Analysis of Gender Studies through Scarlet Letter - Essay Example

The Scarlet Letter of the Foundation Affiliate Department Introduction The Scarlet Letter is a work of fiction in the genre of romance and was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The story was set in the 17th century in Boston city in accordance to the era depicted in the story as a puritan society. The major themes of legalism, sin and guilt are explored throughout the story. Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1804 and descended from a family of early settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Who Belongs to Phi Beta Kappa).Hawthorne’s novel is a pure output of the thinking process of the decadent society of the 17th century (Cliffnotes). Hawthorne depicts the story asa point of historical thinking and the work of prejudice marks a big presence in the minds of the people around the author. The novel on a whole is a mirror to the situations prevalent in those times and the prejudice against women that was practiced by the common people. The story also highlights the wrongdoings of the religious minded people who regarded religion to be above justice and the human condition. This research paper is aimed to bring out all the elements posed by the author as a descriptive way for a proper understanding of the reader. Main Body a. Overview of the Scarlet Letter The story starts in the backdrop of seventeenth century Boston which was then a settlement with puritan values. A young woman namedHester Prynne was escorted from a prison with her young daughter in her embrace and the scarlet letter “A” marked on her breast. A crowd was watching these proceedings from which a man told an elderly onlooker that Hester was being punished for indulging into adultery. The context being that Hester had indulged in adultery while her husband had been presumed to be lost at the sea thus the child being labeled as an illegitimate one. Hester had not yet revealed her lover’s identity and had suffered the punishment for that in the form of being made a pariah by the society. The elderly onlooker who the man answered in the crowd was Hester’s husband and was practicing medicine and had changed his name to Roger Chillingworth. Having kept his identity a secret and only Hester bearing the knowledge of his true identity and Roger had settled in Boston with the intent of revenge. The story moved on several years further and Hester started to support her-self by working as a seamstress with her daughter Pearl by her side (Millington, May 2015).Hester was shunned by the community whose officials tried to take away Pearl from her but their intentions failed with intervention from a young minister by the name of Arthur Dimmensdale.Dimmensdale appears to be suffering from a heart condition that it-self has been brought in due to heavy psychological distress. Chillingworth moved in with Dimmensdale to take care of him and one afternoon discovered a scarlet scar in the shape of letter A on Dimmensdale’s breast. One night Hester and her daughter Pearl now about seven years of age were returning from a deathbed when they encountered Dimmensdale at the top of a town scaffold, trying to punish himself for his purported sins and the suffering that he has put Hester and Pearl through. Pearl asked him to acknowledge her as his daughter, arequest that Dimmensdale declined.Just then a meteor marked an A in the night sky (Shmoop). Hester seeing that Dimmensdale was in a very bad condition, visited Chillingworth to ask him to stop his harrowing to which Chillingworth refused. Hester then made plans for the minister and her to meet in the forest as she was aware that Chillingworth has guessed that she had decided to reveal his identity to Dimmensdale. The two of them decide to flee to Europe with pearl as a family.They made a plan to board a ship that would leave Boston after four days for Europe. Hester at this point in the forest removed her scarlet A pinned to her breast. A day before the trio were to leave on the ship, Dimmensdale preaches his most powerful sermon to date.Meanwhile Hester learns that Chillingworth had booked a passage on the same ship that the trio was to board (Cliffnotes). While Dimmensdale was leaving the church after the sermon, he saw Hester and Pearl standing before the town scaffold. On seeing them, Dimmensdale hastily mounted the scaffold and publicly confessed by exposing the sign on his chest, after which he fell dead as Pearl kissed him. Frustrated by his failed attempt of revenge, Chillingworth died a year later. Hester with Pearl left Boston with no one knowing their whereabouts. After many years, Hester returned with the scarlet letter A still pinned to her breast and resumed living in her old cottage. She continued with her charitable work. Hester received letters from Pearl who was now married to a European aristocrat and had established a family of her own. Hester died and she was buried next to Dimmensdale with the duo sharing a single tombstone bearing the letter “A” (The Scarlet Letter). b. Themes The predominant theme in this novel is the theme of feminine strength and how it is tested by the society. This theme is apparent from the depiction that Hester even though was persecuted for being an adulterer never revealed the identity of her lover and bore the brunt of the society alone.All the while she kept a secret that her actual husband was still alive and harbored revenge against her. In the midst of all this she took care of her beloved daughter and also served the community through her work. Her resolve was tested all through the novel and her life was made a living hell by the society, but she fought on. After Hester was openly shamed and forced by the people to wear a badge of disgrace, her reluctance to leave the town seemed bewildering. She was not incarcerated, and leaving area and its people would allow her to remove the scarlet letter and have a normal life anywhere else. She however decided to stay which dismayed people. People could not put any logic to that resolve. When Chillingworth told her that the town fathers are considering letting her remove the letter, she was premised on her desire to make her own decision rather than to allow others bend it according to their whim and fancy. For Hester, running away or removing the letter would be recognition of society’s power over her; she would be admitting that the letter was a mark of embarrassment and something from which she desired to break out. Instead, Hester stayed, imbibed the scarlet letter as a symbol of her own experiences and character. There was also an underlying theme of compassion and forgiveness which was apparent from Hester’s actions that she never forced the two men in her life to do anything to support her or blamed either of them for having kept her in such misery. Hawthorne showed us an effectively religious society, with its population adhering to strict ethical codes, and exhausting and separating transgressors. A religious society should be ruled by grace and, at the end of the novel, Hester had been forgiven by the strict society that once punished her much like the actions that a proper society should retort to in such situations (Millington, May 2015). Though Hester was judged and punished by the moral-adhering society, she converted her scarlet letter into a representation of refinement rather than ignominy. Even though Reverend Dimmesdale avoided confessing his offense for seven years due to fear of the anger of his so called god fearing society, he found refinement through admission in the very last moments of his bereavement. The theme of evil is predominant in the novel, evil as perceived by the people which may not be actually evil and the true evil. Evil as perceived by the town’s people was the act committed by Hester that has earned her the wrath of the general populace without any proper proof and any thorough process to understand her feelings behind the act. Hester was persecuted by the people based on their beliefs which were based on the teachings of their religions. However the hypocrisy of that situation lay in the fact that the preacher of the religion was the actual adulterer and remained out of people’s ire by not coming out all his life with the truth. Hester had to bear the brunt of people’s misconceptions and their ill treatment towards her and her daughter. This was an evil as perceived by the people but the truest of evil that was depicted in the novel was the evil of Chillingworth. He vanished from the life of his new wife and came back only when she was being persecuted for her wrong deeds. Then after being recognized by his wife he did not ask her for her feelings or cared about a clarification about the current situation but rather formed an idea of a cold revenge. He based solely on the musings of his mind rather than asking Hester, his wife as to what had actually transpired in his absence. His revenge made him live a cold life wasted away in loneliness and finally resulting in a agony filled and no descript death. c. Motifsand Symbols The most prolific symbolism applied in this novel was the presence of the forest just outside the city. The city is a civilized place where rules were made and imposed by humans work and those rules were put upon all inhabitants. Just outside the city was the forest with the nature’s rules, and thatwas a place where the arborous of the society do not apply (Sparknotes). When Hester and Dimmesdale met in the woods, for a few moments, they turned into paramours once again. Hester’s cottage, which was situated on the periphery of settlement and at the boundary of the woods, embodies both orders; it was her place of émigré, which tied it to the dictatorial town, but because it lied spaced out from the settlement, it was a place somewhere she could craft for herself a life away from all the blemishes that the settlement had put on her. Chillingworth was chilly and merciless and thus brought a “cold whirlwind” into Hester’s and Dimmesdale’s lives, “Prynne” had rhyme with “sin,” and “Dimmesdale” pointed to “dimness” symbolizing weakness, lack of insight and willwhich aptly characterized the minister’s persona. The name “Pearl” was like a device of salvation and a biblical allegory. The characters were named in those ways to press a point and depict the novel to be like a tale of how prejudice may lead to abduction of absolute justice. Also, those names added depth to the characters and gave them masks which helped the readers understand the characters and their actions with a penchant. The alternation between night and day was emphasized in the novel. The socially acceptable activities were overt and unacceptable activities were covert. Daylight was shown in syllogism with the activities that made an individual open to persecution.Night time was shown to be a time to conceal the activities that would be intolerable in the day time.Symbolism was linked to the inner theme of the novel about the socially acceptable identity that people carry and the wild side that they desire (Shmoop). d. Analysis of Emotion This section analyses the emotional instances of anger in the letter. Hester’s case angered many people in the crowd that had gathered at the jail’s front door. They wore faces of disapproval and their discussions indicated that they felt that the sentence was light. The group’s ugliest woman out of anger advocated for a death sentence for Hester. By doing that she wanted to show how angered she was with the case. Several women were also outraged at Hester’s lady like movements and her decision to decorate the scarlet A. That angered them and they wanted to rip off the decorated scarlet A. These instances indicated how emotional people were with the outcome of Hester’s case. They were not only angered by the outcome of the case which they felt the penalty was light, but were also angered by Hester’s decision to decorate the scarlet. Hester out of anger squeezed her daughter. She did that after she looked at her and thought about her dark future. The fact that she was condemned by her life which made the future of her daughter dark angered her and was the reason as to why she squeezed her. Hester was also angered when she saw her former husband Roger Chillingworth in the crowd. She became emotional and out of anger squeezed her daughter again. These instances reveal how emotional Hester was and reacted angrily to cool down her emotions. The appearance of Roger Chillingworth when Hester was on the scaffold caused a lot of fear to Hester and when she went back to her cell she felt angered by the day’s events. The day’s events did not anger Hester alone; Pearl was also angered and started crying when she went back to the cell. Both the mother and the daughter seemed to be unhappy with the turn if the day’s events. Hester’s anger this time was not turned to her daughter and only felt agitated by the activities of the day. The daughter on the other hand cried to tone down her anger. Pearl’s life and activities changed significantly as she played and interacted in a way that showed she was acting out of anger. The fact that she threw stones and screamed at other children indicated that she was acting with anger. Having reached and touched the scarlet letter as the first thing in her infancy agonized her. Pearl angrily chased children who tried to throw mud at her. Finally, the aspect of anger was witnessed when Dimmesdale found out the truth about Chillingworth. The news that Chillingworth was Hester’s former husband angered Dimmesdale who reacted by sinking down onto the ground. Conclusion The Scarlet Letter is a revolutionary novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne who had the nerve to present with the prevalent situations of the seventeenth century. The story is told like a fairytale and proceeded to present the social injustice against a woman who in the light of the events that transpired in her life was not at fault but was the one who was persecuted. She was branded as a sinner while the actual sinners lived according to them a life of righteousness. Hesterfelt guilty of the act that she committed but did not give way for her emotions to get the better of her and expose the minister as her lover and the secret that her husband was alive. She guarded the secrets with a sordid heart and took care of the men in addition to her own daughter. Hester can be considered as the epitome of the women who faced the society’s wrath in those days for acting with a sense of self-indulgence. ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY "The Scarlet Letter (The Scarlet Letter at a Glance)."Cliffnotes.Web. 18 May 2015. Cliffnotes is a website where notes are written by teachers and that makes it highly reliable. Clifton Keith Hillegass, the founder of CliffsNotes, was born in Rising City, Nebraska, on April 18, 1918. After graduating from college, he worked as a college bookstore representative for Longs College Bookstore (now the Nebraska Book Company). One of the contacts Cliff developed while at Longs was Jack Cole, owner of Coles, The Book People. Coles business produced study guides called Coles Notes, published in Canada. Cole suggested to Cliff that American students would welcome a U.S. version of the notes. With that idea, Cliff launched CliffsNotes in August 1958, with a line of 16 Shakespeare study guides. Working out of Lincoln, Nebraska, Cliff built the company that produced study guides destined to become a multi-generational icon. In 2012, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) acquired CliffsNotes, Inc., and the brand lives on today as part of the global learning company, and its mission of changing lives by fostering passionate, curious learners. On May 5, 2001, Mr. Hillegass passed away at the age of 83(1,reference). Here Cliffnotes is used as a general guide for a better understanding of the novel in study and provide better insights into the literary piece. Millington, Richard H. "The Meanings of Hawthornes Women." Hawthorne in Salem.Web. 18 May 2015. Dr. Richard Millington, Professor of English, Smith College and has written an authoritative article about the presence of women in The Scarlet Letter. The article clearly underlines the roles of women and how they were perceived those times. Richard Millington suggests that Hawthornes "heroic women," such as Hester Prynne, explore the possibility of an ethical life through both engagement with the community and challenges to its values(2 references). According to Millington, Hester not only keeps alive and at last momentarily expresses a glorious erotic life, but in doing so exemplifies what it might mean to locate a life at once subversive of and engaged with ones community. Such a life, one notices, is precisely what Dimmesdale-a victim, one might propose, of his deep affiliation to the power system whose norms he has violated-cannot compass. Such a life, we might also observe, is the goal of the narrator of "The Custom House," who, in seeking to become a "citizen of somewhere else" allies himself to Hester across the boundaries of gender. So: If we join the critique of masculinity we witness in the stories to the creation of a character like Hester, we might conclude that Hawthornes women operate as a powerfully moving and constructive expressers of the alternative values these fictions endorse and yearn for(3). This lecture by Millington is used as a guiding light to understand the nuances of the character of Hester and how her role is defined in the novel. "The Scarlet Letter."Shmoop.Web. 18 May 2015. Since 2007, Shmoop has been a digital publishing company with a point of view. Their teaching method revolves around the basic idea that learning is often too hard so they carry academic tools for the convenience of students. They own 100% of their content and present both a consistent voice and a distinctive product offering. Their free Learning Guides, Online Courses, College Readiness Prep, and Test Prep balance a teen-friendly, approachable style with academically rigorous materials to help students understand why they should care(4). The people at Shmoop also give students an honest look into life after high school. Their Careers page is written by real, Oil Rig Drillers, Delta Force Captains, and Marine Biologists, while the College 101 section tells students what college might actually look, feel, and smell like. Thousands of schools around the world use Shmoop as part of their curriculum and the company has also been honored by the Interwebs: twice by the Webby Awards and twice by Scholastic Administrator Magazine ("Best in Tech"). Here Shmoop is used as a definitive guide to better understand the novel and bring out the undercurrent themes in the limelight. "The Scarlet Letter."Sparknotes.Web. 18 May 2015. SparkNotes is a resource you can turn to when students do not understand their literary assignments. The editors help students understand books, write papers, and study for tests. They are clear and concise, but never leave out important info. The mission is to help you make sense of confusing schoolwork. The editors at Sparknotes are well qualified to lend a hand: they graduates of top schools, have advanced degrees galore, they have taught undergraduate and graduate classes, and they have edited books on Shakespeare, The Scarlet Letter, and the SAT. They work with experts to create books, blogs, quizzes, and flashcards that will help you master hard material. The Sparknotes platform has SparkNotes Guides that contain thorough summaries and insightful critical analyses, No Fear Shakespeare: No Fear Shakespeare provides side-by-side translations of Shakespeare into plain English. No Fear Shakespeare is available online and in book form, SparkCollege: for college bloggers that have the inside scoop on getting into school and paying for it once youre there and may other tools. Here Sparknotes is used as a guide to understand the text of The Scarlet Letter in a better light so that no points are missed(5). Hawthorne, Nathaniel. "The Scarlet Letter."Bartleby.Web. 18 May 2015. Bartleby,com is a website that publishes online versions of English literature and has been doing so for the last twenty years. Bartleby.com began as a personal research experiment in 1993 and within one year published the first classic book on the Web (Whitman’s Leaves of Grass). It was inconceivable then that a billion page views werepossible; let alone, hundreds of millions of users. Steven van Leeuwen has shepherded their mission over the last two decades to serve both the academic community and the curious reader, especially continuing the development of Bartleby.coms original offerings: quotations and poetry anthologies. The website is a great online source for all the people who want to read literary works but are unable to access books or libraries. The website is a free literary companion that provides accurate texts and translations of all the literary works mentioned on the website homepage. Here the website is used as a ready literary source to read the book, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne so as to read the novel as a whole or in parts whenever and wherever required. "Nathaniel Hawthorne." PBk. Phi Beta Kappa Society.Web. 18 May 2015. Nathaniel Hawthorne was inducted as the member of this society in 1824. Phi Beta Kappa celebrates and advocates excellence in the liberal arts and sciences. Its campus chapters invite for induction the most outstanding arts and sciences students at America’s leading colleges and universities. The Society sponsors activities to advance these studies — the humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences — in higher education and in society at large. ΦΒΚ stands for freedom of inquiry and expression, disciplinary rigor, breadth of intellectual perspective, the cultivation of skills of deliberation and ethical reflection, the pursuit of wisdom, and the application of the fruits of scholarship and research in practical life. We champion these values in the confidence that a world influenced by them will be a more just and peaceful world. The Society pursues its aims by supporting its campus chapters and regional associations. It sponsors two quarterly publications, lectureships, and scholarships, and it cooperates with other institutions with similar goals to advance the liberal arts and sciences. (6)Here the website is used to understand about the life of Nathaniel Hawthorne in detail. 1, "About CliffsNotes." Insert Name of Site in Italics. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 May. 2015 . 2, "Pearl in Chapter 2 -"The Market-Place." Insert Name of Site in Italics. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 May. 2015 . 3,"The Meanings of Hawthornes Women." Insert Name of Site in Italics. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 May. 2015 . 4, "About Shmoop." Insert Name of Site in Italics. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 May. 2015 . 5,"About SparkNotes." Insert Name of Site in Italics. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 May. 2015 . 6,"From the Secretary - PBK." Insert Name of Site in Italics. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 May. 2015 . Read More