scholarly journals SOCIAL MATRIX AND CONSTRUCTION OF GENDER IDENTITY IN NATHANIEL HAWTHORN’S THE SCARLET LETTER

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 182-188
Author(s):  
Liaqat Iqbal ◽  
Farooq Shah ◽  
Akbar Ali ◽  
Irfan Ullah

Purpose of the study: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorn, already explored from different perspectives by many researchers, has relevance to the social matrix that how gender identity is constructed in the text. In order to explore this perspective, the study deals with the character of Hester Prynne as how she is deconstructing normative gender. Methodology: For this purpose, the theory of ‘Imitation and Gender Insubordination’ presented by Butler (1993) has been applied. Secondly, the study tries to answer the gender identity of Hester Prynne by using Freudian ‘Identification of gender.’ Lastly, the work is concerned with Hester Prynne’s avoiding the danger of being leper and castaway. The last analysis owes itself to the Freudian understanding of psychoanalysis. Main Findings: The findings show that gender is purely volatile and oscillating and is usually being constructed by feminist narratives, social appropriations, inborn congenital schema, and sexual orientations. Butler’s arguments get augmented in this study through the analysis of a few characters, particularly Hester Prynne’s, and it has indicated that through the application of Butler’s arguments on gender stance that gender is performative and hence, it has no real or inborn value/definitions. Therefore, it is inferred that gender is performative and is socially constructed. Application of this study: This study has implications in literature in general, gender studies, and related fields in particular. Novelty/Originality of this study: Though Nathaniel Hawthorn’s The Scarlet Letter had been written long before that has been explored from different perspectives, the present research is original and new in the sense that it brings social matrix and discusses gender issues in it both from the social and psychological interpretations.

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 138
Author(s):  
Susi Yuliawati

<p>Gender identity, one of the most important social categories in people’s lives, is socially constructed and language is claimed to have a significant role in constructing the gender identity. This paper studies the construction of Sundanese women through five Sundanese nouns referring to women found in the corpus of <em>Manglè </em>magazine, published between 1958–2013. The research employs a mixed-method design in which quantitative analysis is combined with qualitative analysis to investigate how the nouns referring to women are used to construct Sundanese women from the periods of Guided Democracy (1958–1965) to Reformation (2004–2013). The quantitative analysis is used to examine the frequency of word occurrence diachronically. The frequency of word accurrence is subsequently interpreted qualitatively by considering social and cultural contexts, such as the norms of speech levels in Sundanese, Sundanese belief about marriage, and gender issues. The result of analysis shows that women are constructed in various identities by every noun referring to them. The lexical choices used to contruct women are greatly influenced by the social and cultural contexts. </p>


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-49
Author(s):  
Zakaria Zakaria ◽  
Akin Duli ◽  
Fathu Rahman

Misperception and inhuman behave presented by Puritan in conducting state administration, consequently character of Hester Prynne in the novel of Nathaniel Hawthorn’s The Scarlet Letter under the implementation of religious values, law assembling, and political system. The implementation of Puritan’s inhuman religious, law and political values to Prynne’s personal character is something criminal behave, and assembling of the law in the case of sin of Prynne’s adultery presented by Custom House was irresponsible decision or immoral severance in front of court. Puritan’s values over the social living is regulated not only for social norms, culture, and law affairs, but even political matters, means that everything must be obeyed and be bent over the God’s rule, and so to whom (married woman) has committed adultery, must be committed as a sinner and impose a sentence in front of general public. It is a library research and used descriptive qualitative analysis. In challenging and lift it up the universal value in against suppressive, hegemonic in the case Prynn the writer used two approachings as solution to solve the problem and they are feminism perspective and deconstruction model as a solution over the Prynne’s problem.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 09-12
Author(s):  
Huimin Liu

Hester Prynne is a young woman of The Scarlet Letter. She has borne a child out of wedlock and been sentenced to wear the scarlet letter A, a symbol of committing adultery for the rest of her life. She refuses to take the scarlet A as a token of outlaw. With her needlework, she struggles to subvert the original signification of the letter A and to build her new identity as an able, angelic and admirable woman. She transforms the letter A for herself outside the patriarchal signifier. However, her return to Boston, where she voluntarily wears the letter illustrates that Hester acknowledges the importance of the social order and her submission to the public. She has the rebellious spirit but it is not strong enough to overthrow the patriarchy. Hester’s dual image of subversion to submission is attributed to Hawthornes’ ambiguous attitude toward women.


Author(s):  
Marina Yu. Milovanova ◽  

The article analyzes results of the international scientific and practical conference “Gender Studies. Theory, Scientific schools, Practice” (Moscow, March 4–5, 2021). The geography of the representation of the conference participants showed the relevance of the stated topic in Russian and foreign humanities, and the range of researchers in the humanities – sociologists, historians, cultural scientists, political scientists, psychologists, anthropologists – expressed multi-disciplinarity in the study of gender issues. It presents an analysis of current trends in the gender relations and gender discourse in the political, social, economic and cultural spheres in the context of the formation of a new gender order. Moreover it accumulates the scientific ideas, approaches and new research technologies and adduces the practice of implementing their results. The conference was timed to coincide with the 110th anniversary of the celebration of International Women’s Day–March 8 as a day of solidarity of women in the struggle for their rights.


Afrika Focus ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chia Longman

The text of this paper is based on a lecture given at the symposium of the Ghent African Platform “Researching Gender in/on Africa” at Ghent University in December 2009. It addresses some general challenges faced by ‘gender studies’ as an autonomous field versus ‘gender research’ as an integrated topic within mainstream disciplines in academia. Gender studies have sometimes superseded ‘women’s studies’ and expanded to cover the terrain of study of various forms of diversity including men’s and transgender studies. We will show that the ‘mainstreaming’ of gender in public policy at local, national and transnational levels is a development which may potentially lead to the loss of a – feminist – political edge. Secondly, while gender studies with their emphasis on socially constructed gender as opposed to biological essentialist understandings of ‘sex’ appear to face the challenge of a popular ‘new biological determinism’, it is shown that the binary model of sex/gender in fact has been criticised for some time now from within feminist theory and gender research. This is (selectively) illustrated with research from four disciplines, including the work of African gender studies scholars, i.e. feminist philosophy, social sciences (in particular socio-cultural anthropology), history and biology itself. This then shows how the accusation that gender studies would be ‘socially deterministic’ without attending to bodily matters or materiality is unfounded. Finally, it is argued that there is still a need for gender studies to become more culturally diverse, more global and transnational in its outlook, by becoming more deeply attuned to the way gender intersects with other forms of difference and taking into account postcolonial critiques of western feminist paternalism, without falling into the trap of cultural relativism. Key words: gender studies, feminism, sex/gender debate, gender mainstreaming, postcolonial critique, cultural relativism, Afrocentrism 


1998 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-504 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Burkitt

This paper concentrates on the recent controversy over the division between sex and gender and the troubling of the binary distinctions between gender identities and sexualities, such as man and woman, heterosexual and homosexual. While supporting the troubling of such categories, I argue against the approach of Judith Butler which claims that these dualities are primarily discursive constructions that can be regarded as fictions. Instead, I trace the emergence of such categories to changing forms of power relations in a more sociological reading of Foucault's conceptualization of power, and argue that the social formation of identity has to be understood as emergent within socio-historical relations. I then consider what implications this has for a politics based in notions of identity centred on questions of sexuality and gender.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document