Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter was considered by many to be the controversial novel of its time, given its themes of pride, sin, and revenge. The film is also set in a time when very few people thought about the equality of men and women, but Hawthorne managed to highlight gender-based inequalities through the male-dominated puritanical setting of the novel and by reversing the gender roles of characters, such as Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale. Therefore, I believe that the religious setting of this novel in Puritan society served to place greater emphasis on the deep differences between the characters' gender roles, thus creating a deeper contrast and revealing the flaws in the preconceived notions of the Puritans. patriarchal societal norms. "The Scarlet Letter" illustrates the lives of Hester Prynne, her daughter Pearl, local preacher Arthur Dimmesdale, and Hester's husband (who uses the pseudonym Roger Chillingworth in order to conceal his true identity), and how they are affected afterward. that Hester committed an adulterous act with Dimmesdale, thereby conceiving Pearl. This mother and her child are then ostracized by society, and Hester is sentenced to prison, forced to wear a scarlet “A” on her chest as a symbol of her sin. The novel continues to tell the story of the four characters for the next several years, until Hester dies and is buried near Chillingworth (who had died earlier), both sharing the letter "A" on their headstones . Religion and law were considered close. synonymous in Puritan society, as evidenced by "the same solemnity of behavior" among the spectators, "as befitted a people among whom religion and law were almost identical" when Hester emerged from her prison cell. Even in the middle of the paper, he takes ownership of his sin, gradually reducing his position from a righteous minister to a pathetic man desperately begging for Hester to reveal her sin to him instead. While Hester handled her punishment with grace and dignity, Dimmesdale clearly struggled in vain with his guilt. Thus, the contrast created between the two characters shows the unwavering strength of feminine value, in the face of Dimmesdale's "unmanly" actions. Even more, Hester's confession of her sin "made her stronger" and gained the community's respect for her, while Dimmesdale was "broken by long and exquisite suffering", a mere shell of the man he had been. The respect Hester earned from this highly puritanical and patriarchal society attests to the innate strength of women regardless of preconceived notions of their inferiority. Works Cited The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne