“I hope she’s a fool, that’s the best a girl can be in this world, a beautiful fool.”
That’s a line from the book-turned-movie, The Great Gatsby. In the years that I have been here wandering the world, virtual and real, I have been slapped in the face by the incandescent standards of the universe and its smallest portion of what a woman should be like. A woman is always portrayed as a godsend, beautiful and elegant, or a struggling royalty saved by a hero who makes her swoon, or an evil witch behind every man’s failure. But a woman is not a gift, she is not a possession, she is not an asset. A woman is not someone to be saved, if she is to be protected, then from what?
Turning to criticism, this essay compares two iconic female characters from classic literary pieces, “The Scarlet Letter” and “A Doll’s House”: Hester Prynne and Nora Helmer. Their similarities and differences are simplified in the following vignettes:
• Physical beauty
Hester Prynne and Nora Helmer are two women depicted as beautiful and doll-like. Hester Prynne, though not from an elite education, is stunning in her youth because she had Chillingworth marry her to give her name an accent. Chillingworth thought marrying Hester a good part of her personality, as he is known to be physically unattractive (but interesting), apart from the fact that she is too smart for anything. The same goes for Nora. Torvald, her husband, married her for the same reason: embellishment of her name and her image. Nora is beautiful and it’s a nice accessory for her ego. Both were chosen to be trophies and not wives.
• Sacrifice tendencies
They say that women always sacrifice themselves for the people they love. And that sacrifice is observed in both characters. Hester sacrificed not only her life but all her dignity as a person. She was haunted by the public eye, considering the society she belongs to (actually, she chose to stay there). Puritan society believes in life as a form of torment and punishment, so “sins” are paid for in life on earth, thus making it a dimension of hell. She took all the blame for Pearl’s existence, which is the result of her infidelity to her husband. While Nora, on the other hand, tried to save her husband, which is a deadly sin in her time. She signed (forged) a signature to gain access to bank transactions, which is an act seen as a form of rebellion against a man’s authority over his wife. Women are not allowed to act and participate in financial aspects, even if it is about her and her family. But they both did it anyway for the man they love. Hester protected the Dimmesdale name, because he is a clergyman, and Nora tried to protect Torvald because he was ill at the time.
The two symbolize the change in perspective of a woman about herself, since both came out of the stereotype dictated by society and its people. Nora stepped out of the dollhouse and the chains of her husband’s heartbreak to accept that he too needs help, and Hester stepped out of the scarlet letter barrier. The difference is that Hester still needed Dimmesdale to break free from society’s curse, while Nora escaped alone as she left the house.