I’m on a classics reading spree; if that’s not your thing you can skip this post.😘
And those of you who don’t like spoilers can turn the page too.👋
The Scarlet Letter takes place in the mid 1600’s in Puritan world of Boston, Massachusetts. Most people caught in adultery would have been hung on the gallows, but Hester Prynne, who was found to be with child long after her husband was away at sea, was asked to wear a red A on the bosom of her dress for the rest of her life. Throughout her trial and punishment, she refused to reveal the other party to her sin.
The townspeople shunned her and her precocious daughter, little Pearl. Through Hester’s suffering, she also became an angel of mercy to others who suffered.
Reverend Arthur Dimmsdale was a morally weak man in spite of his lofty position in the colony. He loved the acclaim of his parishioners too much to reveal his sin,and the constant hypocrisy of his false piety made him ill physically and mentally. With the aid and irritation of so-called physician, Roger Chillingworth, he lived seven torturous years before confessing.
“What a ruin hath befallen thee,” said Hester, with the tears gushing into her eyes. “Wilt thou die for very weakness? There is no other cause!”
“The judgement of God is on me,” answered the conscience-stricken priest. “It is too mighty for me to struggle with.”
“Heaven would show mercy,” rejoined Hester, “hadst thou the strength to take advantage of it.”
“Be thou strong for me,” answered he.
I started this book with trepidition. In my research, one reviewer said it was like shooting yourself in the foot. He advised not to read it alone, but with a friend so you could discuss it. It’s not quite that bad, but it is that bad.
I skipped the introduction. I liked how the opening scene described a weedy jail yard with a lovely rose blooming at the step that no one knew how it came to grow there. The author says he picks one and offers it to you, dear reader.
I had to wonder how it came about that Hester had married and old, mishapen man to begin with. She is described as a rare beauty. And we are not told in the story why he was gone for years. Nor does it tell how she and Arthur Dimmesdale were tempted.
The themes of sin, adultery and hypocrisy scared me off. And this book is a graphic telling of where sinful choices can lead. The inciting incident happens at least a year before the book opens and there are no clandestine meetings or amorous glances. It’s actually easier to read than Judges in the Bible, in my opinion.
The results of confessing sin are fearful, but not confessing is much more fearful. In this respect, I think The Scarlet Letter is true to the nuances of human experience in social, moral and phsycological areas.
The language is antiquated, using thee and thou. You won’t need a dictionary as most obscure words can be interpreted by the context. I did look up one word, the last word in the book. It’s more complex reading than the Count of Monte Cristo or Jane Austen, with quite long sentences and long paragraphs.
So much more happens than I have described here. If you had asked me a few days ago I would have hesitated to say it was worth reading. Now that I have read to the end, I would reommend this for mature readers. Nathaniel Hawthorne uses words masterfully and the narrator did an amazing job in my opinion. I listened on Libby, Duke Classics version. I skipped the introduction but then went back and listened to it after the story.
If you read this book, you might like it, and you might not. That’s not really the question. I doubt you will feel ambiguous about it. The point of classics is to make you grapple with complicated nuanced characters and their actions. And you have to read all of it to get to the satisfying shift that comes at the end.
This book followed a pattern I am noticing when I read classics. Before starting, I fear I’m not up to it. Half way through I’m thinking what’s the big deal. As it nears the climax I doubt if I can go on, it’s terrible! Then I read the ending chapters and it changes the way I think about everything that came before and it’s wow! this is amazing! I often have the urge to go back to the beginning and read it again, because the ending would make me see different scenes and motives more clearly.
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne was originally published in 1850. Hawthorne would have been a conservative, although I’m not sure of his Christian stance. In The Scarlet Letter, he was writing about a time 200 years earlier. It’s a much closer take on the mid 1600’s as compared to what an author would write today. He called this a romance or love story but to the modern reader it will look very much more like a tragedy or moralistic exposition of sin and it’s consequences. Authors in the 1800s like gothic elements in their stories. This one has darkness, a comet at an auspicious time, an embroidered A that seemed to glow in certain lights. This is a novel, even though the author claimed to have found records of Hester Prynne’s life and an emboridered scarlet letter A in the Customs House in Boston. Claims such as these are typical of writers of this time; it made the story seem more ‘real’ to readers who were not used to novels.
The Puritans were a strict bunch of people and it probably wasn’t an easy time to be young or in love, but Hawthornes descriptions are dramatized and the evils of the ones in charge is likely magnified to better serve the story. This is, after all, a work of fiction and there are other works that give a more faithful picture of the Puritans.
Nathaniel Hawthorne also wrote short stories, one of the first to write this genre in America. One of them, The Celestial Railroad, is an allegory in the style of Pilgrim’s Progress, but highlighting the way liberal theologians of his day tried to make it appear. This story is published separately by Christian Light and you can get it from Gospel Publishers.
The Scarlett Letter had been required reading in high school for years. A lot of people think that is why it gets bad reviews. It could be they were not developmentally ready, or found the frank discussion of sin’s consequences too convicting. I can understand wanting it banned from high schools. But a book remains a classic for a reason and this one is still on a lot of lists. Nowadays it is often interpreted through a secular world view. Really the whole book was bringing Arthur Dimmsdale to confess his sins. If that isn’t God’s mercy, what is?
Hester and Arthur only have one private conversation and Hester begs him to do something—run away to England, there was a convenient ship in harbor right then. I was cheering her on; at last maybe something good would happen. At the end, as Arthur is confessing to the townspeople, he tells Hester that this is better than running away. And I was reproved; of course confessing was better.
I was disappointed there as no mention of grace and once I said aloud as I was reading, Look to Jesus! Hawthorne needed a major sin to carry the weight of the whole story, but you can read it as a type or theme that applies to your life in whatever measure is needed.
Words—so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The House of the Seven Gables is also by Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Black and White and Red All Over: Lessons from The Scarlet Letter. Read this excellent review; the title is brilliant and the rest of it is thought-provoking.
So She Reads 