The Tug of War Between Virtue and Vice Continues...And The Results Aren't Pretty

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s the Scarlet Letter is a story about a young married woman who is punished for the sin of adultery, which has resulted in the birth of an illegitimate child. Hawthorne’s tale is set in a small 17^th century New England town populated by Puritans. The driving force behind each of the main character’s actions in the story is their response to guilt and shame.  Hester Prynne is sentenced to wear a scarlet A on her clothing as punishment for her crime. The baby’s father is eventually revealed to be the young minister Reverend Dimmesdale. He is very weak and suffers from an unknown illness, which is actually the inner guilt that he feels at his actions. Afraid that he will lose respect and social standing in the community by his failure to fulfill the responsibilities of his professional role, he refuses to admit his sin, and instead resorts to self-flagellation as a way of punishing himself.The Puritan community in Hawthorne’s tale was restrictive in many ways, stifling personal expression and emotion, but Hester Prynne and her child are the ones who pay the biggest  price for Dimmesdale’s lack of self-control.  The values of the community served to establish a moral framework that provided structure and order for its members. 

Fast forward to a December 7^th article in the Wall Street Journal, “The Death of Self-Restraint” by Daniel Henninger, reflecting on the cause of the behavior of Harvey Weinstein, Matt Lauer and many other powerful men who have been fired from their jobs due to accusations of sexual harassment. Henninger concludes that “their acts reveal a collapse of self-restraint, causing their victims to suffer just like Hester Prynne and Pearl do.  The difference is that unlike Dimmesdale, these men operate in a society characterized by “a broader evaporation of conscience, the sense that doing something is wrong.” Yes, they are absolutely responsible for their own actions but their behavior could not persist without the complicity of “a culture that had eliminated shame and behavioral boundaries.”

Hawthorne’s tale, with its strong religious overtones, represented and reinforced the acceptable behavior for his society.  Henninger points to the debate during the 80s and 90s about whether religion should be allowed to influence contemporary American culture and the enormous pushback from the secular contingent. He quotes from Rochelle Gurstein’s book “The Repeal of Reticence” in tracing the gradual erosion of moral values in the last century as a result of the loosening of behavioral standards.  Looking at what constitutes popular entertainment today, it seems as though the boundary between basic restraint and vulgarity has completely dissolved. Art and literature have no significance unless they celebrate the deviant or the unchecked impulses of human behavior. Modern artists and writers have created a new cultural norm, in which “the functions of the body needed to be considered apart from the values of love, fidelity, chastity, modesty or shame.” Henninger says that this is the inevitable result when “conscience is demoted as a civilizing instrument of personal behavior.” 

This way of thinking has permeated social interaction and the context of relationships, a fact noted in a June 12^th article in the Wall Street Journal by William McGurn entitled “Dad Meets the Sexual Revolution.” McGurn quotes Heather McDonald, another writer, who wrote about the change in sexual mores over time. Women who find themselves unable to conform to the modern reality because they are looking for something more substantive are up against a culture that, in its own way, is every bit as punitive as the one in the Scarlet Letter,  only at the opposite end of the spectrum.  According to McDonald’s theory, “when the social default for unmarried sex was “no,” the woman didn’t have to explain herself.  “No” was sufficient. The irony is that this default meant the woman held most of the cards when it came to deciding whether a relationship would become sexual. Today, Ms. Mac Donald notes, the default has become “yes”—and the woman who resists is both on her own and on the defensive. For men, of course, this has been a most welcome shift.”  A letter to the editor in the Wall Street Journal reflects, "So long as we are conditioned from an early age to believe that sex is merely a physical, recreational, transactional activity, then laws, sensitivity training, organizational policy, even Harvey Weinstein crash-and-burn stories won't deter many men because they're convinced they are different, the women are different, and it isn't about anything important, just sex. Only a culture in which the sexual act has transcendant value can make a serious dent in such predatory behavior."

McGurn would characterize the behavior of men who participate in this type of interaction as an example of dysfunctional masculinity, which fosters “perpetual adolescence.”  He looks forward wistfully to a time when once again “the heart might be taken as seriously as the orgasm” and “young men pursing young women might even rediscover the marvelous possibilities of moonlit summer evenings.” Guilt and shame, once the gatekeepers of virtue and morality, are unfortunately now relegated to the musty old hope chest of the naïve, unsophisticated or out of date. Yet without those gatekeepers, men like Weinstein and his kind will continue their merciless assault, accumulating victims like the spoils of war, until they succeed in destroying whatever is left of our edifice of civility and personal integrity.

Paradoxically, it is Madonna, the poster girl for licentiousness and exhibitionism during the 80s, who, in the lyrics of her 1989 hit song “Express Yourself”,  provides a compelling voice for female empowerment, telling women not to abandon their high standards for temporary gratification.  She counsels, “What you need is a big strong hand/To lift you to your higher ground” and encourages them to have the courage to walk away when those standards are not met. “You deserve the best in life/So if the time isn’t right then move on/Second best is never enough/You’ll do much better, baby, on your own.” Hester Prynne went on to earn a respected place in the community for her courage and strength in the face of adversity. We modern women should do no less.