“In a Sphere by Herself”:  Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne as Nineteenth-Century Public Woman

Lisa Higgins

I argue that Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne was a response to the phenomenon of the nineteenth-century “public woman,” a recognizable type that was associated with the political critique of women’s sphere and sexual promiscuity in the mid-1800s.  Reading Hester as public woman sheds new light on some of the more puzzling passages and relationships in the novel.  This presentation is part of a longer paper.