Blog Post 5: Open Topic

 

This was my first reading of The Scarlet Letter, and my only prior exposure to Hawthorne was his short story “Young Goodman Brown” in Professor Tuttle’s American Lit. 1 course.  Puritan history has, frankly, bored me.  The strict moral code and intersection of church and state opposes the dream (it’s still a dream) of modern American society and some of my research interests like counterculture literature (e.g. Beat-nik writing).  However, I knew we were reading The Scarlet Letterthrough a feminist lens which, as a Women’s and Gender Studies minor, definitely interested me.  I tried to approach the text with an open mind.  After reading, I can say I have positive sentiments towards The Scarlet Letter!  It’s clear why the novel was a banned book, and though Hawthorne writes roughly 200 years after the Puritan settlement, his views are progressive and still, like most all canonical works, relevant today. I was unaware that the meaning of the A shifts from the beginning to end of the novel.  “Adulteress” to “able” could be an interesting theme to write a paper on, but I’m sure it’s been done before. Hester’s society forces her to wear the scarlet letter.  This is an example of a society attempting to define individuals instead of letting individuals define themselves.  I can connect this to modern day societies and their sentiments towards gender. Many people are more concerned with what a person’s genitals are than respecting what gender they choose to identify as.