The Scarlet Letter

The first mystery is how I managed to wait this long to read The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the premiere classics in American Literature. I was never assigned this book in school, even though I took a course on Hawthorne (we only read the short stories).

The second mystery is how anyone can say they really like this book. I mean, I can understand why it's studied, and why it has the reputation it does, but reading this book was tough sledding. Hawthorne writes in a jungle-dense style that went out with the horse and buggy. At times I read several pages and realized I had no idea what I just read.

Of course, The Scarlet Letter is about Hester Prynne, a woman living in Massachusetts Bay Colony. She has a child out of wedlock, and instead of being shunned, or even executed, she is forced to wear the letter A on her breast (it stands for adultery, although that word never appears in the book).

She and her daughter, Pearl, take up residence in an abandoned cabin and Hester does needlework for a living. She refuses to name the father of the child. She is married, to a man presumed lost at sea.

There are two other main characters, so the mystery of the book isn't hard to figure out. One is Revered Arthur Dimmesdale, a young minister who over the course of the book kind of loses his grip. The other is the old, misshapen doctor, Roger Chillingworth, who is most interested in finding out who the father is.

The themes of the book are guilt, sin, forgiveness, and the suffocating world view of the Puritans. Hawthorne's ancestor was a judge during the Salem witch trials, so he had a dim view of their rigid beliefs. Some of this comes through loud and clear: "Continually, and in a thousand other ways, did she feel the innumerable throbs of anguish that had been so cunningly contrived for her by the undying, the ever-active sentence of the Puritan tribunal."

But other parts lull the reader into a stupor. The prologue is Hawthorne describing the custom-house where he works. It goes and on and on and made me wonder what I was reading. Finally, he finds an object: "It was the capital letter A. By an accurate measurement, each limb proved to be precisely three inches and a quarter in length. It had been intended, there could be no doubt, as an ornamental article of dress; but how it was to be worn, or what rank, honour, and dignity, in by-past times, were signified by it, was a riddle which (so evanescent are the fashions of the world in these particulars) I saw little hope of solving. And yet it strangely interested me."

The character of Hester is difficult to discern. She quietly goes about her business, never angry, stoically serving her sentence. Pearl turns out to be precocious (she has the vocabulary of today's college professors) and even a bit wild, as if she were a creature of nature. In time, people almost forget why Hester's even wearing the A: "Individuals in private life, meanwhile, had quite forgiven Hester Prynne for her frailty; nay, more, they had begun to look upon the scarlet letter as the token, not of that one sin for which she had borne so long and dreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since."

In summation, I can appreciate The Scarlet Letter for its literary merit, but I didn't enjoy reading it. I would never want to do so again.