Analyse how the concept of freedom has changed over time or across populations in American literature.
(Scarlet Letter and Meridian)
Gender inequality has existed in the United States since the Puritan times depicted in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850), through the first, second and third waves of feminism and during the fraught civil right era depicted in Alice Walker’s Meridian (1973). Women are oppressed and suppressed through the society due to the fact of being women, but when they are being oppressed by two different circumstances (such as being black or breaking some rules imposed by the society), it is called double oppression. The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is a text that describes the double oppression of a woman who lives in a Puritan society and who has committed some crimes against the rules that society had imposed. Meridian describes the situation of an African-American woman who fights for the rights of blacks as humans and, also, a woman who fights for freedom inside of the movement, as she is being discriminated by the fact of being a woman. These two women are going to represent the fight for not only freedom in the society, but individual freedom. How the two women struggle to find their own identity and to escape from the punishment that society had imposed to them just for the fact of being women. This essay will argue, ultimately that freedom for women at the same level as men is impossible. To demonstrate this, I will discuss how the two main characters of each text achieve the feeling of being less oppressed and freer by individual overcoming and self-confidence, obtaining at the same time individual freedom and freedom in the society.
On the one hand, we have Hester, the main character of The Scarlet Letter, who represents the double oppression of women in the American society. The condition of being a woman in a Puritan society gives her very little freedom. Also, she committed some ‘sins’ which made her be blamed and punished. The condition of being Puritan means that you have to obey the laws of God and the city, and they punished everyone who escapes the limits, as Hester did. Hester had a child and she has no husband, her husband left her, so she is seen as a threat in the society. In this book, religion is one of the main restrictions of freedom. However, Hester embodies the tensions that appear in a community based on individual assertion. She finds some individual freedom. She is not free in the society but she makes some decisions about her life (as having her child, accepting the punishment, hiding the identity of her child’s father, etc.).
Although Hester loses her dignity in the society, she wins individual power, she is stronger and, then, freer. She does not need the society acceptance to accept herself. When they punished her with the scarlet letter, the “A”, she accepts it and transforms that sing of shame into a badge of honor. “Her breast, with its badge of shame, was but softer pillow for the head that needed one. […] The letter was the symbol of her calling. Such helpfulness was found in her,-so much power to do, and power to sympathize,-that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. The say it meant Able, so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman’s strength.”[1] Then, the punishment receives a new meaning: it means now the strength of her defiant individualism. The way she achieves changing the meaning of a punishment gives her a lot of strength as a woman, and it is a signification of how she is freer step by step escaping the society that marked her with a letter of shame. “The scarlet letter had not done its office”[2]. Because it was giving shame to her but, conversely, it gives her more identity and individual freedom, as she gives it a new meaning.
In this novel, the strength falls on woman, as the protagonist being individually free and stronger than society stereotypes and roles, accepting her situation and making it as a symbol of pride; and men are seen as weak, as her husband, Chillingworth, can’t accept reality because he needs to be accepted by society. Chillingworth accepts the individualization of the norms stablished by the Puritan community for the common benefit, however, Hester rejects it to find her personal freedom and individuality.
On the other hand, in the book Meridian we have the main character as another representation of the double oppression of women in America. The protagonist is black and a woman, so African-Americans were fighting to have the same rights as the white Americans, so she joined the movement. Therefore, she experienced the dissension engendered by racism and sexist violence within the black community. She is not free in the society because she is black and she is not free in the movement because she is a woman. Also, thinking about the individual freedom, it is very important to be said that she was not free herself, she needed to be part of something, she has that sense of belonging. And her lack of freedom starts when she was a child and her mother didn’t accept her “That her mother was deliberately obtuse about what had happened meant nothing beside her own feelings of inadequacy and guilt. Besides, she had already forgiven her mother for anything she had ever done to her or might do, because to her.”[3] Her individual freedom is a non-stop journey to self-discovery. She needs to accept her feelings, past and actions to be free as a human. In the Movement she feels the sexist oppression and also the oppression to use violence to fight for blacks’ rights, but she is not prepared to use it. She feels she has not choice, no freedom to choose to fight or not for the African-Americans’ rights, then she has no freedom inside of the movement.