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@article{183201,
        author = {Dr. Joseph Mathew and Dr. M. Richard Robert Raa and Sukanya TR},
        title = {From Adultery to Autonomy: Feminist Reclamation in The Scarlet Letter},
        journal = {International Journal of Innovative Research in Technology},
        year = {2025},
        volume = {12},
        number = {3},
        pages = {868-877},
        issn = {2349-6002},
        url = {https://ijirt.org/article?manuscript=183201},
        abstract = {The research article critically examines The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne, employing a cultural-materialist and feminist interpretive framework to explore the complex dynamics of Hester Prynne’s alienation and assimilation within the rigid theocratic order of Puritan New England. Drawing on the thematic insights of scholars such as Nina Baym, Michael T. Gilmore, and Parvin Ghasemi, this study investigates how Hester subverts the Puritanical socio-religious edifice through a reconfiguration of identity, morality, and female agency. The study’s central aim is to expose the contradictions between the outward conformity demanded by Puritanism and the interior moral autonomy asserted by the protagonist. The objective is to foreground how Hester’s transformation from a condemned adulteress to a socially revered figure illustrates the mechanisms of ideological subversion and symbolic reappropriation within a patriarchal religious structure. The research contends that Hawthorne, through Hester, critiques not only the patriarchal orthodoxy of his fictional society but also anticipates later feminist interventions into literature and theology. By dissecting the semiotics of the scarlet letter “A,” this article explores how individual resistance can destabilise an entire system of meaning and thus enable broader sociocultural reformation.},
        keywords = {Hester Prynne, Puritanism, Feminism, Alienation, Cultural Materialism.},
        month = {August},
        }