Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter really shows how unfair gender roles and ideas about sexuality were in 17th-century Puritan society. It focuses on Hester Prynne, a woman who gets punished for adultery by having to wear the scarlet “A” on her chest, while the guy she was involved with, Arthur Dimmesdale, doesn’t face the same level of shame or consequences. Hester has to deal with public humiliation and isolation for the rest of her life with her daughter (born from said adultery), but Dimmesdale just gets to keep being a respected minister.