Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Analyse two heroic women who find ways of being that go against the patriarchal grain and subvert the stereotype of the 'weaker sex'.

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Analyse two heroic women who find ways of being that go against the patriarchal grain and subvert the stereotype of the 'weaker sex'.

Fun Home by Alison Bechdel and The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne are two pieces of work in which a heroic woman is depicted. Both the memoir and the novella portray their female protagonists as going against the patriarchal grain - within a familial home and a Puritan society respectively - and subverting the stereotype of the 'weaker sex' through displays of great emotional strength. As a result the protagonists of both works could be considered as female literary heroes.

The Scarlet Letter is set in Puritan New England, and the first chapter of the novella immediately depicts a strict, grey society: "sad-coloured garments and grey steeple-crowned hats ... beetle-browed and gloomy" (Hawthorne, 1992, ch.1). This setting is furthered with descriptions of a heavy, spiked door and general use of pathetic fallacy to convey a sense of severity (Chapman, n.d.). When Hawthorne contrasts this colourless society with the scarlet shade of the "ignominious" letter 'A', that is forcibly emblazoned upon Hester Prynne's chest due to her conviction as an 'adulteress', Hester is seen to instantly