While in the course of our minute existences, we incur a toll on the psyche. Whether self-imposed, cast upon us by a rigid society, or by another being: the result is a taxed system. This poison unfettered can wreak havoc on a weak willed person, yet this is not the case of Hester Prynne, Puritan seamstress, garnished with a red ignominious badge of shame in The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Yet the same oppressive color has seemed to hammer A Handmaid's Tale (by Margaret Atwood) alleged heroine, Offred, into complacency. The two characters share a certain likeness, yet their internal substance stratifies them all the same.
To begin with a simple commonality expressed throughout both works, these women are not innocent. Both, in a Judeo Christian frame of reference, are sinners just as all of mankind is. Hester fell victim to lust, just as Offred stagnated in the life of a harlot. The circumstances could be argued, but semantics aside they objectively sinned in the aforementioned context. Also, the Judeo Christian perspective should be deemed most fitting considering both Gilead and Puritan society are Christian theologies.
Speaking on these societies, as with all schematics, the commissioner, builders, foreman, and all those involved in the realization of said blueprint can misalign the frame and render the project corrupted. This is the case with both theologies, albeit in some stride of difference. Gilead is littered with rank hypocrisy, inequity of race and gender, and morose bending of the word of God. The rich are indulgent, exploitative, and adulterers, among other things. The case of Puritan Boston is similar in that it's air is saturated with hypocrisy. The community harbors no tenderness of heart, and casts judgement as the Lord is supposed to. Hester finds herself paying back heavenly and earthly tithes because of a single sin committed. This is where we can distance the narratives of Hester and Offred however, because Offred committed no virtual offense, she was simply a woman.
Offred was largely a victim of circumstance. She was a slave, forced to have sex with the Commander and prodded into trying to get pregnant with Nick. Hester was never forced into anything. She could have chosen to abandon the place of her sin in lieu of wearing the brazen scarlet on her chest and donning the penance in her soul. Yet she chose to stay, and she chose to forge her own destiny in this seemingly simple action. She was kind and charitable and worked her way back into the hearts of a cold, frigid people. She found God smiling down upon her and her posterity. Likewise, when offered a chance to leave opprobrious conditions in Gilead, Offred declined. Yet she did this out of sheer complacency and a lack of will. She was content to live in her present shackles as long as Nick could offer her companionship.
While Hester doesn't accept her societal fate, she hearkens the belief that her sin has besmirched her and tainted her soul. To clarify, Hester might seem that she is accepting her peer's judgment of fate, but she is in essence doing good because she wants to, nobody else could force her to. Silently and in reservation, Offred disapproves the conditions she and her people are subject to. However, she refuses to externally act on her beliefs, unlike Hester's aforementioned abundant acts of good that encapsulate her good intents to right a wrong. This inclination in her moral fiber might be a product of her raising, however, old works of fiction don't require excessive discourse on such details.
Offred is subject to Aunt re education as Hester might seemingly be indoctrinated with Puritan principles. Though Hester was brought up surrounded by feminists who gave her blended perspective on her reality, Hester was raised in a traditional religious English camp of thought. Therefore all thought not genetically given would be molded to certain virtue, thought process, etc.
The will to blaze one's own path is not present in all people, fictional or otherwise. Hester Prynne never once lets anything other than her own action dictate her future, while we see the narrative of a victim present in Offred's storyline. Both characters posses many faults and are certainly not bereft of good qualities. They both portray a lesson in all of their exploits.
2 comments:
While I agree with your interpretation of Hester as a fighting spirit, and of Offred as a somewhat complacent and conforming individual, I disagree in the fact where you said that Offred never committed a sin or broke a law. She had attempted to escape Gilead which resulted in her punishment in becoming a handmaid. This same act could have resulted in her death. Not only was she punished in becoming a handmaid, but she also had her child taken away, and doesn't know the fate that befell her husband. All of these things in some degree contribute to her complacency as she no longer has a family due to something that she did. Her complacency could have been a form of self punishment, or simply because she doesn't have much left to live for that is worth risking her life, freedom, and safety.
I find your interpretation of Puritan society quite interesting as well. I would say that it wasn't necessarily rife with hypocrisy. The puritanical interpretation of the Bible and of God were very strict. They saw God as a very vengeful, foreboding, and cold character, so it makes sense that the society would lack empathy and warmth. The punishments for any sins were quite extreme and Hester could have been executed for her crime, so the scarlet letter could easily be seen as a reprieve.
Overall, your style of writing is quite unique and use many complex words and phrases, and I like your closing statement where you talk about how Hester and Offred are good people with a few flaws.
Your view on the toils of humanity in the introductory paragraph certainly provide an interesting take on the matter. It is expansive, covering the self-inflicted wound, societal wrong, or as inflicted by a malicious peer, but ultimately focuses on the self-inflicted by means of societal wrong. You appear to blame the two women for the wrongs of society against them, a self-inflicted injury by means of committing societal taboo. However, this could just be because of both Hester and Offred's own spiritual afflictions, I am unsure of your intent.
In my opinion, your transition from similarities to differences was refreshing: a discussion of the similarities between Hester and Offred's societies, which as a part of their sins to their societies, is intrinsic to the analysis of the ways in which they compare and contrast.
Your analysis of the ways in which they contrast is well-rounded. You get into their psyches, really analyzing the ways in which they differ, even if from the surface they appear to be the same. Hester is different from Offred because she accepts her guilt as it is displayed on her breast to her and all the world to see, she knows in her heart that she is truly guilty. Offred, likewise, differs from Hester in that she doesn't accept this "guilt" she has. She knows in her heart that she had not committed any wrong, and though she adheres to the circumstances she is given, just as Hester had done, she does not believe she deserves them, therefore she and Hester are different.
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