Megan Naylor
Dr. DiCicco
English 3664
March 29, 2011
Gender Roles in The Scarlet Letter and The Awakening During the Victorian era, the life a woman was immensely difficult. They were considered the property of their husband, and treated as such. Women were forbidden from owning their own property, even if they were given the property from their father. In such a case, the land would be transferred in ownership to her husband. A woman’s place was in the home, to dutifully care for her husband and children. Her job was to cook, clean, and bear children. Interestingly, a wife was treated similarly to her children. Obedience toward the man of the home was necessary from both the children and the mother. In contradiction to all of the restriction and repression, the nineteenth century produced two of literatures strongest women. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Kate Chopin gave American society two women who actively defied their husbands and who possessed their own strong moral codes. With The Scarlet Letter published in 1850 and set in the seventeenth century, Nathaniel Hawthorne was taking a large risk in creating a novel detailing a woman’s adultery with the town’s minister and producing an illegitimate child in the process. Despite the treatment she receives, Hester does not waver in her promise to keep her lover secret, proving that she is a strong willful woman. As the century is coming to a close, Kate Chopin produced a work that sent shock waves through American society. The Awakening presents the story of Edna Pontellier, a woman who is deeply dissatisfied with her life, and ‘awakens’ her soul through a physical relationship with a man who is not her husband, and through her paintings. Edna was strong enough to escape her debilitating home life and was audacious enough to choose her own happiness above that of her husband and children. Both authors’ created