Citation

Mishra, A. (2026). Punishing Desire: Female Adultery and Patriarchal Justice from Puritan America to Modern India. Journal for Studies in Management and Planning, 12(1), 75–78. https://doi.org/10.26643/jsmap/2026/4

Dr. Aparna Mishra

English

Bhopal, India

Email: aparnaamishra24@gmail.com

Abstract

Adultery has historically functioned as a deeply gendered moral category, with women subjected to harsher scrutiny, punishment, and social regulation than men. This paper undertakes a comparative feminist analysis of The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne and A Married Woman by Manju Kapur to examine how patriarchal societies across two distinct eras and cultures discipline female sexual transgression. Although separated by more than a century, divergent cultural contexts, and different narrative modes, both novels reveal a striking continuity in the moral double standards governing adultery. Female desire is rendered visible, punishable, and socially destabilising, while male transgression is concealed, excused, or institutionally protected. The paper argues that adultery in these texts functions less as a moral failing and more as a mechanism through which patriarchal authority asserts control over female autonomy. By analysing public punishment, moral surveillance, and gendered accountability, this study demonstrates how patriarchal justice adapts its methods while preserving its fundamental logic.

Keywords: adultery, gendered morality, patriarchy, feminist criticism, Hawthorne, Manju Kapur

1. Introduction

Across cultures and historical periods, adultery has rarely been judged as a gender-neutral transgression. Instead, it has functioned as a moral fault line along which societies articulate anxieties about female sexuality, social order, and institutional authority. While male sexual transgressions are often treated as private indiscretions or psychological lapses, female adultery is repeatedly framed as a public threat demanding social correction.

This paper examines the persistence of this gendered double standard through a comparative reading of The Scarlet Letter (1850) and A Married Woman (2003). Despite their vastly different contexts—Puritan New England and modern urban India—both novels expose how patriarchal societies punish female desire while shielding male authority. The comparison reveals not moral evolution but ideological continuity: patriarchy alters its methods of regulation without relinquishing control.

Indian and Western feminist critics alike have noted that sexuality remains one of the most tightly regulated aspects of women’s lives. As Elaine Showalter observes, women’s writing frequently documents “the painful process of becoming conscious” rather than triumphant emancipation (13). In both Hawthorne and Kapur, adultery becomes the narrative moment where such consciousness collides with institutional power.

2. Adultery, Patriarchy, and Moral Regulation: A Theoretical Framework

Feminist theory has consistently identified sexuality as a central site of patriarchal control. Simone de Beauvoir argues that society treats male sexuality as an act, while female sexuality is treated as destiny, thereby burdening women with enduring moral consequences for sexual transgression (The Second Sex 411). Adultery thus becomes less an ethical breach than a mechanism for enforcing gender hierarchy.

Michel Foucault’s analysis of sexuality as a domain regulated through surveillance rather than mere prohibition is particularly instructive here. He contends that power operates most effectively when it is internalised, functioning through confession, guilt, and moral normalisation (History of Sexuality 94). This framework allows for a comparative understanding of how Puritan America’s public punishment evolves into modern India’s moral containment.

Gerda Lerner further argues that the institutional regulation of female sexuality is foundational to patriarchy itself (198). Whether through law, religion, or respectability politics, women’s desire is consistently framed as socially dangerous. These insights provide the conceptual basis for examining adultery not as personal failure but as patriarchal justice in action.

3. Public Punishment and Spectacle in The Scarlet Letter

In The Scarlet Letter, adultery is constructed as a public crime requiring ritualised punishment. Hester Prynne’s transgression is immediately translated into spectacle: she is displayed on the scaffold, branded with the scarlet “A,” and subjected to continuous communal surveillance.

The letter is not merely punitive but symbolic. Hawthorne describes it as having “the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity” (53). Hester’s body becomes a moral text, permanently marked and socially isolated. The punishment extends beyond legal sanction into daily existence, transforming her identity into a cautionary emblem.

Feminist critics have argued that Hester’s punishment is designed less to reform her than to stabilise a patriarchal order threatened by female autonomy. Nina Baym notes that Hester’s suffering functions as “a warning rather than a correction” (88). The public nature of her punishment ensures that female desire remains visible and regulated.

4. Male Guilt and Institutional Immunity

While Hester’s punishment is public and corporeal, Arthur Dimmesdale’s suffering is private and psychological. Although equally culpable, Dimmesdale retains his social authority as a minister. Hawthorne observes that his anguish was “of the inward sort, and therefore the more terrible” (129), a statement that transforms guilt into spiritual depth.

This narrative sympathy exposes the moral asymmetry of patriarchal justice. Dimmesdale’s silence is interpreted as complexity and suffering, while Hester’s silence is read as defiance. Judith Butler’s concept of gendered accountability is useful here: women are required to “give an account of themselves,” while men retain moral opacity (Giving an Account of Oneself 42).

Thus, male transgression is internalised and humanised, whereas female transgression is externalised and criminalised. Patriarchal justice operates not through equal law but through differential visibility of punishment.

5. Moral Surveillance and Emotional Containment in A Married Woman

In A Married Woman, adultery is no longer a legal offence but remains a moral one. Kapur shifts the terrain of punishment from public spectacle to internalised surveillance. Astha’s extra-marital relationship does not invite public condemnation, but it subjects her to intense emotional scrutiny and guilt.

Astha recognises that she has “stepped outside the circle” and that return is possible only through denial (214). This statement reveals how modern patriarchy disciplines women through silence rather than exposure. Moral containment replaces legal punishment, yet the burden remains gendered.

Astha’s husband, Hemant, faces no comparable judgment. His emotional neglect is normalised, while Astha’s desire is treated as excess. Kapur underscores this imbalance when she notes that Astha “carried the burden of feeling too much, while Hemant carried none” (218). As in Hawthorne’s novel, male authority remains intact despite relational failure.

Veena Das observes that such moral containment is characteristic of middle-class respectability, where women’s transgressions are absorbed through silence rather than confrontation (132). Kapur’s narrative exemplifies this process.

6. Gendered Accountability across Cultures

Despite cultural and temporal differences, both novels expose a shared moral logic. In Puritan America, patriarchal justice operates through law and religious spectacle. In modern India, it functions through respectability politics and internalised guilt. Yet the outcome is identical: female desire is punished, male authority preserved.

Adrienne Rich’s concept of compulsory heterosexuality is relevant here. She argues that marital fidelity operates as a system ensuring women’s emotional and sexual compliance (648). Both Hester and Astha threaten this system, not merely through adultery, but through the assertion of autonomous desire.

Thus, adultery becomes a site where patriarchy reveals its deepest anxieties. It is not fidelity that is protected, but control.

7. Continuity Rather Than Progress

The comparative reading challenges narratives of linear feminist progress. While modern society abandons physical branding, it retains moral regulation. Hester is publicly marked; Astha is privately contained. One suffers spectacle, the other silence. Yet both are disciplined for destabilising male-centred institutions of marriage and authority.

Foucault’s insight that power adapts rather than disappears is crucial here. Patriarchal justice evolves in form but not in function. The regulation of female sexuality remains central to social order.

8. Conclusion

This paper has argued that The Scarlet Letter and A Married Woman reveal a persistent gendered double standard in the moral regulation of adultery. Despite differences in historical context, narrative strategy, and cultural background, both novels demonstrate how patriarchal justice punishes female desire while shielding male transgression.

Adultery, in these texts, functions not as a moral absolute but as a diagnostic category through which societies police women’s autonomy. Hester Prynne and Astha do not merely violate marital norms; they expose the fragile foundations of patriarchal morality.

Feminist disillusionment thus emerges not as failure but as critique. By placing these texts in dialogue, the study underscores the enduring nature of gendered moral control and invites a rethinking of adultery as feminist resistance rather than moral deviance.

References

Baym, Nina. Revisiting Hawthorne’s Feminism. Rutgers UP, 2002.

Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Translated by H. M. Parshley, Vintage, 1989.

Butler, Judith. Giving an Account of Oneself. Fordham UP, 2005.

Das, Veena. Critical Events: An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India. Oxford UP, 1995.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volume I. Translated by Robert Hurley, Vintage, 1990.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. Edited by Leland S. Person, Norton Critical Edition, Norton, 2018.

Kapur, Manju. A Married Woman. Penguin India, 2003.

Lerner, Gerda. The Creation of Patriarchy. Oxford UP, 1986.

Rich, Adrienne. “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” Signs, vol. 5, no. 4, 1980, pp. 631–660.

Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own. Princeton UP, 1977.