Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is one of the most famous novels by the American romantic writer. While the novel is well-known for its depiction of the relationships between the characters, and the romantic plots and subplots, the novel also has great value as a historical study of the Puritan period. Puritan society was a highly gendered society, with strict gender roles for men and women, and a well-established patriarchal society. Explorations of the novel, and of the depiction of Hester’s character, her punishment, and her actions in the novel can help reveal whether Hawthorne was realistically depicting the position of women in puritan society, or if Hawthorne’s novel presents and idealized and empowered character that could not have existed in actual puritan society.
Puritan Society; Historical Patriarchy
In order to examine Hester’s gendered position in the novel, one must first establish the historical parameters of women in puritan society. There is little doubt that Puritan New England was a patriarchal society. Indeed, part of the appeal of the colony and the motivations of the colonist who emigrated there, was to act out the role of the biblical patriarch in the biblical new world. For example, “Many Puritan men in the first and second generations aspired to become family patriarchs. Likening their 'errand in the wilderness' to the ancient Hebrews' 40 years of wandering in the desert, the first generation sought to recreate a hierarchical form of family life” (Digital History). They desired to rule their wives and children the same way the characters in the Old Testament of the Bible did.
In order to try to recreate this patriarchal society, the men attempted to dominate and control all aspects of society, and their family’s role in it. They tightly controlled the economic opportunities for their sons, that the marriage opportunities of their daughters. The monitored male female interaction, took an active role in courtship and marriage, and openly shamed people who went against the family’s regulations (Digital History). The demographics of the colony, combined with its ideological beliefs lead to the situation in which nearly all women were married, and often before the age of 20. As historians have noted, it was very common for married girls to transfer their obedience from their fathers to husbands.
Another contribution to the role of and position of women in society was the ideological beliefs of the puritans. Their belief system was based on a strict interpretation of the bible, and women were forced into their social position because of the original sin of Adam and Eve, which the patriarchal bible presents as mainly the fault of the Eve. This is particularly important to the The Scarlet Letter as Hester is portrayed as repeating the original sin of Eve, and her harsh punishment fit in with both the biblical ideology of the colony, and the patriarchal system of its social and governmental rule. As feminist historians have noted, “Women did not participate in town meetings and were excluded from decision making in the church. Puritan ministers furthered male supremacy in their writings and sermons. Women and children were treated harshly in the Puritan Commonwealth. Women were viewed as instruments of Satan” (Puritan Women).
The story of Eve’s temptation was not read as an element of a larger, ancient creation myth, or even as a moral tale, but rather as a normative lesson for why women must be controlled in society. The story of Eve demonstrated that women were inherently more dishonest than men; indeed, it was used as evidence that god had created women as more likely than men to give into temptation, and thus more likely to lie, steal, or cheat. This was used to justify the tight control over women’s mobility in society, and why their interactions with others, especially other men, had to be monitored. The only way a woman could overcome this god created flaw was to completely obey her husband (Puritan Women).
Historian Marilyn Weterkamp, in her essay “Puritan Patriarchy and the Problems of Revelations”, published in the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, discovered how the nature of Puritan religion, and their patriarchal society created a paradox which struck at the heart of the Puritan colonies, and can be read as part of the reason for the empowerment Hawthorne wrote into Hester’s character. Westerkamp notes that one of the tenets of the religious ideology of puritan society was the belief that any individual could experience a direct connection with God. And if people believed that they had forged a personal relationship with God, then it followed that people could experience a direct revelation from God. Indeed, this was often claimed by the leaders of New England such as Johnathan Edwards and the various members of the Mathers clan. However, women were also believed to be able to forge a direct relationship with god, and thus, they also came to believe that they were experiencing direct revelation for God, and sought to play the role of the prophet (Westerkamp 571-572). She writes, “Puritan leaders in old and New England confronted the self-proclaimed authority of female prophets and found a conflict between the societal demands of order and control and the spiritual possibilities of revelations” (Westerkamp 572).
The analysis developed by Westerkamp and other historians working in the field of gender discourses, seems to imply that although religion was the ideological justification of the oppression of women in New England society, it may have also served as an area in which women attempted to gain some discursive and social power. However, this clashed with the patriarchal system, and it appears that the church elders chose in favor of the patriarchy instead of the religious experience. As other historians have demonstrated, everyone had an established place in puritan society, especially women. If women somehow ended up in a position of not being married, they had almost no material support from the community. Thus, the withholding of a male protector, in the form of a husband or father (or a male child from a previous marriage) was a real, and dangerous threat for women in New England society. And it appears that this threat was used against women who attempted to assume the role of prophet, or to publically speak of any direct revelation from God. Westerkamp demonstrated that women who assumed control over themselves, especially at the direction of divine revelation, found themselves ostracized from the community, and on top of that, possibly facing criminal charges (Westerkamp 574).
The serious nature of the penalty—criminal charges or removal of communal support, shows how jealousy the patriarchy guarded the power of divine revelation. Even though their religious ideology specifically said that anyone, male or female, could experience the word of God, in practice, the church and communal elders did their best to try and make sure no women experienced this direct revelation, or at the very least did not go public if they did. Westerkamp’s model serves as an interesting prism through which to read the problems of Hester in The Scarlet Letter. Perhaps her removal from the community had less to do with any violation of sexual norms, and more to do with her daring to exert agency and control over her spiritual life. Or perhaps Hawthorne simply made the sexual transgression serve as a stand in for the more serious crime of Hester attempting to challenge the puritanical patriarchy’s control of all aspects of communal and spiritual life.
Of course, another great danger that women faced if they dared to seek to control their own spiritual lives, or to actually live according to the promise of their religion and seek a direct relationship to god, was the possibility of being accused of witchcraft. As is well known, Hawthorne had a relative who served on the jury of some of the Salem witch trials, and literary critics have often maintained that he wrote the story party out of a sense of family guilt about what happened. If this was the case, it would make sense that Hawthorne might place the source of Hester’s agency in the spiritual realm. For Hawthorne depicts Hester’s outcome far differently than would have happened to a real woman accused of the same practices. Hester reverses her punishment, and acts as a benefactor to the society which has ostracized her, while at the same time assuming the role of prophet. In actual historical puritan New England, it is unlikely that Hester would survive as long as she did, and she would certainly not have been allowed to retain any type of influence over the community.
A Historical Reading of the Scarlet Letter:
There are several chapters which will provide the richest material for the type of historical reading asked for in the paper topic, and developed in the historical research on the patriarchy in Puritan New England. Chapter One “The Prison Door” follows the long “Custom House” introduction, and establishes the setting of the story as puritan New England. “The Prison Door” is an important chapter because it not only describes the setting in a general sense, but establishes the reality of the puritan way of life, the puritan ideology, and the patriarchal organization of society. The chapter name itself is symbolic, as it not only describes the prison door that swings open to release the shamed Hester Prynne into the world, but can also symbolize the closing of the prison door of a patriarchal society on women living at this time. Indeed, this chapter is probably the most realistic in the novel, as it truly depicts who rules the community, who has the power, and what would have really happened to a woman convicted of these crimes in that culture (Hawthorne 53).
The door is opened by a group of older men, bearded and in garments meant to show their authority as both biblical patriarchs and as community leaders. All of the characters of the Old Testament, upon which the patriarchy was based, were bearded, so the beards of these men symbolize the New Jerusalem established in America and its ruling class of patriarchs. With irony Hawthorne mentions the utopian mission of the founders of the colony, but notes that one of the first things they built was a jail (Hawthorne 53). Again, Hawthorne symbolizes the power these men held, and how they believed it was their biblical right to control other people in this way.
Hawthorne continues through chapter two, indicating that a crowd has gathered around the where executions took place for, “the grim rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these good people would have augured some awful business at hand” (Hawthorne 54). He again mentions the beards, and uses the word physiognomies to describe the beards; this is key, as the word refers to the ancient practice that one could judge a person’s character based on the appearance of their face. Thus again, the beards are a symbol of the character of these men, and what they believe; the word augured means to tell the future, which is the kind of thing a witch would be accused of. Thus, if taken as a whole, the scene symbolizes how these men ruled this community, and especially its women, according to the ancient laws of the Old Testament, which has apparently lead to a utopia gone wrong.
In fact Hawthorne lists the types of ‘criminals’ that might have been punished here “an undutiful child to be corrected at the whipping post. It might be an Antinomain, a Quaker, or other heterodox religionist. it might be to that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins was to die upon the gallows” (Hawthorne 54). Hawthorne makes clear the list is of those guilty buy old testament norms, from people practicing different religions, including women. This is not the type of justice the reader is used to; rather this is an ancient justice of men who believe that god speaks to them and only to them. Thus Hester’s crime and punishment have historical validity to it. While she may have been executed, she would certainly have been publically shamed and ostracized from the community for daring to decide who she had a right to love. When the back story of Hester’s reason for falling in love with Arthur Dimmesdale is presented to the reader, the nature of the ancient patriarchal biblical justice seems even more absurd, because her actions are certainly understandable by a reasonable person. But her prosecutors are not the type of people interested in reason, for they have a monopoly on divine revelation, and automatically know right from wrong and good from evil.
Interestingly, Hawthorne presents the other married women of town as being upset with Hester’s punishment and calling for a harsher type of punishment like whipping or execution (Hawthorne 55). One wonders why Hawthorne made this choice as historically it would have been the men pushing for the harsher penalty. Is Hawthorne suggesting that these women are a sort of victim of the society they live in, brainwashed to think the same way as the men do? One woman says “The woman has brought shame upon us all and ought to die. Is there not law for it? Truly, there is both in scripture and in stature book” (Hawthorne 56). Hawthorne even has a male in the crowd tell the women to be merciful.
Thus, Hawthorne depicts these women in terms that would have been familiar to readers of his day. They are jealous, and they are willing to fight each other for men, and they are always afraid of another woman stealing their men. This depicts women still at the mercy of men, and acts as if they still do not mean anything unless they are married with a man at their side. Hawthorne’s modern audience may not be judging them the women by the rules of the Old Testament, but they are still judging the women based on their gender, and worse, upon gender stereotype. Thus, while not the literal prisoners of a patriarchy, the women are still the victims of a gendered society that sees women only as mates for men.
In the middle of the crowd’s attack upon Hester, Hawthorne writes that had there been a papist in the crows (a catholic) that “he would have seen in this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attireand with the infant at her bosom, as an object to remind him of the image of divine maternity” (Hawthorne 59). At first this line seems a criticism of Puritanism, which unlike Catholicism, has lost any connection with the role women play in the divine realm, and that there are holy women and not just the evil Eve. However, the lines also reveal that Hawthorne’s imaginary catholic viewer only feels this way because of how beautiful Hester is, and how well she is dressed. In other words, only a beautiful woman can remind a viewer of the female divine.
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