I was assigned to read The Scarlett Letter in my Honors Comp. Class and I was not excited to read it at all. Dreaded it in fact. I did put two and two together though, that the movie Easy A was based off of the book I was about to read! Even though I didn’t have any interest in reading the book there was some important lessons and surprisingly some things I, as a teenage girl, could relate to.
Hester Prynne was basically like some young girls who are shamed for just being themselves. My letter is to any woman or girl who has been shamed for the decisions she makes with her body. I hope to bring conversation about the reality of sexism in America today, and why it is important that it changes. There is a lot of misconceptions and confusion about what really goes on, and for there to be change we have to talk about it. So the story was basically about a young girl in the Puritan time (AKA strict modest era) named Hester Prynne. Her husband was lost at sea and she committed a very big sin of that time, sleeping with another woman’s husband. Now days those kinds of things are unfortunately common, but yet the only party punished was Hester. Of course the man had internal guilt but he did not get publically punished like she did. Hester was found guilty of adultery and was forced to wear a scarlet “A” on all of her clothes to show what she had done. She refused to reveal the man in the equation so he went unpunished. She wore the “A” for years and just felt an overwhelming amount of guilt. She eventually started to change her outlook on it and tried to make something good out of it. She opened an embroidery shop and established herself as a respectable woman that much of the ladies in the town looked up to.
The problem here with the story is that women are always slut shamed for what we do with our bodies! All the while men are praised the more women they get! Hester was publically embarrassed and ashamed for years, and even though things were much more strict in that time period, the same things still happen on a smaller scale today. Men are studs and women are sluts. Especially being a girl in high school, I see these things happen all the time. I have friends who have been with multiple guys and they are still some of the most respectable girls I know. Some 28% of men and 4% of women said they would only lose respect only for women who slept with a higher amount of people, but not men, who hook up a lot. Women are still to this day much more conservative when it comes to casual romance because of the existing double standard. There is a reverse double standard arising in which women consider men having a high amount of casual romance unappealing.
The purpose of my letter is to really bring conversation and understanding about the topic of double standards and sexism. Since the Puritan times this has been an ongoing issue, as you could see in Hester’s case. We as women need to show the personal strength against society and their opinion. We deserve to have freedom with our sexuality just as men do.
It’s important for young girls to grow up knowing that they have freedom with their bodies. Society will always have an opinion but you have to have the personal strength to overcome it. Every young girl should read The Scarlett letter. Even though it’s not the most exciting book out there, every girl could learn important things from it just like I did. Hester Prynne was seen as a good woman gone bad, a reoccurring societal meme. She was the storybook version of every woman’s attempt at tying in her sexuality with societies demands. I hope young girls reading this can learn to be strong and free of unfair judgement, and not let others keep you from being you.
