(Shifting) Gender Roles in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (PDF)

Essay from the year 2021 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 2,0, University of Stuttgart, language: English, abstract: In the following, I will first present the individual gender roles of the Puritans and those of the 19th century, demonstrating how they have changed, followed by an account of the feminine gender roles of Hester and her daughter Pearl. Finally, I will briefly present the extent to how the gender roles in the novel are shifted.

The topic of gender roles is an area in society that has been a point of debate for several centuries. Even today, in many parts of the world, gender equality is discussed and fought for. Genders are assigned fixed characteristics and behaviors that are supposed to be followed to conform to society. If someone does not behave according to their gender role, it can very often
lead to conflicts within society, even today. Gender roles are changing, but this is not a new phenomenon.

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote the novel The Scarlet Letter, which takes place about 200 years before his time. The novel is about a woman who has committed adultery and who has given birth to a child out of marriage. As punishment, she must wear the scarlet letter A at chest height for the rest of her life, a symbol of shame. This circumstance does not sound appropriate
to our times, and even in the 19th century, when Hawthorne wrote the novel, some gender roles of the 17th century were no longer appropriate. The protagonist, Hester Prynne, does not conform to the conventions of her time and emancipates herself from the Puritan gender roles and even ends up not being condemned for it. Furthermore, she and the child's father - the priest
Arthur Dimmesdale - both demonstrate an exchange of gender roles in their ways of acting and characteristics.