Hawthorne Makes Himself a Woman

28 the minnesota review Carol E. Miller Hawthorne Makes Himself a Woman a response to that "damned mob of scribbling women" who steal the reading public The thing is to become Hester Prynne, after all, submit with quiet grace to the inevitable brand of domesticity, capitalize on a craft, dress with gay discretion. Signs in the night sky win men's respect, and isolated penances make the aged prophetless. Cloaked in black, possessed of stigmata—yes, the very trick becoming a woman who whispers the language of woods in the ears of Salem's lot, a woman who tells the story of women becoming Hester Prynne. ...