What Is The Difference Between The Scarlet Letter And The Coquette

In the 1850’s, America was undergoing a massive internal changes via the industrial revolution. With this new era, American culture was drastically changed as women started to take a more prominent role in American society. In his novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne attempts to stimulate this change by illustrating the positive influence of a strong female character in a Puritanical society through his heroine, Hester Prynne, by putting her in a scandalous situation capable of drawing out the worst in people.

Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays the ideology of Puritan society in the novel the Scarlet Letter; however reader also get to witness his characters being an illustration of hypocrisy and victims to their own guilt. In the Scarlet Letter, as in many of Hawthorne’s shorter works, he makes profuse use of the Puritan past: its odd exclusionary belief, its harsh code of ruling, its concern with sex and witchcraft. The Scarlet Letter is a story that is embellished but yet simple. Many readers may view this novel as a soap opera due to the way Hawthorne conveys this Puritan society’s sense of strictness and inability to express true emotion along with the secrecy and how deceiving the characters are being. As the story unfolds the main character Hester Prynne is bounded in marriage at an early age. She engages in an adulterous affair with an unknown member of their small village. Hester soon becomes pregnant and with her husband’s absence the chances of this child belonging to her husband are slim. The towns’ people know that she has committed a sin and imprisons her for her crime.

Who would have guessed a sense of feminism would be located within a book published in 1850, over 100 years before the feminist movement? Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter gives a glimpse into an adulterous woman’s life in a strict Puritan town located in Boston. Her name is Hester Prynne and her triumphs and tribulations are held within the novel. The reader gains an emotional connection to Hester and wants her to be happy. Support for an independent and shamed woman was controversial but may have helped spark a need for equality within the readers then and even now.

Both Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome provide an insight into the moral ideas that have shaped New England. One major theme of The Scarlet Letter that helps to portray this is the theme of Puritanism. The religious nature of the morality shaped the society’s reaction to Hester’s affair. A major theme of Ethan Frome that helps to portray this is the theme of duty and morality vs. desire. Ethan feels he has a moral duty to remain with his wife, Zeena, even though he truly desires to run away with Mattie. The ideas of morality presented in The Scarlet Letter and Ethan Frome are similar in that they both portray adultery as greatly immoral; however, they differ in the reason behind these ideas of morality.

The Scarlet Letter is a novel about a Puritan woman who has committed adultery and must pay for her sin by wearing a scarlet “A'; on her bosom. The woman, Hester Prynne, must struggle through everyday life with the guilt of her sin. The novel is also about the suffering that is endured by not admitting to one’s wrongs. Reverend Mister Dimmesdale learns that secrecy only makes the guilt increase. Nathaniel Hawthorne is trying to display how guilt is the everlasting payment for sinful actions. The theme of guilt as reparation for sin in The Scarlet Letter is revealed through Nathaniel Hawthorne’s use of northeastern, colonial settings, various conflicts, and

The plight of each female character begins in the historical settings of each novel, in regards to The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne depicts a society controlled by “magistrates [who] are God- fearing gentlemen,”(Hawthorne,44) and continues with the

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel ‘The Scarlet Letter’, the protagonist Hester Prynne is the main focus of the novel as she is depreciated for committing the act of adultery. The novel conveys the issues of gender roles while Hester is the focus of scorn in the small puritan town of Boston along with clear disdain for her daughter Pearl, the product of her mother’s act of adultery. During the time, Hester is trying to repent for her “sins” by trying to live her life as best as she can to appease the townspeople,but to no avail. Hawthorne uses gender’s to call attention to the way in which society is set up, along with women being the focus of discontent when caught in a wrongdoing while men do not receive the same punishment. Instead, punishment is usually lax for men, proving a great difference between the two genders.

Envisage living in a community where one could only be intimate with their husband. Sounds insane, right? Though being sexually active with more than one partner in a lifetime is moderately common in today’s society, it was severely looked down upon in the 1800s. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathanial Hawthorne communicates the story of Hester Prynne, an adulteress. Hester Prynne lived in a Puritan Society in which women were held to high, difficult, and unjust standards by men. Evidently, she undergoes unusual punishments for her infidelities against her estranged husband. She forcibly wears an embroidered, scarlet letter A on her breast for the remainder of her life. Though physically benign, its call of attention to Hester’s transgression is emotionally straining. As a man or woman, adultery must always be perceived as improper and unlawful. However, the author exhibits transcendentalist values when one can conclude that Hawthorne’s words were not demeaning Hester, but more so commending her. His execution of rhetorical devices applauds Hester’s individuality in a conforming society. Through the author’s implementation of diction to illuminate Hester and debase the rest of society, manipulation of symbolism to compliment Hester’s individuality, and application of irony to manifest Hester’s gained dignity from rebelling, Hawthorne illustrates Hester’s journey in a culture against change as one of dauntlessness, and conveys his purpose that individuality is precious.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is an age old novel. The story revolves around the actions of a woman, Hester Prynne, who committed the act of adultery and has to bare on her chest the scarlet letter “A”. The main conflict in the story is the fact that the people of the town have no way to identify the father of Hester’s illegitimate child, Pearl Prynne. Other major conflicts involve Hester’s husband, Roger Chillingsworth, who also deceives the town by never announcing his marital status to Hester in order to find his wife’s secret lover, and Arthur Dimmesdale, the supposed respectable man of the cloth, who has the affair with Hester. In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter, the use of secrecy and lies create the foundation

The Truth Behind the Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne is an author who strives to incorporate similar aspects and ideals of the puritan society into the development of his novel, The Scarlet Letter. This style that Hawthorne uses helps me as the reader understand the feminist ideals present throughout the novel. After reading the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, I started to search for feminist ideas and behaviors present leading me deeper into the meaning of The Scarlet Letter as a whole. The Scarlet Letter is a novel in which a women suffers through the feminist ideals and behaviors of society in her everyday life. Several feminist examples in The Scarlet Letter that prove that feminist ideals are present are how Hester

The novel “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne was published in the 1850s, and takes place in the Boston, Massachusetts area during the 17th Century when Puritans were the main population. Hester Prynne, is accused of committing adultery and is forced to wear a scarlet A against her chest and care for Pearl, Her daughter who is born from the tryst. In the beginning of the novel, both Pearl and the Letter are introduced at the same time aspressed against Hester’s chest. Though she chooses to hold the child close to her and the Letter is thrust upon her, Hawthorne shows the reader how determined she is to take these symbols of sin and integrate them into her life and create her own identity.

Novelist, Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his fictional novel, “The Scarlet Letter”, expresses a story about a young woman, Hester Prynne, back in the 1600s who was convicted of adultery and must now wear a big “A” on her chest to show those in the small Massachusetts Bay colony the sin she has committed. Hawthorne’s purpose is to illustrate the hardships Hester must go through for committing such act in the small colony where religion was put first. Hawthorne adopts a serious and pitiful tone throughout the novel to get the adult readers to sympathize with the main character, Hester Prynne. Though this book was written back in the 1800s and is based off a woman who’s shamed for adultery, this book can still relate to today’s world with some of

Nathaniel Hawthorne highlights the habitual societal conflict of surfacing gender equality ideology throughout The Scarlet Letter. The typical female role in society during the mid-seventeenth century was to be a caretaker. Hester Prynne’s sentence for breaking this stereotype through adultery is to wear a large, red letter A on her chest. Hawthorne uses Hester’s character to add characteristics of early feminism. For example, Hester not only takes on the so called male and female role put in place by society at some point throughout the story, but she also challenges societal views of women. To fully understand the situation women were going through, you must be familiar with the historical context. The story takes place in a Puritan

“Women belong in the kitchen.” “All women should be barefoot and pregnant.” “Women are strictly homemakers.” These are a few of the commonly used phrases regarding the female role in society that date back to the mid-seventeenth century. However, ardent supporters of gender equality have surfaced in almost every culture where this ideology is practiced. Nathaniel Hawthorne explores this inveterate societal conflict through his story The Scarlet Letter. The main character, Hester Prynne, is punished for committing adultery by being forced to wear a scarlet letter upon her bosom; Hawthorne created a story sympathetic to the female cause and demonstrated, through Hester, qualities of early feminism that later establish themselves during his

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne can easily be said as an early piece of feminist literature. The author exemplifies Hester Prynne as a strong independent female protagonist in the novel. Moreover, the author presents the daughter of Hester, Pearl, as an intelligent female though still in her childhood. These characteristics were not easily applied to females during those times. Hawthorne goes on to prove that men are imperfect by portraying the characters of Chillingworth and Dimmesdale. Therefore, Hawthorne establishes The Scarlet Letter to be a work of feminist literature where a female triumphs in the face of numerous challenges.