Person sees this as favorite subject of Hawthorne's as he recalls "Dimmesdale's temptation to blight a young girl's innocence with a single word" (123) and compares it to Hawthorne considering "The Scarlet Letter "a triumphant success" because it had such an effect on [his wife] Sophia that it broke her heart and sent her to bed with a grevious headache" (122)
Whether or not Person is calling Hawthorne a chauvinist is left to opinion. Person is, however, pointing out that Hester is a female character that defies the constant thread of men controlling women. Therefore, despite Hawthorne's true feelings about women he was able to write a tale in which the hero is a heroine. .
Hester Prynne proves her heroinism more than once in the tale of The Scarlet Letter and to more than one person. Take Pearl for example. Despite being troublesome and quite a handful, Hester manages to give Pearl what most girls at her time never caught a glimpse of the freedom to be herself. Without her mother's unselfish love Pearl may not have lived the life she did. If she had been turned over to the magistrates of the town as suggested in The Scarlet Letter, Pearl's intellect and imagination may have been suffocated but the Puritan beliefs. Another way Hester is a heroine to Pearl is evident in the scene in the forest where Dimmesdale and Hester meet. While talking with Dimmesdale Hester casts away the scarlet letter and "by another impulse, she took off the formal cap that confined her hair; and down it fell upon her shoulders [t]here played around her mouth, and beamed out of her eyes, a radiant and tender smile, that seemed gushing from the very heart of womanhood" (Hawthorne, 160). For once during the seven years that the tale takes place Hester embraces her womanhood again, but this is cut short as Pearl cannot handle what she sees. The child "burst into a fit of passion, gesticulating violently, and throwing her small figure into the most extravagant contortions" (Hawthorne, 164).