Over time, says the narrator, “the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world’s scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over,and looked upon with awe, yet reverence, too” (Hawthorne 487-488, emphasis added). The reader cannot help but notice how Hester has managed to recover some vestiges of virtue. The narrator continues by pointing out that Hester has “no selfish ends,” nor has she “lived in any measure for her own profit and enjoyment” (Hawthorne 488). In fact, in a curious, if not paradoxical twist of moral fate, Hester Prynne has become a strange paragon of virtue. “People brought [her] all their sorrows and perplexities, and besought her counsel….” (Hawthorne 488). Not surprisingly, the narrator points out, those seeking advice were mainly women, beset with the “continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced, or erring and sinful passion….” (Hawthorne 488). Thus, even a woman who strays—and does so seriously—from the cardinal virtues can, through the means of public and persistent shaming and a life spent in penitent reflection—polish the tarnish from her reputation and can even, as in the case of Hester Prynne, become a model citizen to whom others look for advice and role modeling of appropriate gender norms and socially conformist behavior.

It was not only male authors who reinforced the dominant gender norms of the day for women, however. Female authors were, not surprisingly, equally culpable, given that they were particularly exhorted to use their words to inspire women to uphold the core virtues that were not only indicative of personal piety and purity, but of faithfulness to a greater social cause. While women’s narratives, fictive or otherwise, tended to be more intimate, revealing the torments of the heart and mind of female protagonists who were profoundly troubled by impossible loves and equally impossible dreams, the trajectories of most plots, as well as their resolutions, tended to support the dominant gender paradigms. Even in nineteenth-century novels such as Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, which have recently been receiving feminist re-readings, the plots and their resolutions ultimately turn back towards an embrace of the four cardinal virtues identified by Welter as the requisite qualifications for joining the cult of true womanhood.

In Charlotte Bronte’s 1847 novel, Jane Eyre, for instance, the eponymous character is portrayed as a young woman of many talents and skills, some of which could handily be applied beyond the domestic sphere should she choose to pursue an education and a profession. She is quick-witted, creative, and hard-working, clearly capable of managing domestic affairs, but just as capable, one gets the sense, of doing anything she might choose beyond that sphere. Yet Jane Eyre suffers because of her life circumstances—always with grace—and it becomes increasingly clear that she will never really get the opportunity to pursue any vocation outside of the domestic circle. True to ideal femininity, however, Jane accepts this fate and does so without resentment or resignation.

In fact, Jane embraces her domestic role, and towards the end of the novel she confirms that she has fulfilled the obligations of nineteenth-century femininity when she reflects upon her marriage. “I know what it is,” she says, “to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth” (Bronte 1171). She goes on to show just how fervently she has embraced the feminine ideal, observing, “I hold myself supremely blest—blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband’s life….” (Bronte 1171). While a feminist reading might point out that Jane fully believes her husband Edward to be as much her life as she is his, the reader does not hear this from Edward’s own mouth and given that, one must consider the possibility that a contemporary interpretive framework is being imposed upon a nineteenth-century text around which such a framework cannot possibly fit. Regardless of whether Edward agrees, however, it is clear that Jane has embraced the domestic sphere to the exclusion of other possibilities for herself, and she fully believes—and has proven—that she excels in that domain, particularly with regard to upholding the cardinal virtues.

Works Cited

Beecher, Catharine Esther, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. The American Woman’s Home.Retrieved on December 3, 2007 fromhttp://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/mrwmh10.txt

Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Retrieved on December 3, 2007 from http://books.google.com/ books?id=cTtRYLsdAAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22jane+eyre%22&sig=lNkv9QkahjQh8UELbUBC4bmCYno

Buikema, Rosemarie, and Anneke Smelik. Women’s Studies and Culture: A Feminist Introduction. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Burstyn, Joan N. “Catherine Beecher and the Education of American Women.” The New England Quarterly 47.3 (1974): 386-403.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. [Electronic Version]. Retrieved on December 3, 2007 from http://books.google.com/books?id=2ksS0EimvrYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=%22the+scarlet+letter%22&sig=EIJjZVhzfhwxegDuthVomtUka0A

Teslenko, Tatiana. Feminist Utopian Novels of the 1970s. New York: Routledge.

Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” (1966). Retrieved on December 3, 2007 from http://www.pinzler.com/ushistory/cultwo.html