Scarlet Letterhighlight gender and sexuality aspects

A Comparison Paper Between Two Books
Audre Lorde’s The Uses of the Eroticand Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letterhighlight gender and sexuality aspects that enhanced women’s tribulations in earlier society.The concept of eroticism is often restricted, constrained, and labeledin a patriarchal society and has always been unspeakable. But erotic is a resource deep within each of us, deeply rooted in the feminine and spiritual level, deeply rooted in the power of our unexpressed or unrecognized feelings. In this article, I compare The Uses of Erotic and The Scarlet Letter to explore feminism dominated by male society. The reflections left in these two works are not only about women’s rights and freedoms but also about how women position themselves in a patriarchal society.
In this society, women have been taught to doubt and resist eroticism. The phenomenondepicts women’s inferiority, a misconception that prompts them to believe they can only be truly powerful by suppressing pornography in their lives and consciousness. The definition is wrong because it was formed in the context of a model of male power aimed at disadvantaging women. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorneportrays Hester, the heroine, as living in a society ruled by Puritan forces, whose asceticism denies women’s normal demands for true love, believing their bold pursuit of love is shameful and spurned. After Hester’s husband disappeared, she fell in love with the priest, Dimmesdale. As a result, she gave birth to a daughter, Peral, violating the Puritan rules of abstinence and moral obligations, which occasioned being compelled to wear a “red-letter A” on her chest and receiving humiliating punishment. One can see that under the double oppression of patriarchal society and Puritan forces, Hester is a victim of a specific era and social background. Because of society’s definition of “so-called,” women are not recognized as Puritans.
In The Uses of Erotic, Lorde calls for women to transform love and desire into a power to empower themselves “not self-discipline, but self-abnegation,” and that it should be avoided rather than admired. She also notes that females are “docile” because of their fear of the erotic force“recognizing the power of the erotic within our lives can give us the energy to pursue genuine change within our world” (Lorde 59). Lorde’s notion that women are treated as the inferior sex is expressed in The Scarlet Letter, where the inquisition forces Hester to have an “A” (Adultery) after having”adultery” with her beloved priest and having a child. Amusingly, she was not ashamed of the label. For example,the social title given to her is aimed at shaming her publicly, but transforming it into her way of rebellion strengthens her pursuit of freedom. As a result, she did not give in when asked to wear a “red-letter A” for punishment. Faced with the symbol of shame, she chose to stitch it with fine red cloth and decorated it with golden silk thread weaving, transforming “shame” into a symbol of true love and bravely living with the faith of love. One detail depicts that when Hester knew that the Puritans only allowed women to wear plain or black clothes, she searched for ornate clothing to sew beautiful clothes for her daughter, which was also a silent rebellion against society at the time, and positive thinking about the social status of women. In addition to being compassionate and sympathetic for women, Hawthorne also affirms women’s strong, brave, independent, and other qualities. Thus, the two texts show how oppression based on eroticism forced women to fight for their rights.
Overall, various elements make Hawthorne’s feminine consciousness gradually mature, which is expressed through other literary works, such as Lorde’s The Scarlet Letter. The two readings depict how male domination in yesteryears forced women to abscond love to fit in society. Hence, women rights have been actualized through decades of oppression.

Works Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. Oxford University Press, USA, 1998.
Lorde, Audre. “The Uses of The Erotic: The Erotic as Power.” The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, 1993, pp. 339-343.