I Teach Everything Through a Feminist Lens and Here’s Why:

This year in my 11th grade American literature course, I decided to teach every novel through a feminist lens.

When we began reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, I intentionally explained how many readers believe that Hester was one of the first feminists, that she transcended her time, rose above her oppressive society and left an indelible mark on her community. With purpose, I guided my classes toward an understanding and a respect for the feminine story. Hester Prynne was slut-shamed, her sisterhood failed her, and she alone endured her “hostile world.” The text is clear; Hester wanted “the whole system of society to be torn down and built anew.” She believed that women should be “allowed to assume what seems a fair and suitable position” (Hawthorne). Spending time with her words, devoting discussion to her ideas, intently listening to her, the students, with their sharp and modern eyes, came to their own respectful understandings. Of course, we discussed the trials of Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth, but those stories never surpassed our conversations on Hester, the soul of the story.

Coincidentally, this year, I taught The Scarlet Letter just as Dr. Christine Blasey Ford took the stand to testify and accuse Brett Kavanagh and just as “The Clinton Affair,” a docu-series, aired on television. Teaching Hester’s story amidst current events, as so many young women endure their own hostile worlds, spaces infected with toxic masculinity and a President who openly discusses sexual harassing women, I am driven to not only uphold a moral ground in my classroom but also combat the overt sexism with sacred feminine ideologies. In order to eradicate “locker room talk” we need to reshape the narrative and rethink how we teach traditional “American” tales.

For Hester, “the scarlet letter had not done its office”(Hawthorne) because she audaciously and humbly took ownership of her story, but for women like Myrtle Wilson, Tom Buchanan’s mistress in another seminal American tale, Fitzgerald’s classic, The Great Gatsby, the story ends differently. Even though Myrtle’s life disappears in the dust, right where she began, she too, deserves a modern telling, a perspective that honors her power. And so, during class discussion, we spend ample time conversing about Tom’s New York party. Taunting Tom, she raises her voice, and she screams Daisy’s name. Yes, she’s an accomplice in this affair, but she does not go down without a fight, not in her tired marriage to Wilson and not in her seedy relationship with Tom. As she screams the name of Tom’s wife, she screams her truth and the one barrier that keeps her from ever achieving more – money. Classism drives this novel, and Daisy with “her voice full of money” (Gatsby) represents everything Myrtle will never achieve. In Fitzgerald’s world, she begins in the dust and she ends in the dust. We wonder as a class. How different would things really be for Myrtle today?

When I look at the young men and women in my classrooms, it’s more essential for me than ever before to illuminate the feminist stories within these traditional tales. The standard canonical American literature curriculum is stale unless we reshape the narrative and devote study to the feminine power at work, or not at work, within the prose. Of course sometimes I’m discouraged, but I believe that in my corner of campus, in my small way, as I give a loud voice to characters like Hester and Myrtle, I’m giving hope to the young people staring back at me.