The Scarlet Letter

(BOOK 3 of the 52 week Challenge)

Last week I said that I was reading Climbing Parnassus for this week, but I picked up The Scarlet Letter instead. So Parnassus has to wait.

Don't read any further unless you want to know the plot of the book.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was a 19th century American novelist and short story writer, and a transcendentalist. The Scarlet Letter is considered to be a part of the Dark Romanticism movement of his time period.

The novel tells the story of Hester Prynne, a married woman who is sent ahead of her husband from England to live in Puritan Boston. While her husband is still across the ocean, Hester gives birth to a child who was conceived after Hester reached the New World, and she is placed in prison for her *crime*. When she is released from her incarceration, she is forced to wear a scarlet *A* on her clothing as a continuation of her punishment.

Even though the daily wearing of the letter brings Hester the scorn of the townspeople, she refuses to reveal the identity of the father of her child, and the man refuses to reveal his identity as well. Hester, and her daughter, must bear the shame alone. Not until the end of the novel do the townspeople learn that Hester's partner in crime was the young minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, who they have ardently worshipped. Hawthorne describes the parishioners adoration for their minister in this passage:

Never, on New England soil, had stood the man so honored by his mortal brethren as the preacher! How fared it with him then? Were there not the brilliant particles of a halo in the air about his head? So etherealized by spirit as he was, and so apotheosized by worshipping admirers, did his footsteps in the procession really tread upon the dust of earth?

The Reverend Dimmesdale describes to Hester his agony at carrying his secret in this passage:

"Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! Mine burns in secret! Thou little knowest what a relief it is, after the torment of a seven years' cheat, to look into an eye that recognizes me for what I am! Had I one friend, -or were it my worst enemy!- to whom, when sickened with the praises of all other men, I could daily betake myself, and be known as the vilest of all sinners, methinks my sould might keep itself alive thereby. Even thus much of truth would save me! But, now, it is all falsehood! -all emptiness!- all death!"

Hmmm, Reverend, maybe you should have confessed years ago and not paraded around town like you were above mere mortal men. That might have made you feel better. Can you tell I didn't appreciate his obnoxious piety?

Also on the scene is Hester's husband who has arrived from England, but he swears Hester to secrecy and changes his last name so as not to be associated with Hester and her child. Roger (Prynne) *Chillingworth* then spends the remainder of his life consumed with seeking revenge against the man who impregnated his wife.

This encounter between Roger and Hester later in the novel made me wish that the two had never met. How different each of their lives could have been!

"Woman, I could wellnigh pity thee!" said Roger Chillingworth . . . , "Thou hadst great elements. Peradventure, hadst thou met earlier with a better love than mine, this evil had not been. I pity thee, for the good that has been wasted in thy nature!"

"And I thee," answered Hester Prynne, "for the hatred that has transformed a wise and just man to a fiend! Wilt thou yet purge it out of thee, and be once for human? If not for his sake, then doubly for thine own! . . . "

All in all, I found The Scarlet Letter to be a very sad tale.