A Marxist Reading of The Scarlet Letter

Berk Kaba

Istanbul Aydın University, Turkey

Throughout the years, the novel The Scarlet Letter has become a source of the representation of women's empowerment. Many researchers generally focused on the role of women from the perspective of Hester Prynne in a patriarchal and religious society and her punishment as an outcome of gender inequality and spiritual doctrines. In the name of bringing a new viewpoint for the novel, this research paper seeks to analyze The Scarlet Letter under Marxist reading by focusing on the demonstration of ideological hegemony and social hierarchy with sufficient examples from the life of Hester Prynne and through her miserable experiences in the Puritan society. By applying pivotal conceptions from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Marx’s seminal work Das Kapital (1867) as the primary sources of this paper, the study aims to delve into the ways in which Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ability to demonstrate and critique the construction of ideologies of Puritan society that are based on religious doctrines. This paper attempts to answer two main questions: How the novel The Scarlet Letter illustrates social hierarchy among characters from a Marxist viewpoint and what effects of ideological hegemony in terms of religion and class in The Scarlet Letter can be seen. With a detailed inspection of character communication and social relations, the research aims to display how Hawthorne’s work discloses the latent economic and ideological impacts that shape human interactions and societal notions of 17th-century New England.

Article link: https://www.asianinstituteofresearch.org/JSParchives/a-marxist-reading-of-the-scarlet-letter