Women Beyond the Margins
A Comparative Study of Elizabeth Bennet and Hester Prynne Through a Feminist Lens
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.70042/eroth/904217Keywords:
Resistance to marginalization, Feminist consciousness, Renegotiated identities. standpoint theory, embodiment, Gendered power structuresAbstract
This article examines Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne through a feminist prism with reference to the characters of Elizabeth Bennet and Hester Prynne. Both of the women defy and surpass the social conventions in their respective patriarchal and puritanical cultures. This paper examines how the feminist theoretical positions (especially standpoint theory and embodiment) help Elizabeth oppose the marriage norms, and Hester transform shame into strength in ways that challenge the patriarchal structures that seek to define and marginalize them. The contrast between these two characters shows how the feminist thinking changes and finds its reflection in literature. Elizabeth and Hester are not only defiant of the conventional gender expectations but also demand their independence and re-negotiated identities which can be useful in examining the gendered power structures in their societies. This paper therefore examines how the two characters cross the boundaries which have been placed on them and exhibit feminist concepts of self-determination and self-powering.
Downloads
References
Ahmed, S. S., and K. I. Hossain. "Sin and Punishment in The Scarlet Letter: A Feminist Perspective." IUBAT Review, vol. 5, no. 1, 2022, pp. 35-43. DOI: https://doi.org/10.3329/iubatr.v5i1.64590.
Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Penguin Classics, 2003.
Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex. Routledge, 2011.
Chang, H. C. "The Impact of the Feminist Heroine: Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice." International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature, vol. 3, no. 3, 2014, pp. 76-82. Available at: https://url-shortener.me/9IOF.
Gesmaloni, G. "The Power and Discrimination of Women as Seen in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice." Jurnal Ilmiah Langue and Parole, vol. 1, no. 1, 2017, pp. 105-116. DOI: https://doi.org/10.36057/jilp.v1i1.10.
Harding, Sandra. Objectivity and Diversity: Another Logic of Scientific Research. University of Chicago Press, 2015.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. Penguin Classics, 2005.
Wang, Y. "A Representative of the New Female Image—Analyzing Hester Prynne’s Feminist Consciousness in The Scarlet Letter." Journal of Language Teaching and Research, vol. 1, no. 6, 2010, pp. 893-897. Available at: https://ln.run/xQgu3.
Ali, Wesal Yousef. “Revisiting Classical Literature Through the Lens of Modern Feminism.” AJRSP 6.67 (2024): 06 34. doi.org/10.52132/Ajrsp.e.2024.67.1
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. 3rd ed., Routledge, 1999.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Erothanatos: A Peer-Reviewed Quarterly Journal on Literature
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
All articles and content published in Erothanatos are made available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0), unless otherwise stated. This license permits users to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work, and to make derivative works, for non-commercial purposes only, provided the original author(s) and source are properly credited.
Authors retain the copyright to their work. In cases where a special issue is priorly declared to be published in book form with an ISBN, the copyright and licensing terms for that publication will be specified separately and communicated to contributing authors in advance.
By submitting to Erothanatos, authors agree to the terms of this license and acknowledge that their work will be freely accessible to the public and may be used for academic, educational, and non-commercial purposes in accordance with the terms of the CC BY-NC 4.0 license.
For further details about the license, please visit the Creative Commons website.
