Current Series Catalogue

Scarlet Women:
Rebel Heroines in Literature

What does it mean to be a “bad girl”? How does the definition of a rebel heroine vary according to the culture and time period she lives in? Why are we always so fascinated with heroines who break the rules? And what do these rules say about us and our attitude toward women? Examine these questions as you follow the stories – and very different endings – of some of literature’s most notorious scarlet women.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Literature’s most famous adulteress, Hester Prynne is shamed in front of her entire community but refuses to name her child’s father.

Margaret Mitchell, Gone With the Wind
The prototypical bad girl, Scarlett O’Hara breaks all the conventions of Southern society – and gets away with it.

Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth
A beautiful but poor orphan who is hopelessly addicted to the pleasures of high society tries to find a wealthy husband but is foiled and eventually ruined.

Ernest Hemmingway, The Sun Also Rises
Brett Ashley breaks her engagement, flirts with every man she encounters, and has an affair with a bullfighter – but is she happy?

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Janie Crawford has married three men and been tried for the murder of one of them, but she cares little for what her small-town neighbors think of her.

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