how is Hester Prynne a uniquely American heroine?

In Booker T Washington’s Up from Slavery and W.E.B DuBois’s The Souls of Black Folk both author’s used Realism to reflect on how things were for Africain American’s after slavery ended. Washington’s essay focuses on life for him and his family during slavery and once they moved from Virginia to Kanawha Valley West Virginia. In this essay he describes the cabin that he and his and siblings shared. He writes “The cabin was without glass windows; it had only openings in the side which let in the light, and also the cold chilly winter’’. A few sentences later he describes the floor. “There was no wooden floor in our cabin, the naked earth being used as a floor. In the centre of the earthen floor there was a large deep opening covered with boards, which was used a place in which to store sweet potatoes during the winter”. Washington didn’t have to overemphasize to readers the terrible living conditions that most slaves had to endure during those times.
Washington emerged as a national figure in 1895 as the result of a short speech, included below as a part of his autobiography, to a crowd of two thousand at the Atlanta Exposition of 1895 (Levine 699). This speech was known as the Atlanta Compromise and in this speech, he argued that African Americans should defer the quest for immediate full equality in return for basic economic opportunities (Levine 699). Washington wanted African Americans and the Southern white man to build better working relationships because it could be beneficial to both races. In his speech he says “Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and professions. And in this connection it is well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South the Negro is given a man’s chance in the commercial world, and in nothing is this Exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance (Levine 717). Washington was honest and didn’t sugar coat things for the crowd that day which helped jump start better relationships between the Southern white man and African Americans in some parts of the south.
W.E.B DuBois was a ferocious advocate for the equality of African Americans. He grew up in Massachusetts and attended mostly white schools and churches as a child. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Fisk University in 1888. He got his master’s and Ph.D. from Harvard. Like Washington DuBois used realism to show how African Americans were treated after slavery and during the Jim Crow area. He writes “For the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line” (Levin 920). DuBois was straight forward by letting readers know that the color line was just not an issue in America it was also a problem in different parts of the world as well. DuBois and Washington took different approaches when it came to standing up for African Americans to be treated equally. DuBois felt that Washington didn’t hold the United States accountable for their injustice against African Americans. He writes “But so far as Mr. Washington apologizes for injustice, North or South, does not rightly value the privilege and duty of voting, belittles the emasculating effects of caste distinctions, and opposes the higher training and ambition of our brighter minds,- so far as he, the South, or the Nation does this -we must unceasingly and firmly oppose them. By every civilized and peaceful method we must strive for the rights which the world accords to men clinging unwaveringly to those great words which the sons of the Fathers would fain forget” (Levine 936). This relates to Realism because he thought that Washington was removed for the African American experience.
Although Washington and DuBois viewed things differently when it came to how African Americans should deal with social and economic injustice, they both used Realism to get their point across to readers. The purpose of using realism is to emphasize the reality and morality that is usually relativistic and intrinsic for the people as well as the society. This sort of realism makes the readers face reality as it happens in the world, rather than in the make-believe world of fantasy.