For my presentation, I plan on looking at The Scarlet Letter for the most part. My main idea connects to my group in the sense that I talk about how human rights are given or withheld based on how a being fits into the majority definition of what a human is. Examples of this include:
- How rich white men have been those humans that deserve rights.
- Those with darker skin are inferior and are 3/5 of a person, thus do not deserve rights.
- Native Americans were seen as ‘savage’ because they differed from the European definition of a ‘civilized human.’ Thus didn’t deserve the same rights as the civilized.
- Women are the property of men and thus should not hold any rights for themselves.
To expand on this in my presentation, I am looking at how Hester’s return in The Scarlet Letter alludes to a woman changing the societal view of her in order to gain rights peacefully without just rebelling against her society. This smoothly moves then into explaining how this can connect to how through literature, people develop their definitions of humans who deserve rights.
In order to move to a final paper version of my research, I will be looking at the sources I’ve collected to strengthen my argument about how literature can be used to change societal views against different types of humans. Korobkin will bring insight into how Hawthorne manipulated the reader’s reading in order to meet his agenda. Then I’d like to talk a little bit about the law around human rights. Brook looks at how natural law has been a huge dictator of actual laws throughout history. In short, he’s ultimately saying that natural law can not be a dictator of law because nature is always changing and it is also different depending on who you ask. Progress is more powerful in changing society than arguing against natural law. I’d also like to develop my feminist lens more thoroughly by looking at how other people read The Scarlet Letter as a feminist text. Finally, I’d like to dive deeper into the literature aspect: how should those of underrepresented groups of humans be represented in literature in order to make them seem more human? With this argument, I’d look at my other sources that talk about how misrepresentation in literature can have some detrimental effects on those groups and could end in even more alienization as humans.
I think your panel did a great job at relating each other’s topics to one another. Your project really interests me, as Women’s and Gender Studies (my minor) often relates to how we define what is human or who is privileged to experience all human rights. I like how you don’t just focus on African Americans, for example, but also include other groups like Native Americans/indigenous peoples. You focus heavily on law. I’m not sure if you were planning to do so but think it’s very important. It has come clear to me this semester how much law mimics society. Laws have such an impact on how we define what should be simple things like human rights. The sources you use seem to be really strong. If you haven’t done so already, check out Nina Baym’s “Revisiting Hawthorne’s Feminism” for a strong feminist perspective on The Scarlet Letter.