Scarrlet Letter Essay

Women in literature has long been a discussion among scholars, as a way to see where we are going and where we’ve been-using the words written by people from different times as a type of encyclopedia into a time frame. Women have been treated well, women have been oppressed, and often time we hear about the progression of the rights of women in different societies. However, I believe that there has been the common mistake of amateur scholars and college students to confuse the status of a woman’s rights and her actual treatment. Women’s rights are, without a doubt, important to history. Although, when it comes to the nature of a character’s development and a true window into society and culture, a woman’s treatment should come into greater interest when examining a work of literature.
The concept of total depravity is an important one when examining The Scarlet Letter, as part of the Puritan lifestyle is to accept the idea of Original Sin and with that the concept that Eve is the cause of sin and evil in a human’s life. (This could be taken to mean that women are at the root of all evil, but we won’t go down that road.) This automatically sets women up to be on the bottom end of the food chain. It’s like when you do something terrible, like setting a building on fire because you left the Christmas tree lights on. No one will forget that and let you near a set of twinkle lights again, as your mistake will be thrown up in your face forever. Women in early Puritan society are kept low in the status to constantly remind them that they are not intelligent enough to make decisions and control their own lives. (Isn’t that terrible when one girl with an apple spoils it for the rest of us?)
Something that I feel was working against Hester Prynne was the thought of Unconditional Election-that God selects those he saves and that his salvation is not meant for everyone, as some are undeserving. While HP was comfortable with herself and proud, a modern woman who would be...