“The Scarlet Letter and the Antislavery Feminists” Jean Fagan Yellin, in her essay “The Scarlet Letter and the Antislavery Feminists,” argues that The Scarlet Letter’s motifs and language reject the doctrines of the antislavery feminists and instead reinforce patriarchal norms and ideas. Yellin’s purpose is to reveal Hawthorne’s rejection of feminist ideals in order to help her readers examine how The Scarlet Letter upholds the patriarchal status quo of Hawthorne’s era.
Yellin convincingly employs ample text evidence to explain how language used in the novel represents the continuation of patriarchal structures, as well as employing allusions and metaphors to show how the town views Hester in terms of her womanhood and how the denial of Hester’s sisterhood connects to the theme of slavery. Yellin writes with a feminist diction and an academic tone to connect with her audience of scholars who examine the narrative of women in literature.
In particular, Yellin solidly analyzes Hawthorne’s rejection of feminist ideals in The Scarlet Letter throughout her essay, and her conclusions on Hawthorne’s ideals of patriarchy are accurate. Yellin’s structure and tone aid the quality of her argument on this topic. She first relates the background of Hawthorne as an author to his positions in The Scarlet Letter, persuasively linking his background – and that of his wife – to the positions he takes in the book.
She then goes through the book to examine his rejection of the antislavery feminists’ ideologies. In particular, she *** metaphors and allusions to connect the community’s perceptions of Hester to other works that her audience would be familiar with in order to help them create an image of what she is arguing. More specifically, she *** the image of the Queen of Palmyra in Zenobia by Harriet Hosmer and the work Greek Slave by Hiram Powers. She compares Hester to the conquered queen by stating that both are a “regal conquered female figure” (Yellin 641).
Additionally, Yellin points out that “[w]here Hiram Powers had distanced an enchained white woman in space and called her a Greek Slave, Nathaniel Hawthorne distanced an enchained white woman in time and called her Hester Prynne” to further emphasize the point that Hester is constrained by the patriarchal rules of society (634). These images of the sculptures connect a physical image in the reader’s mind to Hester’s position in the community, giving the reader a visual image, which emphasizes her previously theoretical argument.
Additionally, Yellin alludes to the story of Eve to advance her point about Hester’s relationship with the community, first calling Hester “a lost and fallen Eve” when she breaks the patriarchal rules of society, and then analyzes her as “an unfallen Eve in tune with Nature” when Hester, for a brief moment of fantasy, escapes the patriarchal rigidity in the forest (648, 650). This further helps her argument because it gives the reader a common benchmark for comparison and helps the reader to visualize Yellin’s argument even more.
Moreover, Yellin’s tone suits her commentary and emphasizes the strength of her argument. The academic tone used throughout the piece allows Yellin to communicate her ideas more convincingly to her audience, scholars interested in the treatment of women, because her audience expects detailed analysis using specific words to make her point. Her feminist tone, especially viewing in Hester in terms of “her identity (her womanhood) and her membership in the community (her sisterhood),” allows her to examine the text through this lense of feminism and through feminist concepts, thus enhancing her argument (Yellin 633).
Yellin’s use of text evidence from throughout the book and her commentary over that text evidence further supports her position. Her analysis starts from the first scaffold scene in the book and analyzes Hester’s development throughout the book, ending with the third scaffold scene, which ends both the book and Yellin’s argument. Additionally, she utilizes ample text evidence to support her point. Because her argument covered the book as a whole, she needed text evidence from all parts of the book to prove her point, and she successfully integrated text evidence to show that her argument applies to most parts of the book.
Furthermore, she employs insightful commentary to make her point. This increases the credibility of her argument because her commentary is able to parse Hawthorne’s words and determine his intent behind them in order to view the work overall through the lens of women’s position in society. Her commentary has not only a broad, big picture outlook but also a more specific outlook, with it examining both the book overall and specific quotes within it to enhance her argument compellingly.
Yellin makes an effective argument in her critical article about The Scarlet Letter, and I agree with its premise about Hawthorne’s affirmation of the patriarchal status quo. At the beginning of the book, Hawthorne immediately takes a jab at women in general, writing that “the women [of Boston] … stood within less than half a century of the period when the man-like Elizabeth had been the not altogether unsuitable representative of the sex” (Hawthorne 38).
Hawthorne states here that women should be like men through his use of litotes. Hawthorne first compares Queen Elizabeth I to a man and, cause of this, calls her as a “not altogether unsuitable” woman. This comparison implies that women who are like men are suitable “representations of their sex” and that women who meet the standard definition of femininity are thus “unsuitable” representations. This further implies that men are better than women because only a “man-like” woman can be an adequate representation of women overall.
Overall, this displays Hawthorne’s anti-female, and pro-male, bias through his description of women as worse than men, and the description shows Hawthorne’s favor of the patriarchy because he believes that women are “unsuitable,” for the most part, to take place in government and societal structures. Furthermore, “The rulers, and the wise and learned men of the community, were longer in acknowledging the influence of Hester’s good qualities than the people. [Their] prejudices… were fortified in themselves by an iron framework of reasoning” (Hawthorne 106).
Hawthorne emphasizes the rigidity of the leaders of the Puritan community by comparing their prejudices to an “iron framework. ” Iron connotes strength and inability to change, thus emphasizing how the Puritan leaders are unwilling to change their frame of mind in reference to Hester as an adulteress and a woman. Their minds are so set in the patriarchal status quo that they do not see any good qualities in Hester; indeed, because they are at the top of society, they are more rigid with the people because the status quo protects their positions of authority and any change in the status quo would negatively impact their status in society.
Additionally, Rev. Dimmesdale encounters “a most pious and exemplary old dame” whose life was “made almost a solemn joy to her devout old soul, by religious consolations and the truths of Scripture, wherewith she had fed herself continually for more than thirty years” (Hawthorne 139). Hawthorne applies positive diction to this woman, utilizing words like “exemplary,” “joy,” “devout”, and “pious,” because she accepts the patriarchal status quo exemplified in biblical scripture.
She engages herself with the religious order and the status quo and thus receives this positive diction from Hawthorne, who seems to support the woman’s acceptance of the status quo through his positive diction. Finally, in the forest scene with Dimmesdale, the two fantasize leaving the community, and Hester briefly takes off the scarlet letter, receiving a ray of sunshine. However, when the fantasy ends and she puts back on the Scarlet Letter, “the warmth and richness of her womanhood departed” (Hawthorne 135).
This quote emphasizes that when Hester accepts the scarlet letter, and thus, the patriarchal rules of the community, she loses her “womanhood” and goes back to being an object in the patriarchal culture which defines her as such. Furthermore, the fantastical nature of the scene emphasizes Hawthorne’s view of the patriarchal status quo: because it is a fantasy and cannot, and will not, exist at the end of the novel, Hawthorne conveys the fact that women cannot escape the patriarchal status quo and must submit to it.
The end of the novel emphasizes Hester’s submission to the status quo and contrasts with the forest scene in which Hester “escapes” the patriarchal rigidity of Boston in order to demonstrate that it is ultimately impossible for women to exercise their self-determination and break away from patriarchal structures. In short, in her essay “The Scarlet Letter and the Antislavery Feminists,” Jean Fagan Yellin effectively analyzes Hawthorne’s affirmation of the patriarchal status quo of his time period.
Even today, the issue of women’s rights in society remains a major issue, with issues like the pay gap still prevalent, and many still argue that patriarchy still exists today. Examination of the rights of women through literature can help us to view our society today in a different light and give new lessons to ameliorate issues of gender, and Yellin’s examination sparks a new, deeper discussion of the rights of women.