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Title: The Scarlet Letter (Modern Library Classics)
ISBN: 0679783385
Author:
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Publicate Date: 2000-09-19
Publish: 2000-09-19
List Price: $6.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Paperback
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1: fascinating
A one sentence summary of this book would go like this: set in Puritan Boston, Massachusetts during the 17th century, The Scarlet Letter is about a woman named Hester Prynne, who is condemned to wear the letter "A" for the rest of her life after committing the sin of adultery. Now, this may not sound terribly interesting, but there is more to good literature than just plot, and The Scarlet Letter is one of these excellent works. Nathaniel Hawthorne's distinctive dark, flowing descriptions give this book a kind of eerie appeal and turns the plot into a fascinating story.
All of the main characters are extremely well developed. Because Hawthorne tends to keep everything shrouded in mystery, while still foreshadowing certain events, I could not stop reading. I just had to satisfy my curiosity, and one page led to another and another.
Hawthorne's finest character in this novel was old Roger Chillingworth, the antagonist whose name suits him perfectly. When Chillingworth arrives in Boston to find that his wife, Hester, has given birth to a daughter he could not have fathered, Chillingworth vows to discover who the man is. As he grows more and more obsessed with revenge, his appearance changes too, until he is better described not as a man, but as a devil-like creature that lives only for revenge. While many authors cannot make a character seem truly frightening without including a list of horrific crimes that the character is responsible for (in which case the reader is probably more shocked by the gore than by the character), Hawthorne manages to make Chillingworth unsettlingly evil by simply describing his appearance, no blood, torture devices, or dialogue required. He writes so skillfully that nothing else is needed.
And Chillingworth is only one example of Hawthorne's talent. The Scarlet Letter is definitely a book worth reading.
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2: The first masterpiece of American literature
"All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," might well be Nathaniel Hawthorne's theme in The Scarlet Letter. Certainly, by all community standards Hester Prynne's adultery is a sin. Worse yet Arthur Dimmesdale has triply sinned since he has had carnal knowledge of a member of his flock, and through a deep and abiding cowardice has failed to acknowledge his sin; and what is even worse yet, he allows Hester to bear the weight of public condemnation alone.
However the worse sin of all belongs to Roger Chillingworth, Hester's husband who is not dead at all, but returned in disguise as a physician who has learned the efficacy of various medicinal concoctions from the Indians during his captivity. He pretends to befriend Dimmesdale in order to extract his long and torturous revenge. But it is Chillingworth's character itself more than anything that marks him as the worse of the sinners. He lives only for revenge and to give pain and suffering. He cares nothing for his wife and her child. He cares nothing for anyone, not even himself. He lives only to avenge.
Dimmesdale's sin is that of a weak character. In a sense Dimmesdale is Everyman, the non-heroic. We see the contrast between the proud bravery of Hester and the all too human weakness of Dimmesdale who cannot bring himself to confess his sin, but looks to her strength to do it for him. We see this in the first scaffold scene as he pleads along with Chillingworth for Hester to reveal the father's identity. "Reveal it yourself!" we want to say.
While some have seen Chillingworth as the devil incarnate--and indeed I suspect that was Hawthorne's intent--it might be closer to the truth to see him as the vengeful God of the Old Testament with his lust to mysterious power and his desire to see the sinful suffer. At any rate, Hawthorne's masterpiece--and it is a masterpiece, one of the pillars of American literature, to be ranked with such great works as Melville's Moby-Dick and Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn--is about sin and the effect of sin; and this is only right since the central tenet of Christianity itself is sin and the forgiveness of sin.
By employing and investigating deeply three types of sin--Hester's from love and even something close to innocence; Dimmesdale's from lust, pride, neglect and cowardice; and Chillingworth's from hate--Hawthorne came up with a most felicitous device for examining the human soul.
The Scarlet Letter is regularly taught at the high school level, but surely this is a mistake. The novel is difficult and challenging even for honors students. The architectured sentences, with their points and counterpoints, their parallel construction, their old school rhetorical cadences are strange and even wondrous to the modern eye. It is a good practice for the teacher and for the student to read aloud Hawthorne's prose so as to grow accustomed to his words the way one must for Shakespeare. If this is done and the edifice of Christianity and especially the fatalism of the Puritan mind brought to bear, then with leisurely pace and a steady concentration, the terrible beauty of Hawthorne's novel might be made immediate.
Although the story itself is compelling, and the prose rich and poetic, the real strength of this great novel is in its characters. How true to life are all of them including even little Pearl who is defiant and willful in her beauty and her promise, so like a heroine-to-be of a modern novel. And how despicable and loathsome is this bent old man who embodies the very soul of the despised! And how attractive on a superficial level is this pretty young pastor whose actions are not the equal of his looks. And how strong and faithful and heroic is Hester who invites both envy and admiration, something like a flawed goddess of yore.
What stuck me when I first read this, and remains with me today, is that it is those who presume to punish sin who are the real sinners. Chillingworth's life is one devoid of human feeling, devoid of any real joy as he lies in the stone cold bed of hatred and revenge. And to a lesser extent so it is with Dimmesdale who cannot forgive himself, who secretly flagellates himself so that his life becomes a hell on earth. On the other hand there is Hester who finds forgiveness and love with good works and in the joy of her beautiful and precious Pearl and in her unstinting love for Dimmesdale and her hope and faith that a better life will come.
This is a deeply Christian novel although it is usually seen as a criticism of Christianity in the sense that the Christian community condemns the least of the sinners while the hypocrisy of its clergy is made manifest. Looking deeper we see that it is forgiveness of sin and the redemption that comes from good works that is exemplified. Hester knows the joy of life because she is a loving and giving person; and on another level she is forgiven because we the reader forgive her. How could we not? And most of the Puritan flock also forgave her since it came to be said that the scarlet "A" she wore upon her person stood not for "Adultery" but for "Able."
It is also good to realize that when Hawthorne published the novel in 1850 the scene of the story was nearly two hundred years removed. Thus Hawthorne looked back at Puritan America from the standpoint of a more secular society greatly influenced by Jeffersonian deism and the transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau. In some respects, Hawthorne's brilliant treatment of the ageless theme of sin, guilt and redemption was a serendipitous, even unconscious, artifact of his literary skill. No artist composes a masterpiece without some deep talent at work independent of his conscious efforts.
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3: Hester's Story
Hester Prynne is a young woman who has committed adultery. As punishment for what her Puritan religion considers being a crime, Hester is branded with the letter `A'. Hester must wear the letter, which has been beautifully embroidered in scarlet onto her gown, to remind her of the burdens she carries because of her sin; a second husband, Mr. Dimmesdale, a daughter, Pearl, and a town full of enemies who consider her irrational. The commotion that Hester's affair caused was not pleasant. Many shunned and abandoned poor Hester. She was left to fend for herself and newborn daughter with no help from her husband or anyone else. Even Mr. Dimmesdale, the local Puritan church leader who was involved in Hester's affair, turns against her by charging her of the crime! Dimmesdale tries his hardest to cover up his mistake but Hester endures more sorrow and feels even more damaged than him. Although Hester Prynne's decision to betray her husband and her religion may not have been a good one, Hawthorne proves that she is not the only one who deserves to be punished. He criticizes the Puritan ways and shows that sometimes punishment isn't necessary; when the person being punished has learned a lesson.
Pearl is in a way punished as well, for something she does not know about. Although the young girl grows up happy and almost carefree, she really isn't. Her mother learns to love her even though she was born by a sin and eventually she meets her father who loves her as well.
Even after Hester has showed her town she can raise a child "the Puritan way" without any trouble, it takes them awhile to realize that Hester really shouldn't have had to suffer so much pain and sorrow for something that was not any different from things they had done. Hawthorne's novel is stunningly well written and teaches a valuable lesson to the reader; be true to everyone, even yourself. "The Scarlet Letter" is a timely classic that should be remembered always and forever. The last sentence of Nathaniel Hawthorne's amazing novel sums up the entire book perfectly: "On a field sable, the letter `A' gules." This is a great book for anyone who loves suspense, drama, love, and authors who write with a passion that allows the reader to visualize what's happening and feel the heartache that Hester felt.
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4: Wonderful classic
I don't understand why this novel has such a low customer rating, except that I can see how many would find the subject matter and elevated writing style extremely difficult and dislikable. The Scarlet Letter is not to be (nor is it possible to be) read lightly; it is actually, in the way of many 19th-century classic novels, quite painful to read. I loved it, and I still trudged through it.
The subject matter, infinitely grim and distasteful, is not enjoyable in any way. It centers on the nature of morality, sin, corruption, hypocrisy especially concerning morality, and all that hackneyed bag of themes. You probably already know the general plot of the novel, so I need not reiterate it. Ironically, while criticizing the hypocrisy and sternness of the Puritans, Hawthorne seems very puritannical himself, and displays those same characteristics, including a kind of absurd self-righteousness and a pompous, austere, rigid, very Christian sense of morality. I got endless irony out of this; it seemed as though he, as the narrator, was condemning the Puritans for their harsh, hypocritical actions while endorsing Puritan principles and expressing views just as severe and ridiculously religious, if not more so, than theirs. I have to warn you that it's pretty disgusting the way he is wholly obsessed with the ideas of sin and guilt. Honestly, I think all he wrote about in his lifetime were Puritans, morality, sin and how we are all horrible sinners, etc. I imagine he could have been a fire-and-brimstone-preaching evangelist if he hadn't chosen the path of literary genius instead. And yes, despite all this, he is still a literary genius.
What makes this such a wonderful piece of classic literature, and one of my favorites, is how beautiful, eloquent, gorgeous, and sophisticated the language is. Rarely have I seen such an astounding mastery of the English language and literary devices, with perfect fluency and coherence, depth, insight, passion, intensity, and power of expression. Of course, I'm sure the style of prose is not for everyone; but I find it remarkable, magnificent, admirable. I loved the rampant symbolism, the ingenuity of little metaphors found everywhere. I loved the character Pearl, who is so strange and otherwordly and complex. Dimmesdale is, well, so very pathetic; he is the epitome of the once-righteous-now-fallen, guilt-torn, utterly miserable, wretched, squirming, feeble, tortured soul, and his abject, wallowing despair adds to the overall gloomy and tormenting atmosphere of the novel.
I know I ranted quite a bit in this review, but honestly, it's a superb work and triumph of English-language literature, and you should at least be able to appreciate it to some degree, in some aspects, and concede its exceptional use of language. I have a feeling that a lot of the reviewers expressing negative opinions are malcontent high school students grumbling about a "stupid, boring book" assigned to them for class. I myself had to read it for my junior-year English class, but I am very glad I was forced to do so.
For those whining about how "verbose" it is - please get over your own short attention span or lack of taste or whatever it is that impedes you from recognizing and appreciating good literature. An example of verbosity is: "I waded along the flooded bank of the river that had overflowed its banks and along which I now waded in flood water," not a sentence of graceful structure and expressiveness like (randomly selecting): "Continually, indeed, as it stole onward, the streamlet kept up a babble, kind, quiet, soothing, but melancholy, like the voice of a young child that was spending its infancy without playfulness, and knew not how to be merry among sad acquaintances and events of sombre hue."
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5: The private, the public, and Hawthorne
After recently re-reading The Scarlet Letter in this edition, one passage stuck out:
"One day, leaning his forehead on his hand, and his elbow on the sill of the open window, that looked towards the grave-yard, he talked with Roger Chillingworth, while the old man was examining a bundle of unsightly plants.
'Where,' asked he, with a look askance at them,-for it was the clergyman's peculiarity that he seldom, now-a-days, looked straightforth at any object, whether human or inanimate,-'where, my kind doctor, did you gather those herbs, with such a dark, flabby leaf?'
'Even in the grave-yard here at hand,' answered the physician, continuing his employment. "They are new to me. I found them growing on a grave, which bore no tombstone, no other memorial of the dead man, save these ugly weeds that have taken upon themselves to keep him in remembrance. They grew out of his heart, and typify, it may be, some hideous secret that was buried with him, and which he had done better to confess during his lifetime.'
'Perchance,' said Mr. Dimmesdale, 'he earnestly desired it, but could not.'
'And wherefore?' rejoined the physician. 'Wherefore not; since all the powers of nature call so earnestly for the confession of sin, that these black weeds have sprung up out of a buried heart to make manifest, an outspoken crime?'
'That, good Sir, is but a fantasy of yours,' replied the minister. 'There can be, if I forbode aright, no power, short of the Divine mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried with a human heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them, until the day when all hidden things shall be revealed. Nor have I so read or interpreted Holy Writ, as to understand that the disclosure of human thoughts and deeds, then to be made, is intended as a part of the retribution. That, surely, were a shallow view of it. No; these revelations, unless I greatly err, are meant merely to promote the intellectual satisfaction of all intelligent beings, who will stand waiting, on that day, to see the dark problem of this life made plain. A knowledge of men's hearts will be needful to the completest solution of that problem. And I conceive, moreover, that the hearts holding such miserable secrets as you speak of will yield them up, at that last day, not with reluctance, but with a joy unutterable.'"
It recalled a recent conversation with an old friend. We got to talking (writing, actually) about whether truly private experience is possible. My friend recounted many experiences in which he had intimations of things which we might term "private": intimations of the death of loved ones, clairvoyant or telepathic experiences, and that sort of thing. One of the things that Hawthorne keeps coming back to is the social and personal skirmishes across the public/private border. A woman has a private affair that bears public fruit in the birth of her child and results in her being very publicly humiliated. Her husband abandons his public claims and ties to her and assumes a new identity. He attaches himself to her lover, a minister, who holds the knowledge of his sinful affair deep within his own heart, where it nonetheless becomes known and visible to the husband. Throughout, the public and private have a way of bleeding into one another.
In the passage above, Dimmesdale is blind to those workings of Divine mercy which may have effects that are broader than the confines of a purely solitary heart. He seeks to make his sin purely an issue between him and his God, not realizing that by seeking to restrict sin and guilt, he is equally seeking to confine God and his action to the merely private realm. The novel turns on the futility of this task.
Never really saw this before. Of course that's not surprising. You don't see much the first time around, especially when this is assigned reading for a high school student. It may seem like a book of merely historical interest, but it's a pertinent read on the human heart and its transformations through desire, shame, and guilt. While some of it may be overly allegorical for modern tastes, the sheer force of its insights is pretty remarkable. Kathryn Harrison's introduction is fine, and the work itself is truly stunning.
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