Almack
English 4 AP
2 October, 2014
Literary Theory: Feminism
Feminism is in our culture whether it should be relevant or not. Elements of all branches of feminism are not only in our everyday culture in the mainstream media, social media, and even our classic literature that we read as insight to what our society was like beforehand. This describes two branches of feminism and they relate to the classic novel The Scarlet Letter. The branches that will be talked about are French feminism and Radical feminism. The idea of feminism bloomed around the enlightenment era but is different than how we think of feminism overall today. It was a view that consisted of women and men being exact equals and it was an idea that was actually …show more content…
However, knowing the somewhat patriarchal society they had back then, the priest may have been booted from being a priest but there’s no way that he’d be in the same trouble has Hester. There are several reasons why this priest would not have received the same punishment as Hester. Not only being a male, he is also a male in a higher up position than most of the citizens in the puritan society. Being a male and also a male in society he probably would have retained a social status somewhat in the community. This is just something that was a part of life. Women weren’t thought of as equal to men. Men were stronger and were the only ones able to work and have jobs, or so thought by the mass of the community (which also consisted of mostly men.) Men in this story definitely play a patriarchal role over the society but it is evident by the end that of the story that Hester is able to work past the judgements of others and work through the highly religious society and still do work for the people that have judged her while other men receive no punishment or very slight ones if they do receive them because there is always an excuse for the men of that …show more content…
People take feminism and interpret it into what they think it means and it makes it a bit harder to talk about how it is found in literature and in writings because what one person finds to belong to feminism may not be the opinion of someone else. Although, with that said, it is undeniable that there are forms of feminism in this piece. French feminism is a more prominent branch than Radical feminism. This text shows that women don’t deserved to be downplayed with hurtful insults no matter how bad the screw up was and that women can be just as tough or even tougher than men when going through those struggles and still going through work areas and jobs that require some dirty hands.
Feminism is in a lot of classic and modern literature. It is a subject of life that can go both good and bad ways. Feminism can help bring women to equality and establish a true equality between both sexes and it is also a potential threat in the sense that some women want to create a matriarchy in which gives no men rights and in some ways eliminate the male species almost entirely. Feminism for the most part however is a good and impactual manner that creates great subject material, controversy, and discussion in literary