that never needed another male figure to take care of her. Hester Prynne is revolutionary in the way that she goes against what Adrienne Rich defined as a woman’s role in