The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
-Spoiler Alert!-
The Scarlet Letter is a novel about Hester Prynne, a woman living in a small Puritan town in New England, and her shame from having an affair outside of her marriage.
Prynne’s shame is represented by the scarlet letter that she must wear as punishment for adultery.
Prynne becomes pregnant and is thus discovered. Since her husband was still in Europe, it would have been impossible for him to be the father. But Prynne refuses to tell who the real father is. She keeps his identity secret so that his life will be spared.
As the reader discovers, the death penalty would be likely to the real father because he is Minister Arthur Dimmsdale. As a man charged with guiding his congregation’s morality he would have been seen as a hypocrite as well as a sinner. The people would have reacted even more strongly against him than another man of lower social rank had they known.
What adds more interest to the story is the arrival of Prynne’s husband, who becomes known as Roger Chillingworth. Prynne is the only townsperson who recognizes him. The two enter into a pact not to reveal his identity. If Chillingworth acknowledged himself as Prynne’s husband, he would be humiliated beside her. Prynne tries to offer him, the victim of her affair, the same courtesy she gives to her lover. Also, in this way, all the townspeople will assume her husband was lost at sea, thus making her act of adultery less severe.
Chillingworth resides in the same town and becomes its doctor. He tries to discover the man who slept with his wife. He thus becomes fixated on revenge.
Dimmesdale suffers alone. His sin is private and it galls him. Not only has he committed adultery with someone in his congregation, he refuses to own up to his acts. He is a coward and a hypocrite. And he watches in despair as Hester burdens all of the public shame. Dimmsdale lives a lonely life cut off from the rest of the community and his shame burdens him with real physiological consequences. He becomes frail and pale, despite his young age. He often places his hand over his heart as though it troubles him.
Dimmesdale’s poor health incites Chillingworth to live with him. Thus the cuckolded husband is living shoulder to shoulder with the adulterer. Once Dimmsdale’s sin is known, Chillingworth torments the poor man’s sensitive soul. Rather than doing so openly, Chillingworth brings the minister’s mind back constantly to the sin. This is much more painful than a swift public outcry.
I think of the three main characters as if there were involved in an inverted love triangle. Instead of each loving the other, each is harming the other. And it is not just one way.
That’s broadly speaking what happens in the book.
As for the experience of reading, it’s a pleasure!
Nathaniel Hawthorne is a master of phrase and description. Not only that but there are literary allusions galore. It is like an American version of the Garden of Eden yet there are layers beyond this.
Just getting into the main part of the story, Hawthorne takes the reader through centuries of Massachussets history. He pokes fun at the old men who spend their idle time at the customs house where supposedly the story was inspired. And his descriptions from the first chapter alone wander wildly from sumptuous meals to petty corruption to dreamscape explorations in the moonlight.
Anyone who’s looking for a good American novel, and who isn’t too intimidated by long sentences and descriptions from the 1850s, should enjoy the Scarlet Letter. If you weren’t forced to read it in high school at least.