She’s a slut, she’s easy, she doesn’t respect herself. These phrases are constantly used against women who dare to have sex outside of marriage. They’re also to degrade women the speaker has never met. Often coupled with these remarks are wildly biologically inacurate results regarding the woman's body. This combination is frequently used as reinforcement for the “purity myth”, which places extreme emphasis on a woman’s ‘virginity’ before marriage. While the social aspect today most negatively impacts women, men are also hurt. They are forced to adhere to hyper-masculine standards, either placing massive emphasis on sexual encounters, rating and grading their “conquests”, or suffering through the same forced ‘purity’ as women. They are even told disturbing lies about masurbation, including that it will cause blindness or infertility. (spoiler alert: it doesn’t) And while some modern media is starting to move away from these toxic ideals, much of western media, past and present, defends these values. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a book with a meaning that is, quite honestly, up for interpretation by the reader. However, it cannot be interpreted as a book meant to empower women, or be kind to men.
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The Scarlet Letter is not a feminist book, because it reinforces the harmful stereotypes surrounding sexual relations outside of a traditional marriage by defending the divine punishment that was being exacted upon Hester and her lover for daring to have sex out of
The Scarlet Letter is not a feminist book, because it reinforces the harmful stereotypes surrounding sexual relations outside of a traditional marriage by defending the divine punishment that was being exacted upon Hester and her lover for daring to have sex out of