Womanhood as Duty (though not to be written about as such or otherwise by women, but only by Hawthorne).
Womanhood as Duty (though not to be written about as such or otherwise by women, but only by Hawthorne).
‘Nathaniel Hawthorne is notorious for complaining in a letter to one of his publishers that a “damn’d mob of scribbling women” was stealing his audience. Elsewhere, he referred to women authors as “ink-stained Amazons” who were “without a single exception, detestable,” and once expressed his wish that all women be “forbidden to write, on pain of having their faces deeply scarified with an oyster-shell”’ (http://www.umass.edu/umpress/fall_98/idol.html).
The existence of women in the West before the late 19th century appears from my narrow ledge of a perspective to have been for the express purpose and service of others – parents, husbands, children, community, parish, stray men, God, commerce, and anyone who needed to be fed, clothed, bedded or otherwise comforted. Cott examines how “passionlessness” both perpetuated the usefulness of women to others, and created a sudden desire in women to be useful to themselves. The changing of direction in the church from portraying women as the sinful daughters of Eve to pinning virtue and morality on them was, according to Cott, a purely commercial gesture. For women, the practice of social chastity gave them new access to intellectual and artistic practices for the sake thereof, presumably fostering this new breed of Hawthorne’s “ink-stained Amazons.”
My copy of The Scarlet Letter came to the BC library from the personal collection of Professor Spininger, who scribbled generously in the margins. According to his notes, Hester’s free-spirited contemplation and rejection of prescribed methods is a move toward feminist heroism. According to Hawthorne’s ideas, however, is it to Hester’s benefit that she was burdened with child-rearing before she could further indulge these tendencies. Otherwise, she would be compelled to engage instead of philosophy in wreaking havoc on the establishment and demanding equality, liberation, and respect. The many burdens, secrets, and responsibilities that Hester carries on her chest along with the scarlet letter are meant to serve all those around her, humbling her into a position of passive obedience. Even when Hester discloses her husband’s identity to Dimmesdale, she takes the burden of both keeping and releasing the secret, as well as its consequences. When she is finally forgiven, she is once again burdened with saving the minister from his dire circumstances with littler regard for her condition, either from Dimmesdale or herself.
A woman scarred for writing, much like a woman desexualized to tame men’s sexuality, and a woman condemned for returning the affections of her minister, is a woman without even a faint chance of sovereign existence and self-fulfillment. This is the same woman that is idealized in our time as mother, wife, business woman, party girl, teacher, nurse, and fictional heroine.
Tags: desexualization, duty, feminism, Hester Prynne, morality, women
March 8th, 2010 at 10:21 am
Hi Lena (and others), take a look at my reply to D.G.’s post regarding the quotes from Hawthorne with which this post opens.
You make a really important point here about the connection between women’s insistence on moral purity, as Cott describes it, and their new access to publishing. In class tomorrow, consider this further as a complex network of power relations (rather than a winner takes all formation). I love the fact that your copy has the record of another reader so that you are actually reading 2 novels, your own version and the one interpreted by the previous reader.
Also, in class, let’s think about the self in self-fulfillment: how does the idea of the self shift from the Puritan one to the mid-19th century one that Hawthorne gives us and that comes through the documents we read for this week?