A Feminist Reading of Hawthorne’s Short Stories

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M.A. Thesis in English Literature

 A Feminist Reading of Hawthorne’s Short Stories

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories have never received the same amount of critical attention as devoted to his celebrated The Scarlet Letter. This study is broadly an attempt at calling attention to the variety and significance of his short stories and specifically a focus on the author’s characterization of his female characters and the significance he assigns to their roles. It is revealed that in the stories studied, Hawthorne tends to either dismiss women as being only slightly relevant to his purposes or use them as negative stereotypes to act as foils to his male characters’ consequential roles. Much of the analysis is based on the concept of “sexual politics” in literature as interpreted by Judith Fetterley in The Resisting Reader.