Scarlett Historical Context

The mother reinforces the feminine gender role by showing her daughter what behaviors and things were appropriate for her. She used repetitive voice to encourage her daughter to learn how to become a lady, a housewife, and how to deal with relationships, and how to grow food, because this is how the mother managed to survive under her living circumstances. Jamaica Kincaid, demonstrates this idea when the mother said, “On Sunday walk like a lady..., this is how to sew on a button.., this is how to grow okra.., this is how to make a bread...”( Shreve &Niguyen, 2006, p. 183-184). Back in society girls at a young age needed to learn how to conduct themselves as ladies and the basic duties of a housewife. These components were necessary in order to be seen as a respectful woman in society. This idea shows us that Jamaica Kincaid uses the character of his story “Girl” to demonstrate the influence that time and place have on gender roles in society.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in a strict Puritan family in Salem, Massachusetts in the year of 1804 on July 4th. His childhood was calm and isolated. A leg injury left him immobile for a time. After the death of his father, A SC captain, Hawthorne attended college at Bowdain College with the help of a wealthy uncle. His Puritan background and witness to religious persecution greatly affected his writings. Haunted by the Salem Witch Trials and the executions carried out with his uncles acting as judges, Hawthorne placed a w in his name to distance himself from the family.

The war changed the standards of society and Scarlett is forced to change if she wants be able to have a better life for herself and those she loves. Scarlett is having to become the man of the family and she is an incredibly rare woman who can face the challenges that are brought forward head on. Also, Scarlett is undoubtedly the most passionate character in Gone with the Wind and that passion allows her to not only protect the man she loves, but also helps her to push through the challenges of saving Tara. Although the decisions she makes are not always what women of that era should do, they are also decisions that women at that time are not supposed to be making and many of the other women do not have to make those hard choices. Scarlett succeeds is protecting what she loves because she does not allow society’s limitations to what she should do and be to hold her

Men dominated the household, went to school, and had many more rights than the women did. They could own property, while the women could not. Women were raised on the idea that their purpose in life was to get married, serve their husband, and birth many children. If she remained single, she would be ridiculed by society. Even when a woman would marry a man, he had rights to all of her inheritance and everything the woman owned. Women also didn’t really get the privilege of an education unless they were a higher-class woman, and they would only be trained in the basics. Men could do basically anything they so pleased and women could get in trouble for simply speaking out of line. The life of a woman in the 1800s could be thought of as slavery in some eyes, and this affected how each character conducted themselves in The Scarlet Letter.

Scarlett O’Hara is not an amiable person. In fact, she is written to be disagreeable, and remains that way to the end of Margaret Mitchell’s novel Gone with the Wind. An altogether unpleasant character, Scarlett can be described as headstrong, spoiled, immature, and selfish. By the book’s conclusion, she does not undergo any character development that increases her congeniality; however, she does brave a myriad of harsh trials that shape her into a more dynamic and perceptive woman. The agonizing hardships she endures transform her from a juvenile Southern belle to a cunning and self-sufficient breadwinner.

Scarlett was written and published in 1991 by Alexandra Ripley. She was a writer and lived in Richmond, Virginia (Mitchell). Her intent was to have a sequel to the classic novel Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Mitchell’s two sons and husband came to her and asked if she would write the novel. The targeted audience was readers who had once fallen in love with Gone With the Wind and wanted the story to continue. The book was published by Warner Books. The author is familiar with the topic as she should be, since she was writing a sequel to a novel written by someone else, even though critics say that she does not follow the writing style of Margaret Mitchell (Who). Ripley wrote how she thought the sequel should be written, and was successful.

Scarlett goes through many things to get what she wants. She has no care in the world for other but herself, and therefore in the end after realizing that what she felt for Ashley wasn’t true, she loses the man she truly loved. Gone with the Wind, also displays the life of the South during the American Civil War, but more importantly it gives the viewer the opportunity to relate to Scarlett. That is because Fleming displays situations that can happen like making drastic decisions to obtain what one wants, and that one sometimes realizes the true value of what one has after it is all

“Stop looking at my butt, Scarlett,” Seamus said right on queue as he started to laugh.

Little things always come back to bite which in the end can hurt people or kill people. The Scarlett Letter is a story in which a woman cheats with another man. The woman is punished publicly, while the man is punished privately or in secret. The story is centered on the letter A that in the case of the book stands for adultery. On the other hand, In Nathaniel Hawthorne s The Scarlett Letter Arthur Dimmesdale is perceived as a saint, but in reality Hawthorne uses this to support the hidden motif of hypocrisy.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist during the Romantic period in the 19th century. He lived in Salem, Massachusetts where his family had lived for five generations. Most of Hawthorne’s works are satires focused around Puritan communities and are partially autobiographies relating to his own life. One of Hawthorne’s most well known works is The Scarlett Letter published in 1850. This novel is set in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1640’s based around the Puritan colony and its strict values. The novel looks into Hawthorne’s common theme of sin when the main character Hester Prynne commits adultery with the town minister Arthur Dimmesdale. Hester and their daughter Pearl, are forced to stand on the scaffold with her mother as

Nonetheless, the riot was not the only event to help shape her novel. Margaret Mitchell uses her past experiences with love to form the many dynamic relationships between her characters. Mitchell’s first love, Henry, is used to create the emotional affairs between Scarlett and Ashley Wilkes. Mitchell refers to the relationship with Henry as, “a memory of a love that had no trace of physical passion.” Henry was a World War I soldier that was killed in combat. Margaret met Henry during her first year of college at Smith College in Massachusetts; both Henry and Margaret had come from well-respected families. When Henry went to war, Mitchell started to work in a Red Cross hospital; coincidentally, Scarlett did the same thing during the civil war. After Henry’s death, Mitchell moved home to take care of her mother, who later died of Spanish Flu. Like the two star crossed lovers, Scarlett and Ashley were also well educated and well respected. Ashley, like Henry, was a soldier in a major war. While Scarlett and Ashley never had a physical relationship, they both liked to play with the others emotions. Both Scarlett and Mitchell never truly moved on from their first love and because of that their next relationships were negatively affected. Mitchell, like Scarlett, was often described as an ‘unscrupulous flirt,’ which helped her meet her second husband, Berrien ‘Red’ Upshaw, who favored Rhett in

Later in the story, Scarlett is living in Atlanta. She buys two saw mills as a money making project, because she is still needing to survive. Scarlett is willing to risk social standing to survive; because she is successful the matrons of society look down on

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter is about a woman living in Boston during the 1630s. Her name is Hester Prynne and she has committed the crime of adultery and is caught when she is found to be pregnant. The book picks up when she is having a scarlet A placed on her breast for “adultery” and after the child is already born. After 7 more years, it picks up and the readers can see what she goes through and how she and the townspeople around her change and develop in a multitude of ways. After close analysis and review, I have found that the scarlet letter is a feminist novel.

Scarlett was obsessively in love with Ashley Wilkes and attempted several times to lure him away from his lovely wife Melanie. She was also attracted to Rhett Butler and eventually married him. Scarlett was a survivor. When she was faced with a problem, she took charge; whether it was taking care of Melanie when she had the baby, shooting a union soldier, building the lumber company, or taking care of something else. Melanie Hamilton, in contrast to Scarlett, was unselfish and gentle. She always saw the good in people and situations and looked beyond their flaws. She had an inner strength that kept her from complaining about the injustice done on the south and on her loved ones. Melanie married her cousin, Ashley Wilkes; therefore she became Scarlett’s antagonist. Melanie was generous, loving, and forgiving at all times to all people. Although she was physically weak, her heart was strong. In the end her second pregnancy caused her death and she put her trust in Scarlett to take care of her husband and son. Ashley Wilkes was the gentle and elegant son of a plantation owner. He was weak and indecisive. He was not any good at farming or hard labor. However, he did take on tasks of honor and sacrifice. After the war, Ashley lost the life he had expected and had difficulty finding the strength to continue his life. Rhett Butler was a very wealthy, handsome, southern gentleman from Charleston. He was a man who knew his

Only quite recently have women even come close to achieving equality with men in America. Perhaps partly due to their alluring and innocuous feminine appearances, women have long been subjugated by the will of man, especially during the era of colonial Puritanism. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s American Romantic novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne looks back to those dark times through a feminist lens in order to reveal the significance of the roles that men and women play in an extremely patriarchal society, the depravity of said society via Roger Chillingworth, and his own personal opinions about women, especially through the desexing of Hester Prynne. Due to the pertinence of women’s rights issues in America since the book has been published, many authors offer critical essays focusing on Hawthorne’s feminism.