book review of scarlet letter

The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel hawthorne , nina baym  ( introduction ) , thomas e. connolly  ( editor ).

279 pages, Paperback

First published March 16, 1850

About the author

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Ratings & reviews.

What do you think? Rate this book Write a Review

Friends & Following

Community reviews.

We may realize its value, in the present case, by imagining the book with the scarlet letter omitted. It is not practically essential to the plot. But the scarlet letter uplifts the theme from the material to the spiritual level. It is the concentration and type of the whole argument. It transmutes the prose into poetry. It serves as a formula for the conveyance of ideas otherwise too subtle for words, as well as to enhance the gloomy picturesqueness of the moral scenery. It burns upon its wearer's breast, it casts a lurid glow along her pathway, it isolates her among mankind, and is at the same time the mystic talisman to reveal to her the guilt hidden in other hearts.

„Acest semn, omul acela [Dimmesdale, firește, n.m.] îl purta pe el! Ochiul lui Dumnezeu îl vedea! Îngerii îl arătau mereu cu degetul! Diavolul îl cunoștea bine și-l rodea fără istov cu gheara lui aprinsă! El însă îl ascundea cu viclenie... Acum, în ceasul morții, iată-l în fața voastră! Vă cere să priviți iarăși litera stacojie a lui Hester! E vreunul dintre voi care să pună la îndoială judecata Domnului asupra unui păcătos? Priviți! Priviți groaznica ei mărturie! Și cu un gest convulsiv, își desfăcu la piept veșmîntul sacerdotal. Atunci, revelația se săvîrși!... O clipă, privirile mulțimii cuprinse de groază se concentrară asupra înspăimîntătorului miracol, în timp ce pastorul stătea drept ca un om care, într-un acces de extremă durere, cîștigase o victorie. Apoi se prăbuși pe platformă (pp.243-244)”.

Those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped.

"Indeed, the same dark question often rose into her mind with reference to the whole race of womanhood. Was existence worth accepting even to the happiest among them?"

"What a strange, sad man is he!" said the child, as if speaking partly to herself. "In the dark nighttime he calls us to him, and holds thy hand and mine, as when we stood with him on the scaffold yonder! And in the deep forest, where only the old trees can hear, and the strip of sky see it, he talks with thee, sitting on a heap of moss! And he kisses my forehead, too, so that the little brook would hardly wash it off! But, here, in the sunny day, and among all the people, he knows us not; nor must we know him! A strange, sad man is he, with his hand always over his heart!"

Join the discussion

Can't find what you're looking for.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Comprehensive Review

03 Mar The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Comprehensive Review

Introduction.

“The Scarlet Letter” is a historical fiction novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, first published in 1850. The novel is set in 17th-century Puritan Massachusetts and tells the story of Hester Prynne, a woman who is punished for committing adultery by being forced to wear a scarlet letter “A” on her chest. The novel explores themes of guilt, sin, and redemption, as well as the role of women in society.

Buy The Scarlett Letter on bookshop.org

Thesis statement:

“The Scarlet Letter” is a classic work of American literature that offers a profound exploration of the human condition, with complex characters and a richly detailed historical setting

Suggested reading age: High school and above.

The novel begins with Hester Prynne being led out of the town prison, carrying her infant daughter Pearl, and being forced to stand on a scaffold in the town square, wearing the scarlet letter “A” on her chest. The townspeople gather to witness her punishment, and Hester’s husband, who has been absent for some time, appears in the crowd. He is a scholar and physician, and he adopts the name Roger Chillingworth.

Hester refuses to reveal the identity of her lover, and Chillingworth becomes obsessed with finding out who he is. He suspects the town’s young minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, and begins to torment him psychologically. Meanwhile, Hester lives on the outskirts of town, raising Pearl and doing charitable work for the community.

Over time, Dimmesdale’s guilt and Chillingworth’s torment take a toll on his health. Eventually, Dimmesdale publicly confesses his sin and dies in Hester’s arms. Chillingworth dies soon after, leaving Hester and Pearl to leave Boston and start a new life.

• Hester Prynne:  The protagonist of the novel, Hester is a strong and independent woman who refuses to name her lover and accept shame for her actions. She is a complex character who is both a sinner and a saint, and her strength and resilience are admirable.
• Arthur Dimmesdale:  The young minister who is Hester’s lover, Dimmesdale is a weak and conflicted character who is unable to come to terms with his sin. He is tormented by Chillingworth and ultimately dies from his guilt.
• Roger Chillingworth:  Hester’s husband and the novel’s antagonist, Chillingworth is a cold and calculating man who seeks revenge on Dimmesdale. He is a complex character who is both a victim and a villain.
• Pearl:  Hester’s daughter, Pearl is a wild and unconventional child who represents the product of Hester’s sin. She is a symbol of both innocence and sin, and her relationship with Hester is one of the novel’s central themes.

“The Scarlet Letter” is a richly layered novel that explores a variety of themes and literary devices. Some of the most notable include:

• Symbolism:  The scarlet letter “A” is the novel’s most prominent symbol, representing both Hester’s sin and her identity as an outcast. Other symbols in the novel include the scaffold, the forest, and the rosebush.
• Imagery:  Hawthorne uses vivid imagery to create a richly detailed historical setting. He describes the town, the people, and the natural environment in great detail, creating a sense of immersion for the reader.
• Irony:  The novel is full of ironic twists, such as the fact that Dimmesdale, who is seen as a saintly figure by the townspeople, is actually a sinner, while Hester, who is seen as a sinner, is actually a saintly figure.
• Foreshadowing:  Hawthorne uses foreshadowing to build suspense and hint at future events. For example, he foreshadows Dimmesdale’s confession and death early in the novel.
• Point of view:  The novel is written in the third person, but it shifts between different characters’ perspectives, giving the reader a deeper understanding of their thoughts and feelings.

“The Scarlet Letter” is a classic work of American literature that has stood the test of time. It is a profound exploration of the human condition, with complex characters and a richly detailed historical setting. The novel’s themes of guilt, sin, and redemption are still relevant today, and its exploration of the role of women in society is particularly resonant.

The novel is not without its flaws, however. Some readers may find the pacing slow, and the language can be dense and difficult to understand at times. Additionally, some of the novel’s themes and ideas may be controversial or challenging for some readers.

Overall, “The Scarlet Letter” is a must-read for anyone interested in American literature or the human condition. It is a powerful and thought-provoking novel that will leave a lasting impression on the reader.

Possible questions for a high school test:

• What is the significance of the scarlet letter “A” in the novel?
• How does Hawthorne use imagery to create a sense of immersion in the historical setting?
• What is the relationship between Hester and Pearl, and what does it represent?
• How does Dimmesdale’s guilt manifest itself throughout the novel?
• What is the role of women in Puritan society, as depicted in the novel?
• The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Reviewed
• Nathaniel Hawthorne | Biography, Books, Short Stories, Writing Style, & Facts

Awards and accolades:

• “The Scarlet Letter” has been widely recognized as a classic work of American literature and has been included in numerous lists of the greatest novels of all time.
• The novel was a best-seller in its time and has remained popular ever since.

Functional, bibliographic details:

• ISBN: 978-0-06-135096-2
• Number of pages: 256
• Publisher Name: Modern Library
• First publish date: 1850
• Genre: Historical fiction
• BISAC Categories: Fiction / Classics, Fiction / Historical, Fiction / Literary
• Suggested Reading Age: High school and above

Spoilers/How Does It End

You were warned!

It is revealed that the novel concludes with a focus on redemption and the consequences of past actions. Dimmesdale dies after confessing his identity as Pearl’s father, believing that he has saved his soul. Pearl inherits Chillingworth’s fortune, which allows her to live a happy life and escape the stigma of her tainted origins. Hester returns to the New England community years later to live out her days quietly, still wearing the scarlet letter by choice. The ending shows how individuals can learn from past mistakes, even if they also have to live with the consequences of those actions. Hester’s identity will always be bound up with the fateful choice she made, as evidenced by the final image of the novel, which is a description of her tombstone emblazoned with the letter A. The novel does not have a strictly happy ending, but it does allow for redemption and peace

Share this:

Common Sense Media

Movie & TV reviews for parents

• For Parents
• For Educators
• Our Work and Impact

Or browse by category:

• Get the app
• Movie Reviews
• Best Movie Lists
• Best Movies on Netflix, Disney+, and More

Common Sense Selections for Movies

50 Modern Movies All Kids Should Watch Before They're 12

• Best TV Lists
• Best TV Shows on Netflix, Disney+, and More
• Common Sense Selections for TV
• Video Reviews of TV Shows

Best Kids' Shows on Disney+

Best Kids' TV Shows on Netflix

• Book Reviews
• Best Book Lists
• Common Sense Selections for Books

8 Tips for Getting Kids Hooked on Books

50 Books All Kids Should Read Before They're 12

• Game Reviews
• Best Game Lists

Common Sense Selections for Games

• Video Reviews of Games

Nintendo Switch Games for Family Fun

• Podcast Reviews
• Best Podcast Lists

Common Sense Selections for Podcasts

Parents' Guide to Podcasts

• App Reviews
• Best App Lists

Social Networking for Teens

Gun-Free Action Game Apps

Reviews for AI Apps and Tools

• YouTube Channel Reviews
• YouTube Kids Channels by Topic

Parents' Ultimate Guide to YouTube Kids

YouTube Kids Channels for Gamers

• Preschoolers (2-4)
• Little Kids (5-7)
• Big Kids (8-9)
• Pre-Teens (10-12)
• Teens (13+)
• Screen Time
• Social Media
• Online Safety
• Identity and Community

Explaining the News to Our Kids

• Family Tech Planners
• Digital Skills
• All Articles
• Latino Culture
• Black Voices
• Asian Stories
• Native Narratives
• LGBTQ+ Pride
• Best of Diverse Representation List

Celebrating Black History Month

Movies and TV Shows with Arab Leads

Celebrate Hip-Hop's 50th Anniversary

The scarlet letter, common sense media reviewers.

Classic novel of American religion, morality, and hypocrisy.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this book.

The Scarlet Letter is one of the most celebrated n

Differing views of morality and sin are what drive

Although she has committed an act that offends the

Illicit sex is, of course, at the center of The Sc

Parents need to know that The Scarlet Letter is a classic American novel that deals with adultery, sin, religion, and redemption. Hawthorne's prose is dense with irony and symbolism, but readers who persevere will be rewarded by his subtle humor and acute understanding of human foibles.

Educational Value

The Scarlet Letter is one of the most celebrated novels in early American literature and is probably the magnum opus of its author, Nathaniel Hawthorne. It vividly depicts Puritan life in Massachusetts during the mid-1600s and explores issues of American morality, religion, and hypocrisy. Its use of symbolism can't be missed. The novel is frequently used in high school and early college literature classes and is a favorite example for discussion on AP tests and the like.

Positive Messages

Differing views of morality and sin are what drive the narrative of The Scarlet Letter . Hester bears the public shame for her transgression, but there are others who suffer for it in secret. Hester's unwavering goodness ultimately restores some of her standing in the community. Redemption is available to those who work for it.

Positive Role Models

Although she has committed an act that offends the morals of all her neighbors, Hester remains resolute in her pledge not to reveal the father of her child or to disclose a secret concerning her long-absent husband. She is a tender and loving mother. She even does charitable work, which allows her eventually to return to the good graces of the townspeople.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Illicit sex is, of course, at the center of The Scarlet Letter 's premise and plot. Hester is ostracized because she dares to raise a child out of wedlock and refuses to name the father. She and others come to bear responsibility for their actions. But this being a 19th-century novel about 17th-century Puritans, Hester's affair is not described in any detail likely to offend modern sensibilities.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Where to read, community reviews.

• Parents say (3)
• Kids say (9)

Based on 3 parent reviews

Should not be required reading…..

What's the story.

Set in the mid-1600s in a Puritan village near Boston, MA, THE SCARLET LETTER chronicles the spiritual journey of Hester Prynne, a married woman who becomes a social outcast when she conceives a child out of wedlock during her husband's long absence. Forced by the outraged townspeople to wear a vivid letter \"A\" for adultery on the breast of her gown, Hester refuses to name her daughter's father and accepts a life set apart from nearly everyone she knows. Only the intervention of the Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale keeps Hester and her impish daughter Pearl together. When Hester's missing husband secretly returns, posing as a doctor and calling himself Roger Chillingworth, the stage is set for a tumultuous story of sin, tragedy, and redemption.

Is It Any Good?

Hawthorne's prose can seem complicated and stilted to modern ears, but a careful reading reveals his delicious use of irony and symbolism to make his points about American morality and hypocrisy. Written in the mid-1800s, The Scarlet Letter is one of the most acclaimed early America novels and is frequently assigned in upper-level high school and entry-level college English Literature classes. It examines issues of sin and redemption and paints a vivid portrait of Puritan life in the mid-1600s.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how views about adultery and children born out of wedlock have changed over time.

What is it about Hester's attitude regarding her affair that so angers her fellow townspeople? Why doesn't the father of the child come forward?

Young Pearl is regarded by some of the villagers as a kind of demon-child. Does her behavior in the book strike you as normal for a child her age? Do you believe that the sins of a father or mother can be passed along to a child?

The Scarlet Letter is noted for Hawthorne's use of symbols. How is the letter "A" used as a symbol? What does it mean in different contexts?

This novel is considered a classic and is often required reading in school. Why do you think that is?

Book Details

• Author : Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Genre : Historical Fiction
• Topics : History
• Book type : Fiction
• Publisher : Simon & Brown
• Publication date : January 1, 1850
• Number of pages : 208
• Last updated : June 11, 2015

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

Our editors recommend.

The Crucible

Johnny Tremain

Historical Fiction

Related topics.

Want suggestions based on your streaming services? Get personalized recommendations

Common Sense Media's unbiased ratings are created by expert reviewers and aren't influenced by the product's creators or by any of our funders, affiliates, or partners.

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

The 100 best novels: No 16 – The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)

N athaniel Hawthorne, describing "a tale of human frailty and sorrow", insisted that The Scarlet Letter was "a Romance", not a novel. This distinction, in his mind, was important. Where a novel, as he put it, "aims at a very minute fidelity, not merely to the possible, but to the probable and ordinary course of man's experience", a romance expressed "the truth of the human heart". Here, in short, is the prototype of the psychological novel, a brilliant and groundbreaking example of a new genre within 19th-century fiction.

Hawthorne's tale has a stark simplicity. In the 17th-century town of Boston, a young woman, Hester Prynne, is publicly disgraced for committing adultery and giving birth to an illegitimate child, a girl named Pearl. Forced to wear a scarlet "A", Hester slowly redeems herself in the eyes of Puritan society. Over many years, she challenges the two men in her life – her husband and her lover – with the dark truth of their emotional responsibilities and failures, while at the same time wrestling with her own sinful nature. After seven long years of painful rehabilitation, she emerges as a strong, inspiring woman, while the pastor, Arthur Dimmesdale, who seduced her dies of shame. Hester, too, eventually dies and is buried near Dimmesdale under a tombstone marked with a simple "A".

Such a bare summary does few favours to an extraordinary work of the imagination that burns from page to page with the fierce simplicity of scripture and an almost cinematic clarity of vision. The Scarlet Letter is an astounding book full of intense symbolism, as strange and haunting as anything by Edgar Allan Poe (No 10 in this series) , a writer whom we know Hawthorne much admired.

The process of Hester Prynne's acquisition of self-knowledge, the recognition of her sin and her ultimate restoration in a sequence of enthralling scenes, punctuated by moments of confrontation with Dimmesdale, is utterly compelling and, at times, deeply moving. Nathaniel Hawthorne's understanding of the emotional transactions of the sexes is profound and modern, too. And very interesting about the price paid for the loss of love. Hester's reflections on her relationship with Dimmesdale ("How deeply had they known each other then! And was this the man? She hardly knew him now") could be found in many modern novels.

The most memorable and original aspect of The Scarlet Letter lies in Hawthorne's portrait of Hester Prynne, who has been described as "the first true heroine of American fiction", a woman whose experience evokes the biblical fate of Eve. Hawthorne's achievement is to make her passion noble, her defiance heartbreaking and her frailty inspiring. She becomes the archetype of the free-thinking American woman grappling with herself and her sexuality in a cold, patriarchal society.

There is also something emblematic of the newly settled American society about The Scarlet Letter , the belief that the public individual, subjected to a merciless democratic scrutiny, is owed the human right of ultimate restoration, if he or she deserves it. Hester Prynne is more than just a mother with a baby, she is an outcast woman who will ultimately be welcomed back into American life, purged and cleansed of her sin. Readers of The Scarlet Letter during, for instance, the Monica Lewinsky scandal of the 1990s , could not fail to miss the resonance of Hawthorne's "romance" with that bizarre political drama.

By chance, in his own time, Hawthorne was not alone in wanting to explore the mysteries of the American psyche through fiction. In summer 1850, after the successful publication of The Scarlet Letter , he met the young Herman Melville who had just begun, and was grappling with, his own dark meditation on America, the next volume (No 17) in this series, Moby-Dick .

A note on the text

The Scarlet Letter was published in Boston in the spring of 1850 by Ticknor, Reed and Fields. When he delivered the manuscript in February 1850, Hawthorne said "some portions of the book are powerfully written", but cautiously added that it would probably not prove popular. Secretly, he hoped for much more. After the night of 3 February 1850, when he read the final part of the novel to his wife, he told a friend that "it broke her heart … which I look upon as a triumphant success. Judging from its effect," he went on, "I may calculate on what bowlers call a 10-strike!" Hawthorne had struggled, with almost no recognition, for some 25 years. It's clear that he anticipated some success.

In fact, the book was an instant bestseller, a term not yet in use. The Scarlet Letter was one of the first mass-produced books in America and the mechanised first printing of 2,500 copies sold out in 10 days. However, after a promising start, it brought the author only $1,500 and, in the end, sold barely 7,800 copies in Hawthorne's lifetime. Thereafter, it continued to attract praise from perceptive writers. Henry James once wrote: "It is beautiful, admirable, extraordinary; it has in the highest degree that merit which I have spoken of as the mark of Hawthorne's best things – an indefinable purity and lightness of conception… it has the inexhaustible charm and mystery of great works of art."

Other Nathaniel Hawthorne titles

Fanshawe (published anonymously, 1828); The House of Seven Gables (1851)

• The 100 best novels

Comments (…)

Most viewed.

The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel hawthorne, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

The Scarlet Letter: Introduction

The scarlet letter: plot summary, the scarlet letter: detailed summary & analysis, the scarlet letter: themes, the scarlet letter: quotes, the scarlet letter: characters, the scarlet letter: symbols, the scarlet letter: literary devices, the scarlet letter: quizzes, the scarlet letter: theme wheel, brief biography of nathaniel hawthorne.

Historical Context of The Scarlet Letter

Other books related to the scarlet letter.

• Full Title: The Scarlet Letter
• When Written: 1848-1850
• Where Written: Salem, Massachusetts
• When Published: 1850
• Literary Period: Transcendentalism
• Genre: Novel
• Setting: Boston, Massachusetts in the 1640s
• Climax: Dimmesdale's confession and death
• Antagonist: Roger Chillingworth; the Puritans
• Point of View: Third person omniscient

Extra Credit for The Scarlet Letter

Hawthorne and the Salem Witch Trials: Nathaniel Hawthorne was a direct descendent of John Hathorne, (1641-1717), a Puritan justice of the peace. Justice Hathorne is best known for his role as the lead judge in the Salem Witch Trials, in which he sentenced numerous innocent people to death for allegedly practicing witchcraft. Nathaniel added a "w" to his name to distance himself from his infamous ancestor.

'The Scarlet Letter' by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Reviewed

The author’s son reviewed the acclaimed novel 36 years after its publication.

Between Hawthorne's earlier and his later productions there is no solution of literary continuity, but only increased growth and grasp. Rappaccini's Daughter, Young Goodman Brown, Peter Goldthwaite's Treasure, and The Artist of the Beautiful, on the one side, are the promise which is fulfilled in The Scarlet Letter and the House of The Seven Gables, on the other; though we should hardly have understood the promise had not the fulfillment explained it. The shorter pieces have a lyrical quality, but the longer romances express more than a mere combination of lyrics; they have a rich, multifarious life of their own. The material is so wrought as to become incidental to something loftier and greater, for which our previous analysis of the contents of the egg had not prepared us.

The Scarlet Letter was the first, and the tendency of criticism is to pronounce it the most impressive, also, of these ampler productions. It has the charm of unconsciousness; the author did not realize while he worked, that this “most prolix among the tales” was alive with the miraculous vitality of genius. It combines the strength and substance of an oak with the subtle organization of a rose, and is great, not of malice aforethought, but inevitably. It goes to the root of the matter, and reaches some unconventional conclusions, which, however, would scarce be apprehended by one reader in twenty. For the external or literal significance of the story, though in strict correspondence with the spirit, conceals that spirit from the literal eye. The reader may choose his depth according to his inches but only a tall man will touch the bottom.

The punishment of the scarlet letter is a historical fact; and, apart from the symbol thus ready provided to the author's hand, such a book as The Scarlet Letter would doubtless never have existed. But the symbol gave the touch whereby Hawthorne's disconnected thoughts on the subject were united and crystallized in organic form. Evidently, likewise, it was a source of inspiration, suggesting new aspects and features of the truth, — a sort of witch-hazel to detect spiritual gold. Some such figurative emblem, introduced in a matter-of-fact way, but gradually invested with supernatural attributes, was one of Hawthorne's favorite devices in his stories. We may realize its value, in the present case, by imagining the book with the scarlet letter omitted. It is not practically essential to the plot. But the scarlet letter uplifts the theme from the material to the spiritual level. It is the concentration and type of the whole argument. It transmutes the prose into poetry. It serves as a formula for the conveyance of ideas otherwise too subtle for words, as well as to enhance the gloomy picturesqueness of the moral scenery. It burns upon its wearer's breast, it casts a lurid glow along her pathway, it isolates her among mankind, and is at the same time the mystic talisman to reveal to her the guilt hidden in other hearts. It is the Black Man's mark, and the first plaything of the infant Pearl. As the story develops, the scarlet letter becomes the dominant figure, — everything is tinged with its sinister glare. By a ghastly miracle its semblance is reproduced upon the breast of the minister, where “God's eye beheld it! the angels were forever pointing at it! the devil knew it well, and fretted it continually with the touch of his burning finger!” — and at last, to Dimmesdale's crazed imagination, its spectre appears even in the midnight sky as if heaven itself had caught the contagion of his so zealously hidden sin. So strongly is the scarlet letter rooted in every chapter and almost every sentence of the book that bears its name. And yet it would probably have incommoded the average novelist. The wand of Prospero, so far from aiding the uninititated, trips him up, and scorches his fingers. Between genius and every other attribute of the mind is a difference not of degree, but of kind.

Every story may be viewed under two aspects: as the logical evolution of a conclusion from a premise, and as something colored and modified by the personal qualities of the author. If the latter have genius, his share in the product is comparable to nature's in a work of human art, — giving it everything except abstract form. But the majority of fiction-mongers are apt to impair rather than enhance the beauty of the abstract form of their conception, — if, indeed, it possess any to begin with. At all events, there is no better method of determining the value of a writer's part in a given work than to consider the work in what may be termed its prenatal state. How much, for example, of The Scarlet Letter was ready made before Hawthorne touched it? The date is historically fixed at about the middle of the seventeenth century. The stage properties, so to speak, are well adapted to become the furniture and background of a romantic narrative. A gloomy and energetic religious sect, pioneers in a virgin land, with the wolf and the Indian at their doors, but with memories of England in their hearts and English traditions and prejudices in their minds; weak in numbers, but strong in spirit; with no cultivation save that of the Bible and the sword; victims, moreover of a dark and bloody superstition, — such a people and scene give admirable relief and color to a tale of human frailty and sorrow. Amidst such surroundings, then, the figure of a woman stands, with the scarlet letter on her bosom. But here we come to a pause, and must look to the author for the next step.

For where shall the story begin? A “twenty-number” novel, of the Dickens or Thackeray type, would start with Hester's girlhood, and the bulk of the narrative would treat of the genesis and accomplishment of the crime. Nor are hints wanting that this phase of the theme had been canvassed in Hawthorne's mind. We have glimpses of the heroine in the antique gentility of her English home; we see the bald brow and reverend beard of her father, and her mother's expression of heedful and anxious love; we behold the girl's own face, glowing with youthful beauty. She meets the pale, elderly scholar, with his dim yet penetrating eyes, and the marriage, loveless on her part and folly on his, takes place; but they saw not the bale-fire of the scarlet letter blazing at the end of their path. The ill-assorted pair make their first home in Amsterdam; but at length, tidings of the Puritan colony in Massachusetts reaching them, they prepare to emigrate thither. But Prynne, himself delaying to adjust certain affairs, sends his young, beautiful, wealthy wife in advance to assume her station in the pioneer settlement. In the wild, free air of that new world her spirits kindled, and many unsuspected tendencies of her impulsive and passionate nature were revealed to her. The “rich, voluptuous, Oriental characteristics” of her temperament, her ardent love of beauty, her strong intellectual fibre, and her native energy and capacity, — such elements needed a strong and wise hand to curb and guide them, scarcely disguised as they were by the light and graceful foliage of her innocent, womanly charm. Being left, however, for two years “to her own misguidance,” her husband had little cause to wonder, when, on emerging from the forest, the first object to meet his eyes was Hester Prynne, “standing up, a statue of ignominy, before the people.” She “doubtless was strongly tempted to her fall;” and though the author leaves the matter there, so far as any explicit statement is concerned, it is manifest that, had he written out what was already pictured before his imagination, the few pregnant hints scattered through the volume would have been developed into as circumstantial and laborious a narrative as any the most deliberate English or French novelist could desire.

For his forbearance he has received much praise from well-meaning critics, who seem to think that he was restrained by considerations of morality or propriety. This appears a little strained. As an artist and as a man of a certain temperament, Hawthorne treated that side of the subject which seemed to him the more powerful and interesting. But a writer who works with deep insight and truthful purpose can never be guilty of a lack of decency. Indecency is a creation, not of God or of nature, but of the indecent. And whoever takes it for granted that indecency is necessarily involved in telling the story of an illicit passion has studied human nature and good literature to poor purpose.

The truth is that the situation selected by Hawthorne has more scope and depth than the one which he passed over. It is with the subjective consequences of a sinner's act that our understanding of him begins. The murderer's blow tells us nothing of his character; but in his remorse or exultation over his deed his secret is revealed to us. So Hawthorne fixes the starting-point of his romance at Hester's prison-door, rather than at any earlier epoch of her career, because the narrative can thence, as it were, move both ways at once; all essentials of the past can be gathered up as wanted, and the reminiscences and self-knowledge of the characters can supplement the author's analysis. The story rounds itself out at once, catching light and casting shadow; and Hester's previous life seems familiar to us the moment she takes her stand upon the scaffold, — for, in the case of an experience such as hers, a bare hint tells the whole sad story. So long as women are frail and men selfish, the prologue of The Scarlet Letter will not need to be written; it is known a thousand times already. But what is to follow is not known; no newspapers publish it, no whisper of it passes from mouth to mouth, nor is it cried on the housetops. Yet is there great need that it should be taught, for such teaching serves a practical moral use. All have felt the allurement of temptation, but few realize the sequel of yielding to it. This sequel is exhaustively analyzed in the romance, and hence the profound and permanent interest of the story. No sinner so eccentric but may find here the statement of his personal problem. Such an achievement avouches a lofty reach of art. The form has not the carpenter's symmetry of a French drama, but the spontaneous, living symmetry of a tree or flower, unfolding from the force within. We are drawn to regard, not the outline, but the substance, which claims affinity with the inmost recesses of our own nature; so that The Scarlet Letter is a self-revelation to whomsoever takes it up.

In a story of this calibre a complex of incidents would be superfluous. The use of incidents in fiction is twofold, — to develop the characters and to keep awake the reader's attention. But the personages of this tale are not technically developed; they are gradually made transparent as they stand, until we see them through and through. And what we thus behold is less individual peculiarities than traits and devices of our general human nature, under the stress of the given conditions. The individuals are there, and could at need be particularlized sharply enough; but that part of them which we are concerned with lies so far beneath the surface as inevitably to exhibit more of general than of personal characteristics. The individual veils the general to the extent of his individuality; and since the effect of “incident” is to emphasize individuality, the best value of The Scarlet Letter had it been based on incident, would have been impaired. As to postponing the reader's drowsiness, — victims of the Inquisition have slumbered upon the rack; and people who have been kept too long awake over the sprightly subtleties of Zola, or the Dædalian involutions of Mrs. Henry Wood, have doubtless yawned over the revelation of Dimmesdale's soul, and grown heavy-eyed at the spectacle of Pearl's elfish waywardness.

Dimmesdale is, artistically, a corollary of Hester; and yet the average writer would not be apt to hit upon him as a probable seducer. The community in which he abides certainly shows a commendable lack of suspicion towards him: even old Mistress Hibbins, whose scent for moral carrion was as keen as that of a modern society journal, can scarcely credit her own conviction. “What mortal imagination could conceive it!” whispers the old lady to Hester, as the minister passes in the procession. “Many a church member saw I, walking behind the music, who has danced in the same measure with me, when somebody was the fiddler! That is but a trifle, when a woman knows the world. But this minister!” It is, of course, this very refinement that makes him the more available for the ends of the story. A gross, sensual man would render the whole drama gross and obvious. But Dimmesdale's social position, as well as his personal character, seems to raise him above the possibility of such a lapse. This is essential to the scope of the treatment, which, dealing with the spiritual aspects of the crime, requires characters of spiritual proclivities. Hester's lover, then, shall be a minister, for the priest of that day “stood at the head of the social system;” and, moreover, — a main object of the story being to show that no sacred vows nor sublime aspirations can relieve mortal man from the common human liability to guilt, — Dimmesdale himself must commit the most fatal of the sins against which the priest is supposed to provide protection; nay, he is the actual spiritual adviser of her whom he ruins. Young and comely he must be, for the sake of the artistic harmony; but his physical organization is delicate, he is morbidly conscientious and “the Creator never made another being so sensitive as this.”

Highly intellectual he is, too, though, as the author finely discriminates, not too broadly so. “In no state of society would he have been what is called a man of liberal views; it would always be essential to his peace to feel the pressure of a faith about him.” Nor has he ever “gone through an experience calculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally received laws, although, in a single instance, he had so fearfully transgressed one of the most sacred of them.” It is by such subtle but important reservations that the author's mastery of the character is revealed: they would have escaped the average mind, which would thereby have been perplexed to show why Dimmesdale did not follow Hester's example, and seek relief by speculatively questioning the validity of all social institutions. Nor would this average mind have been likely to perceive the weak point in such a character, — “that violence of passion, which, intermixed with more shapes than one, with his higher, purer, softer qualities, was, in fact, the portion of him which the devil claimed, and through which he sought to win the rest.” It is upon this flaw that Chillingworth puts his finger. “See now how passion takes hold upon this man, and hurrieth him out of himself! As with one passion, so with another! He hath done a wild thing ere now, this pious Master Dimmesdale, in the hot passion of his heart!” For the rest, save in one conspicuous instance, the minister plays Prometheus to the vulture Chillingworth. As Hester suffers public exposure and frank ignominy, so he is wrapped in secret torments; and either mode of punishment is shown to be powerless for good. “Nervous sensibility and a vast power of self-restraint” are leading features in the young man's character, and these, combined with his refined selfishness, are what render him defenseless against Chillingworth. Dimmesdale cares more for his social reputation than for anything else. His self-respect, his peace, his love, his soul, — all may go: only let his reputation remain! And yet it is that selfsame false reputation that daily causes him the keenest anguish of all.

Pearl, however, is the true creation of the book: every touch upon her portrait is a touch of genius, and her very conception is an inspiration. Yet the average mind would have found her an encumbrance. Every pretext would have been improved to send her out of the room, as it were, and to restrict her utterances, when she must appear, to monosyllables or sentimental commonplaces. Not only is she free from repression of this kind, but she avouches herself the most vivid and active figure in the story. Instead of keeping pathetically in the background, as a guiltless unfortunate whose life was blighted before it began, this strange little being, with laughing defiance of precedent and propriety, takes the reins in her own childish hands, and dominates every one with whom she comes in contact. This is an idea which it was left to Hawthorne to originate: ancient nor modern fiction supplies a parallel to Pearl. “In giving her existence, a great law had been broken. … The mother's impassioned state had been the medium through which were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of its moral life. … Above all, the warfare of Hester's spirit, at that epoch, was perpetuated in Pearl.” The mother “felt like one who has evoked a spirit, but, by some irregularity in the process of conjuration, has failed to win the master-word that should control this new and incomprehensible intelligence.” Pearl instinctively comprehends her position as a born outcast from the world of christened infants, and requites their scorn and contumely with the bitterest hatred, — a passion of enmity which she had “inherited by inalienable right, out of Hester's heart.” In her childish plays, her ever-creative spirit communicated itself, with a wild energy and fertility of invention, to a thousand unlikeliest objects; but—and here again the mother felt in her own heart the cause—Pearl “never created a friend; she seemed always to be sowing broadcast the dragon's teeth, whence sprang a harvest of armed enemies, against whom she rushed to battle.” And this strange genesis of hers, placing her in a sphere of her own, gave also a phantom-like quality to the impression she produced on Hester: just as a unique event, especially an unpremeditated crime, seems unreal and dream-like in the retrospect. Yet Pearl was, all the while, the most unrelentingly real fact of her mother's ruined life.

Standing as the incarnation, instead of the victim, of a sin, Pearl affords a unique opportunity for throwing light upon the inner nature of the sin itself. In availing himself of it, Hawthorne touches ground which, perhaps, he would not have ventured on, had he not first safeguarded himself against exaggeration and impiety by making his analysis accord (so to speak) with the definition of a child's personality. Pearl, as we are frequently reminded, is the scarlet letter made alive, capable of being loved, and so endowed with a manifold power of retribution for sin. The principle of her being is the freedom of a broken law; she is developed, “a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance of a guilty passion,” yet, herself, as irresponsible and independent as if distinctions of right and wrong did not exist to her. Like nature and animals, she is anterior to moral law; but, unlike them, she is human, too. She exhibits an unfailing vigor and vivacity of spirits joined to a precocious and almost preternatural intelligence, especially with reference to her mother's shameful badge. To this her interest constantly reverts, and always with a “peculiar smile and odd expression of the eyes,” they almost suggesting acquaintance on her part with “the secret spell of her existence.” The wayward, mirthful mockery with which the small creature always approaches this hateful theme, as if she deemed it a species of ghastly jest, is a terribly significant touch, and would almost warrant a confirmation of the mother's fear that she had brought a fiend into the world. Yet, physically, Pearl is “worthy to have been left in Eden, to be the plaything of the angels,” and her aspect—as must needs be the case with a child who symbolized a sin that finds its way into all regions of human society—“was imbued with the spell of infinite variety: in this one child there were many children, comprehending the full scope between the wild-flower prettiness of a peasant baby and the pomp, in little, of an infant princess.” The plan of her nature, though possibly possessing an order of its own, was incompatible with the scheme of the rest of the universe; in other words, the child could never, apparently, come into harmony with her surroundings, unless the ruling destiny of the world should, from divine, become diabolic. “I have no Heavenly Father!” she exclaims, touching the scarlet letter on her mother's bosom with her small forefinger: and how, indeed, could the result of an evil deed be good? There is “fire in her and throughout her,” as befits “the unpremeditated offshoot of a passionate moment,” and it is a fire that seems to have in it at least as much of an infernal as of a heavenly ardor; and in her grim little philosophy, the scarlet emblem is the heritage of the maturity of all her sex. “Will it not come of its own accord, when I am a woman grown?” And yet she is a guiltless child, with all a child's freshness and spontaneity.

This contrast, or, perhaps it is more correct to say, mingling, of the opposite poles of being, sin and innocence, in Pearl's nature is an extraordinary achievement; enabling us, as it does, to recognize the intrinsic ugliness of sin. Pearl is like a beautiful but poisonous flower, rejoicing in its poison, and receiving it as the vital element of life. But the beauty makes the ugliness only the more impressive, because we feel it to be a magical or phantasmal beauty, enticing like the apples of Sodom, but full of bitterness within. It is the beauty which sin wears to the eyes of the tempted, — a beauty, therefore, which has no real existence, but is attributed by the insanity of lust. Now, if Pearl were a woman, this strong external charm of hers would perplex the reader, in much the same way that the allurements of sin bewilder its votaries. The difficulty is to distinguish between what is really and permanently good and what only appears so while the spell lasts. Pearl being a child, however, no such uncertainty can occur. She has not, as yet, what can in strictness be termed a character; she is without experience, and therefore devoid of either good or evil principles; she possesses a nature, and nothing more. The affection which she excites, consequently, is immediately perceived to be due neither to her beauty not to her intellectual acuteness; still less to the evil effluence which exhales from these, and is characteristic of them. These things all stand on one side; and the innocent, irresponsible infant soul stands on the other. Each defines and emphasizes the other: so that so far from one being led to confuse them, so far from being in danger of loving evil because we love Pearl, we love her just in proportion to our abhorrence of the evil which empoisons her manifestations. The same discrimination could not be so sharply made (if, indeed, it could be made at all) in the case of a Pearl who, under unchanged conditions, had attained maturity. For her character would then be formed, and the evil which came to her by inheritance would so have tinged and moulded her natural traits that we should inevitably draw in the poison and the perfume at a single breath, — ascribe to evil the charm which derives from good, and pollute good with the lurid hues of evil. The history of the race abundantly demonstrates that a chief cause of moral perversity and false principle has been our assumption of absolute proprietorship in either the good or the evil of our actions. Pearl, still in the instinctive stage of development, shows us the way out of this labyrinth. As the pure sunlight vivifies noxious as well as beneficent forms of existence, so the evil proclivities of the child's nature are energized, though not constituted, by the divine source of her being.

It would be interesting (parenthetically) to draw a parallel between Pearl and Beatrice, in Rappaccini's Daughter. Both are studies in the same direction, though from different standpoints. Beatrice is nourished upon poisonous plants, until she becomes herself poisonous. Pearl, in the mysterious prenatal world, imbibes the poison of her parents' guilt. But, in either instance, behind this imported evil stands the personal soul: and the question is, Shall the soul become the victim of its involuntary circumstances? Hawthorne, in both cases, inclines to the brighter alternative. But the problem of Beatrice is more complicated than that of Pearl. She was not born in guilt; but she was brought up (to translate the symbolism) amidst guilty associations, so that they had come to be the very breath of her life. They turn out powerless, however, to vitiate her heart, and she is able to exclaim, at last, to her enraged lover, “Was there not, from the first, more poison in thy nature than in mine?” Although, for inscrutable purposes, God may see fit to incarnate us in evil, our souls shall not thereby suffer corruption; possibly, indeed, such evil incarnation may draw off harmlessly, because unconsciously, some deadlier evil lurking in the spirit, which would else have destroyed both soul and body. Pearl, on the other hand, has an unexceptionable moral environment: her evil is not, like Beatrice's, imbibed from without, but is manifested from within; and if “what cometh out of the mouth defileth a man,” her predicament would seem hopeless. But, in truth, Pearl's demon was summoned into existence, not by her own acts, but by the act of others; and, unless with her own conscious consent, it cannot pollute her. Meanwhile, with that profound instinct of self-justification which antedates both reason and conscience in the human soul, the child is impelled on all occasions to assert and vindicate her cause, — the cause of the scarlet letter. She will not consent to have it hidden or disavowed. She mocks and persecutes her mother, so long as the latter would disguise from her the true significance of the badge. When Hester casts it away, she stamps and cries with passion and will not be pacified till it is replaced. She distrusts the minister, save when, as in his plea for Hester in the governor's hall and his midnight vigil on the scaffold, he approaches an acknowledgment of his true position. His promise to appear with her mother and herself “at the great Judgment Day” excites her scorn. “Thou wast not bold, thou wast not true!” she cries. “Thou wouldst not promise to take my hand and mother's hand, to-morrow noontide!” — and she washes from her forehead the kiss he gives her during the interview in the forest. In a word, she will have truth in all things: without truth nothing is good; nor, with truth, can anything be evil. In the deepest sense, this is not only true, but it is the truth of the book. The perfectibility of man being infinite, the best man and the worst man alike must fall infinitely short of perfection: but every one can account honestly for such talents as he has; and it is always the motive, never the achievement, the sincerity, not the sound, that Divine Justice regards. A Thug, who should devoutly believe in the holiness of his mission, would fare better than an evangelist, who should lead a thousand souls to salvation, not for God's glory, but for his own. So when little Pearl would frankly unfold the banner of the scarlet letter, and openly fight beneath it, we feel that God will give her victory, not over her apparent enemies, but over herself.

She is so much alive as to live independently of her actual appearances in the story. The imagination which there bodies her forth has done its work so well as to have imparted somewhat of its own power to the reader; and we can picture Pearl in other scenes and at other epochs in her career, and can even argue of her fate, had the conditions been different for her. Suppose, for example, that Hester and the minister had made good their escape from Boston, or that the latter's confession had been delayed until Pearl had passed the age of puberty. In either of these or a dozen other possible alternatives, the progress of her growth would have had a new and important interest, conducting to fresh regions of speculation. But Hawthorne never allows the claims of a part to override the whole; the artist in him would permit nothing out of its due proportion; and Pearl, for all her untamable vitality, is kept strictly to her place and function in the story. Where she speaks one word for her personal, she speaks two for her representative, character. There seems to be no partiality on the author's part; nor, on the other hand, is there any indifference. The same quiet light of charity irradiates each figure in the tale; and he neither makes a pet of Pearl, nor a scapegoat of Roger Chillingworth.

Dramatically, the last-named personage plays perhaps the most important part of the four; he communicates to the plot whatever movement it exhibits. But what renders him chiefly remarkable is the fact that, although he stands as the injured husband, and therefore with the first claim to our sympathy and kindness, he in reality obtains neither, but appears more devoid of attraction than any other character in the tale. This would seem an unconventional and rather venturesome proceeding; for the average mind, in modern English fiction, finds itself under moral obligations to use every precaution, lest the reader fall into some mistake as to the legitimate objects of favor and of reprobation. Continental novelists, to be sure, have a sort of perverse pleasure in defying Anglo-Saxon taste in this particular, and do not shrink from making the lawful partner of the erring wife either odious or ridiculous. But it will be profitable to inquire in what respect the American romancer follows or diverges from these two methods of treatment.

It is evident, of course, that the fact that a man has suffered injury has nothing to say, one way or the other, as to his personal character; and the only reason why a novelist should represent him as amiable rather than the reverse is (in an instance like the present) that the reader might otherwise, in disliking him, be led to regard too leniently the crime of which he is the victim. Hester Prynne and Dimmesdale, however, are not so presented as to invite such misplaced tenderness on the reader's part; while Chillingworth, on the other hand, though certainly not a lovable, is very far from being an absurd or contemptible, figure. The force, reserve, and dignity of his demeanor win our respect at the outset, and the touches of quiet pathos in his first interview with Hester prepare us to feel a more cordial sentiment. But the purpose of the author is more profound and radical than could be fulfilled by this obvious and superficial way of dealing with the situation. His attitude is not that of a sentimental advocate, but of an impartial investigator; he is studying the nature and effect of sinful passions, and is only incidentally concerned with the particular persons who are the exponents thereof. He therefore declines, as we are not long in finding out, to allow the course of events to be influenced by the supposed moral rights or wrongs of either party. He simply penetrates to the heart of each, and discloses the secrets hidden there, — secrets whose general and permanent vastly outweighs their personal and particular significance. The relation of Chillingworth to the lovers has been pronounced, by an able critic, the most original feature of the book. But it did not so appear to the author's mind. It was a necessary outcome of his plan, and seems more original than the rest only because the pervading originality of the whole happens to be more strikingly visible in Chillingworth than elsewhere. But given Hester and the minister, and the punishment inflicted upon the former, and Chillingworth becomes inevitable. For the controlling purpose of the story, underlying all other purposes, is to exhibit the various ways in which guilt is punished in this world, — whether by society, by the guilty persons themselves, or by interested individuals who take the law into their own hands. The method of society has been exemplified by the affixing of the scarlet letter on Hester's bosom. This is her punishment, the heaviest that man can afflict upon her. But, like all legal punishment, it aims much more at the protection of society than at the reformation of the culprit. Hester is to stand as a warning to others tempted as she was: if she recovers her own salvation in the process, so much the better for her; but, for better or worse, society has ceased to have any concern with her. “We trample you down,” society says in effect to those who break its laws, “not by any means in order to save your soul, — for the welfare of that problematical adjunct to your civic personality is a matter of complete indifference to us, — but because, by some act, you have forfeited your claim to our protection, because you are a clog to our prosperity, and because the spectacle of your agony may discourage others of similar unlawful inclinations.” But it is obvious, all the while, that the only crime which society recognizes is the crime of being found out, since a society composed of successful hypocrites would much more smoothly fulfill all social requirements than a society of such heterogeneous constituents as (human nature being what it is) necessarily enter into it now. In a word, society, as at present administered, presents the unhandsome spectacle of a majority of successful hypocrites, on one side, contending against a minority of discovered criminals, on the other; and we are reduced to this paradox, — that the salvation of humanity depends primarily on the victory of the criminals over the hypocrites. Of course, this is only another way of saying that hypocrisy is the most destructive to the soul of all sins; and meanwhile we may comfort ourselves with the old proverb that hypocrisy itself is the homage which vice pays to virtue, or, if the inward being of society were in harmony with its outward seeming, heaven would appear on earth.

Hester, then, the social outcast, finds no invitation to repentance in the law that crushes her. The only alternative it offers her is abject self-extinction, or defiance. She chooses the latter: but at this point her course is swayed by a providential circumstance with which society had nothing to do. “Man had marked this woman's sin by a scarlet letter, which had such potent and disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy could reach her, save it were sinful like herself. God, as a direct consequence of the sin which man had thus punished, had given her a lovely child, whose place was on that same dishonored bosom, to connect her parent forever with the race and descent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul in heaven.” The sacred obligation of maternity—the more sacred to Hester because it seems the only sacred thing left to her—restrains her from plunging recklessly into the abyss of sin, towards which her punishment would naturally impel her. “Make my excuse to him, so please you,” she says, with a triumphant smile, to old Mistress Hibbins, in response to the latter's invitation to meet the Black Man in the forest. “I must tarry at home and keep watch over my little Pearl. Had they taken her from me, I would willingly have gone with thee into the forest, and signed my name in the Black Man's book too, and that with mine own blood!” But although she is thus saved from further overt degradation, she is as far from repentance as ever. Standing, as she did, alone with Pearl amidst a hostile world, her life turned, in a great measure, from passion and feeling to thought. She cast away the fragments of a broken chain. The world's law was no law for her mind. She assumed a freedom of speculation which her neighbors, had they known it, would have held to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatized by the scarlet letter. Shadowy guests entered her lonesome cottage that would have been as perilous as demons to their entertainer, could they have been seen so much as knocking at her door. “There was wild and ghastly scenery all around her, and a home and comfort nowhere. At times, a fearful doubt strove to possess her soul, whether it were not better to send Pearl at once to Heaven, and go herself to such futurity as Eternal Justice might provide. The scarlet letter had not done its office.”

Such being the result of society's management of the matter, let us see what success attended the efforts of an individual to take the law into his own hands. It is to exemplify this phase of the subject that Roger Chillingworth exists; and his operations are of course directed not against Hester (“I have left thee to the scarlet letter,” he says to her. “If that have not avenged me, I can do no more!”), but against her accomplice. This accomplice is unknown; that is, society has not found him out. But he is known to himself, and consequently to Roger Chillingworth, who is a symbol of a morbid and remorseless conscience. Chillingworth has been robbed of his wife. But between that and other kinds of robbery there is this difference, — that he who is robbed wishes not to recover what is lost, but to punish the robber. And his object in inflicting this punishment is not the robber's good, nor the wife's good, nor even the public good; but revenge, pure and simple. The motive or passion which actuates him, is, in short, a wholly selfish one. It was deeply provoked, no doubt; but so, also, in another way, was the crime which it would requite. Unlike the latter, moreover, it involves no risk; on the contrary, it is enforced by the whole weight of social opinion. If the man had really or unselfishly loved his wife, he would not act thus. His wish would be to shield her, — to protect the sanctity of the marriage relation, as typified in her, from further pollution. His hostility to the seducer, even, would be more public than personal, — hatred of the sin, not of the individual; for men support with considerable equanimity the destruction of other men's married happiness. But, by bringing the matter to the personal level, Chillingworth confesses his indifference to any but personal considerations, not to mention his disbelief in God. As regards religion, indeed, he declares himself a fatalist. “My old faith,” he says to Hester, “explains all that we do and all that we suffer. By thy first step awry thou didst plant the germ of evil; but since that moment it has all been a dark necessity. Ye that have wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of typical illusion; neither am I fiend-like, who have snatched a fiend's office from his hands. It is our fate. Let the black flower blossom as it may!” Accordingly, Chillingworth is an image in little of society; and the external difference between his action and that of society is due to unlikeness not of inward motive, but of outward conditions. The revenge of society consists in publishing the sinner's ignominy. But this method would baffle Chillingworth's revenge just where he designed it to be most effective; for, by leaving the sinner with no load of secret guilt in his heart, it is inadvertently merciful in its very unmercifulness. The real agony of sin, as Chillingworth clearly perceived, lies not in its commission, which is always delightful, nor in its open punishment, which is a kind of relief, but in the dread of its discovery. The revenge which he plans, therefore, depends above all things upon keeping his victim's secret. By rejecting all brutal and obvious methods he gains entrance into a much more sensitive region of torture. He will not poison Hester's babe, because he knows that it will live to cause its mother the most poignant pangs she is capable of feeling. He will not sacrifice Hester, because “what could I do better for my object than to let thee live, than to give thee medicines against all harm and peril of life, so that this burning shame may still blaze upon thy bosom?” And, finally, he will not reveal the minister's guilt. “Think not,” he says, “that I shall, to my own loss, betray him to the gripe of the law. … Let him live! Let him hide himself in outward honor, if he may! Not the less he shall be mine!” And afterwards, when years had vindicated the diabolical accuracy of his judgment, “Better he had died at once!” he exclaims, in horrible triumph. “He fancied himself given over to a fiend, to be tortured with frightful dreams and desperate thoughts, the sting of remorse and despair of pardon, as a foretaste of what awaits him beyond the grave. But it was the constant shadow of my presence, the closest propinquity of the man whom he had most vilely wronged, and who had grown to exist only by this perpetual poison of the direst revenge!” But this carnival of refined cruelty, as is abundantly evident, can be productive of nothing but evil to all concerned; evil to the victim, and still more evil, if possible, to the executioner, who, finding himself transformed by his own practices from a peaceful scholar to a fiend, makes Dimmesdale answerable for the calamity, and proposes to wreak fresh vengeance upon him on that account. And it demonstrates the truth that the only punishment which man is justified in inflicting upon his fellow is the punishment which is incidental to his being restrained from further indulgence in crime. Such restraint acts as a punishment, because the wicked impulse is thereby prevented from realizing itself; but it is intrinsically an act not of revenge, but of love, since the criminal is thereby preserved from increasing his sinful burden by accomplishing in fact what he had purposed in thought. The Puritan system was selfish and brutal, merely; Chillingworth's was satanically malignant; but both alike are impotent to do anything but inflame the evils they pretend to assuage.

Thus it comes to pass that after “seven years,” or any greater or less lapse of time, the culprits are just as remote from true repentance as they were at the moment of committing their sin. Society and the individual have both demonstrated their incapacity to deal with the great problem of human error. Neither suppression nor torture is of any avail. The devil is always anxious to be enlisted against himself, but his reasons are tolerably transparent. When, at length, Hester and Dimmesdale meet again, they are ripe to fall more deeply and irrevocably than before. The woman faces the prospect boldly, thinking more of her lover than of herself; he trembles in his flesh, but is willing in his heart; but there is no sincere hesitation on either side. One hour of genuine remorse would have given them insight to perceive that no such shallow device as flight could bring them peace; for it would have shown them that the source of their misery was not the persecution suffered from without, but the inward violation committed by themselves. Chillingworth comprehends the situation perfectly, and quietly makes his preparations, not to obstruct their escape, but to accompany it. This is the most hideous episode in the story, and well represents the bottomless slough of iniquity which awaits the deliberate choice of evil. And it elevates Chillingworth into the bad eminence of chief criminal of the three. Not only is his actual wickedness greater, but the extenuation is less. The lovers might plead their love, but he only his hate. They can ask each other's forgiveness and implore God's mercy, when, in that final death scene of “triumphant ignoniminy,” they make the utmost atonement in their power; but for Chillingworth, the merciless and unforgiving, there can be no forgiveness and no mercy. “When, in short, there was no more devil's work for him to do, it only remained for the unhumanized mortal to betake himself whither his master would find him tasks enough, and pay him his wages duly.”

This interpretation of his character may profitably be pondered by the student of the human soul. From the fate of Hester and Dimmesdale we may learn that it avails not the sinner to live a life of saintly deeds and aims, but to be true; not to scourge himself, to wear sackcloth, or to redeem other souls, but openly to accept his shame. The poison of sin is not so much in the sin itself as in the concealment; for all men are sinners, but he who conceals his sin pretends a superhuman holiness. To acknowledge our sins before God, in the ordinary sense of the phrase, is a phrase, and no more, unproductive of absolution. But to acknowledge our sins before men is, in very truth, to acknowledge them before God; for the appeal is made to the human conscience, and the human conscience is the miraculous presence of God in human nature, and from such acknowledgment absolution is not remote. The reason is that such acknowledgment surrenders all that is most dear to the unregenerate heart, and thereby involves a humiliation or annihilation of evil pride which eradicates sinful appetite. All sin is based on selfishness; but the supreme abdication of self, postulated by voluntary and unreserved self-revelation, leaves no further basis for sin to build on. The man who has never been guilty of actual sin is peculiar rather than fortunate; but in all events he has no cause to pride himself on the immunity, which indicates at best that he has been spared adequate temptation. The sins forbidden in the decalogue are fatal only after the sinner has deliberately said, “Evil, be thou my good!” or, in the sublime figure of the Scripture, has blasphemed the Holy Ghost. Hester and Dimmesdale, in the story, stop short of taking this step, but Chillingworth actually begins by taking it. It is the unpardonable sin, not because God is wanting in mercy towards it, but because its very nature is to cause its perpetrator to withdraw himself from all mercy. He hugs it to himself as a virtue, as the virtue of virtues; and the more lost he becomes, the more virtuous does he fancy himself to be. It consists, broadly speaking, in disowning one's human brotherhood and laying claim (on whatever pretext) to personal and peculiar favor at God's hands. Such a person will contemplate with complacency the damnation of all the rest of mankind, so that his own hold upon the divine approbation be secure. In his earlier pieces (notably in The Man of Adamant, and Ethan Brand), Hawthorne has more than once touched upon this subject, but in the story Roger Chillingworth he gives it a larger development.

Chillingworth starts with the notion that he has a right to inflict vengeance. It is a very common notion; many respectable persons possess it; indeed, it is not only compatible with social respectability, but is favorable to it. But vengeance, when prosecuted with the deliberation and circumspection observed by Chillingworth, has this singular quality, — that it gives free indulgence to the most cruel and infernal passions of which the human heart is capable, unmodified by any fear of social odium; though here, and throughout, a marked distinction should be made between the idea of society as at present organized and that of mankind or humanity; the former being a purely artificial parody and perversion of the divinely beneficent order of which we already catch occasional glimpses in the latter. This peculiarity of vengeance first stupefies the voice of conscience in the perpetrator, and thereafter has him in complete subjection, and can lead him through the depths of the bottomless pit without his once suspecting that he is out of arm's reach of the archangels. Roger Chillingworth is a good citizen, his private and public reputation are spotless, he is on the best of terms with the governor and the clergy, and his intellectual ability and scientific attainments beget him general respect and admiration. No social test can be applied to him from which he will not emerge unscathed. His hypocrisy is without flaw; it deceives even himself. He is the complete type of the man of the world, the social ideal, — courteous, quiet, well informed, imperturbable. Nevertheless, his moral nature is a poisonous and irreclaimable wilderness, in which blooms not a single flower of heavenly parentage. For he has put his devilish lust of vengeance in the place of God, and day by day he worships it, and performs its bidding. Well might Dimmesdale exclaim, “There is one worse than even the polluted priest! That old man's revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart.” Yet society has no stigma to fix upon his breast.

Hawthorne, however, with characteristic charity, forbears to claim a verdict even against his reprobate. “To all,” he says, “we would fain be merciful;” and he goes so far as to put forth a speculation as to whether “hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.” But hatred grows from self-love; and if love and self-love be not opposites, then neither are light and darkness, or good and evil. It is doubtless true, on the other hand, that we can never be justified in treating the most iniquitous persons as identical with their iniquity, although, in discussing them, it may not always be possible to make the verbal discrimination. In real life there will always be saving clauses, mitigating circumstances, and special conditions whereby the naked crudity of the abstract presentment is modified, as soil and vegetation soften the hard contour of rocks, or as the atmosphere diffuses light and tempers darkness.

Nor would I wish to appear as super-serviceably detecting theories in the mellow substance of Hawthorne's artistic conceptions. He himself felt a repugnance to theories, and in general confined himself to suggestions and intimations; he knew how apt truth is to escape from the severity of a “logical deduction.” Probably, moreover, he was uniformly innocent of any didactic purpose in sitting down to write. He imagined a moral situation, with characters to fit it, and then allowed the theme to grow in such form as its innate force directed, enriching its roots and decorating its boughs with the accumulated wealth of his experience and meditation. In an ordinary novel of episode this system might be an unsafe one to pursue, there being no essential law of development for such things: they are constructed, but do not grow; and if the constructive skill be deficient, there is nothing else to keep them symmetrical. The tree or the flower has only to be planted aright, and wisely watched and tended, and it will make good its own excuse for being; but the house or the ship depends absolutely on the builder. The reason is, of course, that the former, unlike the latter, have a life and a design in themselves. And this, it seems to me, is the difference between stories in Hawthorne's vein and other stories. He is the most modern of writers; he has divined the new birth of literature, which is still unsuspected by most of us, to judge by the present indications. Hitherto, in fiction, we have been content to imitate life, but such imitation has been carried as near to perfection as, perhaps, is profitable. The next step is a great one, but it cannot be shunned, unless we would return upon our tracks, and vamp up afresh the costumes of the past. And what is this new step?

It is not easy to put the definition in words; and certainly it is not intended that we should turn to and write like Hawthorne. But what lies beyond or above an imitation of life? Nothing more nor less, it must be confessed, than life itself. This is a hard saying, but I know not how we are to escape giving ear to it; doubtless, however, a majority of persons will decline to believe, on any terms or in any sense, that a novel or story can ever be exalted from an imitation of life into life itself. And yet Shakespeare's plays are more than imitations of life; and so, it appears to me, is a story like The Scarlet Letter. The plays live, the story is alive. A soul is in it; it is conceived on the spiritual plane. The soul assumes a body, like other souls, and this body may be seen and handled; but the body exists because the soul, beforehand, is, and the latter is independent of the former. How this life may be imparted is another question; but, unquestionably, the process can be no easy one. He who gives life can have no life to give save his own. It is not a matter of note-books, of observation, of learning, of cleverness. The workshop from which issue works that live is a very interior chamber indeed; and only those who have entered it, perhaps not even they, can reveal its secrets.

Discreet readers will not construe me too literally when I venture the opinion that the day of dead or galvanized fiction is coming to an end. Let the circulating libraries have no misgivings; nothing is more certain than that, for many a day and year to come, their shelves will groan, as of yore, with admirable examples of the class alluded to. Moreover, Shakespeare lived a long while ago, and Homer and Moses longer yet; so that it might seem as if the threatened danger were safely astern of us, not to mention that, just at present, there seems to be a more than ordinary quantity of cunningly wrought waxen images on hand. As against those arguments and indications, it can only be urged that the progress of the human race probably implies much more than electricity and steering-balloons would prepare us for; and that the true conquest of matter by mind, being a religious rather than a scientific transaction is likely to be felt, obscurely and vaguely, long before it can be definitely comprehended and acknowledged.

What Jess Reads

Just a girl and her books

Book Review: The Scarlet Letter

THE SCARLET LETTER | Nathaniel Hawthorne 11.05.2009 (originally published 03.16.1850) | Penguin Books Rating: 3/5 stars

THE SCARLET LETTER is a classic tale about Hester Prynne, a woman sentenced to wear a red letter A on her clothes for committing the sin of adultery. The novel opens with Hester, standing upon the scaffold with her infant daughter in hand, receiving her sentence in front of the entire town. The crowd is full of town gossips who believe Hester should be met with punishment far more severe, such as torture and even death. Hester refuses to lay the blame for her adulterous actions on anyone aside from herself, as she denies the town an answer of who is the father of her child.

Immediately Hester is in turmoil, not just from the never-ending stares at her marking, but because of an evil man who knows her secret. As this man is a stranger to her town, Hester is ordered to keep his true identity a secret for fear that he will reveal the identity of her lover to the town, bringing more shame upon her. Hester vows to live a life of solitude, keeping her garment and outward appearance bland and serving the town as a seamstress. Little Pearl, the child created by this adultery, is an odd being who keeps her mother on her toes and remains the one ray of sunshine in her life through this dark time. Slowly, as the years flash by, Hester begins to take claim of her situation and move past the feelings of embarrassment associated with her scarlet brand, only to have her world brought back down to reality in one final dramatic sequence of events.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writing style is one of poetry throughout THE SCARLET LETTER, with long flowing paragraphs describing scenes, people, and situations. While some may be drawn to this style of writing, I was left feeling bored and as if the book drew on too long. As a reader of largely thrillers and crime fiction, which are known for typically being fast paced, I struggled with holding my attention to reading this book. In addition, the overarching Christian and religious themes were something I am not interested in. I understand that at the time these ideas were of a main focus for audience that Hawthorne intended this book to reach. While I struggled a bit with the religious focus, I did find myself cheering for Hawthorne’s more liberal take, indicating throughout that while he did find Hester’s act of adultery to be a sin, he did not agree with the extreme measures the town desired or even the wearing of the scarlet letter A. Despite my own personal issues and stylistic preferences, I found Hawthorne’s novel to be engaging and a plot that provided both romance and despair. It is clear why THE SCARLET LETTER remains a classic throughout this time period.

Share this:

• Book Review
• Classic Literature
• Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Penguin Books
• The Scarlet Letter

Published by jess_reads_books

View all posts by jess_reads_books

One thought on “ Book Review: The Scarlet Letter ”

• Pingback: August Wrap Up – What Jess Reads

Leave a comment Cancel reply

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar

Themes and Analysis

The scarlet letter, by nathaniel hawthorne.

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘The Scarlet Letter’ is stuffed with themes that border around aspects of religion and human morality such as sinning, confessing, and being penalized for such sin - much to the author’s intention of sending some strong moral lessons to his readership.

About the Book

Article written by Victor Onuorah

Degree in Journalism from University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

Hawthorne’s move to go by such name as ‘ The Scarlet Letter ’ for the book’s title is symbolic in itself and already hints at the themes of penitence and punishment for the crime of adultery committed by two of the book’s major characters in Hester Prynne and the priest – Arthur Dimmesdale. There are some foundational themes as there are other subsets that still carry a vital message in them. The most important ones will be analyzed in this article.

Sin and Punishment

These are probably the two most obvious themes of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘ The Scarlet Letter ’ and they are very clearly executed throughout the pages of the book – beginning from the first chapter. 

Hester Prynne, who is the heroine of the book, is one of the characters who bear such guilts of sin and punishment. The sin for which she is being punished is that of adultery – which she commits with a Christian preacher, Arthur Dimmesdale.

Being she lives in the era of a Christian-inspired puritan society, her punishment becomes one of massive social shaming and disgrace – whereby she has to wear a dress with a large inscription of the letter ‘A’ appearing on her chest in blood red color. 

Contrition and Penitence

Hester and Dimmesdale – two prominent characters harboring the most damnable sin of their era – appear to have had a contrite heart after the act, particularly with Hester, who is publicly announced and disgraced. 

Readers could feel the genuineness of Hester’s contrite heart, having been legally married to Roger Chillingworth, her long lost husband – even though she would never regret the love she feels for Dimmesdale and the product of such love being her child, Pearl. 

Gender and Status Inequality Before the Law

Nathaniel Hawthorne, through ‘ The Scarlet Letter ,’ may have tried to point out the sheer inequality of the purity society before the rule of law. Hawthorne’s time is critical of several aspects of Puritanism, and here questions why preacher Arthur Dimmesdale doesn’t get served the same amount of humiliation as Hester gets. 

Though an argument can be raised that the executors of the puritan laws don’t punish Dimmesdale because they do not know for sure if he committed the crime – especially with Hester refusing to give that information out. Still, one can easily sense that they don’t do enough to get the man who’s responsible. 

Two hypotheses here are one; their interest in not punishing men but the women in such crimes. Two, Dimmesdale’s religious status makes him a very important person, so the executors would be tricky with handling a case of such a class. 

Necromancy and witchcraft

There is a massive dose of talks and meetings about and with witches, and even the devil – who is referred to in the book as ‘ The Black Man .’ These subjects are part of what gives the book its dark, spooky ambiance characteristic of gothic fiction. 

Mistress Hibbins is a high-profile suspect whose behavior is, by a puritan society’s standards, termed diabolic and hellish. Hibbins goes about negatively influencing people – like Hester and Pearl – instilling strange, anti puritan mentality in them, conducting and attending meetings and conventions where they invoke and commune with ‘The Black Man’ or devil himself. 

Key Moments in The Scarlet Letter

• After losing his job with the Salem Custom House, a man puts together a piece of the manuscript that he had discovered littering in the attic of his former job. On the cover is an inscription, ‘Scarlet Letter A .’ 
• The story which he has assembled from it narratives the story of a young woman called Hester Prynne who lives in a 1600s puritan society. 
• She appears to have been imprisoned for a heinous crime and is processioned out and made to stand over a public platform wearing a dress with the scarlet letter ‘A’ written boldly on her breast, on which she also carries her baby. 
• The crime for which she is paraded is adultery, and under a typical puritan leadership, social shaming and scorning are the repercussions for such acts. 
• While she faces the worse moment of her life, a man stands a stone’s throw away in the crowd observing the whole event. His name is Roger Chillingworth, the long-lost husband of the woman being punished at the platform. 
• On the platform with Hester is a popular preacher of the town, rev. Arthur Dimmesdale publicly pressures her to say who’s responsible for her baby, but Hester wouldn’t tell and is thrust back into her cell.
• With a keen interest in the matter, Chillingworth lies that he is a doctor to get access to his wife, and when he gets past security into the cell, he threatens her not to let anyone know she is married to him and that if she does, he would search out the man responsible and hurt him very badly.
• Following her release, Hester moves away from town and tries to survive as a dressmaker with young Pearl. Chillingworth is still in town posing as a doctor as he tries to unearth the father of his wife’s baby. And by now, Dimmesdale, the popular town people’s preacher, has failing health and is being tended to by Chillingworth. 
• Pearl grows fond of the scarlet ‘A’ on her mother’s breast, but Hester wouldn’t tell her the truth about it. 
• With Chillingworth now spending so much time with Dimmesdale, he starts to notice an unusually strange correlation between Hester’s case and the preacher’s health history. 
• One faithful day during Dimmesdale’s medical examination, Chillingworth finds that his patient has a similar scarlet letter ‘A’ etched inside his chest. He is convinced Dimmesdale is Hester’s lover and father of the illegitimate child, Pearl. 
• With this knowledge, Chillingworth decides to exert revenge on Dimmesdale by giving him the wrong meds and treating him so much so that his health deteriorates further by the day. 
• For Dimmesdale, it seems that his inability to confess publicly is eating him up and causing him constant emotional trauma and heartache. And on several occasions, he doesn’t eat and chastises and whips himself for his mistake. 
• On a faithful day, just after twilight, troubled by his guilt, Dimmesdale climbs up the platform and is joined by Hester and her daughter shortly, while Chillingworth skulks by the shadows observing them before a shooting star shimmers through the night sky to reveal his presence. 
• What follows next is an exchange of emotions. Hester begs Chillingworth to stop torturing Dimmesdale, but he argues he’s lenient to him. 
• Hester then plans a rendezvous with Dimmesdale in the wilderness, where she exposes Chillingworth’s real identity and begs Dimmesdale to elope with her across the Atlantic to start afresh in a new, distant town. He agrees to go with her after he has delivered a scheduled sermon. 
• On the day of the sermon, Dimmesdale is moved by his preaching that he decides to confess publicly that he is Hester’s lover and the father to Pearl (both of who had joined him on the platform). Opening his chest, he exposes a scarlet cut he had been carrying in his chest and dies as soon as Pearl kisses him.
• Chillingworth’s revenge is taken from him, and he dies a few months later. Hester leaves town with her daughter – explores Europe and marries a wealthy home, and seldom writes her mother. 
• When Hester dies, she is laid to rest beside Dimmesdale, and the later ‘A’ is erected in their resting place.

Style and Tone 

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writing style is typically one that deploys a lot of metaphors and symbolism to execute his works – with the end goal often having a ton of morals to impact on the reader.

Hawthorne’s works are mostly mysterious, somber, and morose in terms of their themes and storylines. ‘ The Scarlet Letter ’ is no different from his typical style and follows his trademark standard for novel writing. 

The tone in ‘ The Scarlet Letter ’ is mostly sad and contrite, but also critical and disenchantment about puritan cultures, their leaders, and their tendency for being highly hypocritical.

Figurative Languages

Hawthorne brings the pages of ‘The Scarlet Letter’ to life with his heavy use of figurative expressions. Among the figurative language used include metaphor – which seems to appear pervasively throughout the book.

The author also uses tools like irony and personification to highlight his critiques of the purity legacy and traditions. 

Analysis of Symbols in The Scarlet Letter 

This is perhaps the foremost symbolism in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book and represents a variety of things. One such thing is that it serves as an identity for the transgressor or sinner of adultery – as is the case with the protagonist, Hester Prynne. 

Hester’s daughter’s character also has an allegorical attachment to its overall essence. Pearl is a direct repercussion of Hester’s son of adultery, but also a symbol of hope for a better life, in the latter part of the book.

Chillingworth

In the book’s reality, he is the husband of Hester, but in terms of the motif to which he represents, Chillingworth proves to be as his name appears; cold. He’s a cold and means man towards the people around him, and this is perhaps one of the reasons Hester could never find love with him. 

What is the main theme in ‘The Scarlet Letter’ by Nathaniel Hawthorne?

Sin and punishment are probably the two most discussed themes in ‘ The Scarlet Letter ,’ and these subjects are pervasive and heavily indulged in by the author throughout the book. 

What does the color red represent in ‘The Scarlet Letter’?

The color red represents sin, and in the book’s case, the sin of adultery – which Hester, the protagonist, is indicted of from the onset of the book. 

What narrative style is deployed by Nathaniel Hawthorne in ‘The Scarlet Letter’?

Nathaniel Hawthorne utilizes the third person narrative technique in his book, ‘ The Scarlet Letter, ’ as this allows the narrator to tell his story subjectively – but from a rounded, three-dimensional standpoint on the characters. 

Join Our Community for Free!

Exclusive to Members

Create Your Personal Profile

Engage in Forums

Join or Create Groups

Save your favorites, beta access.

About Victor Onuorah

Victor is as much a prolific writer as he is an avid reader. With a degree in Journalism, he goes around scouring literary storehouses and archives; picking up, dusting the dirt off, and leaving clean even the most crooked pieces of literature all with the skill of analysis.

Join Our Free Community

Engage in Literary Forums

Create and Join Groups

Create your own profile

See fewer ads

Save and bookmark articles

Discover literature and connect with others just like yourself!

Start the Conversation. Join the Chat.

There was a problem reporting this post.

Block Member?

Please confirm you want to block this member.

You will no longer be able to:

• See blocked member's posts
• Mention this member in posts
• Invite this member to groups

Please allow a few minutes for this process to complete.

Book Review: The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne

“ She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom .”

― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

The red letter “A” is engraved on the clothes of a woman called Hester. She must carry her sin with her through the alleyways of a small Puritan Town of 17th century Boston, settled by the newly arrived colonists from Europe. This symbol is The Scarlet Letter . Its choice of colour – red perhaps is to emphasise on the demonic origins of the mark that is forced on to Hester. Hester is a walking reminder to the Puritan town that any transgressions amount to social annihilation. No woman should follow in Hester’s footsteps if she desires any position within the society.

The Plot – a tale of chastisement and shame

The Scarlet Letter is a historical fiction by Nathaniel Hawthrone. The book was published in 1850, first in America. It recently featured at number sixteen spot on Guardian’s list of The Best Novels Written In English. 

The Scarlet Letter follows the story of a woman called Hester Pryne and her illegitimate child Pearl. In the townspeople’s eyes, Hester is a married woman awaiting her husband, who is believed to be lost at sea. However, in her long wait, she becomes pregnant with a child deemed a product of Hester’s infidelity. The only punishment for such a sinful act of passion is banishment. Hester’s circumstances do not deter her. She is a committed mother to Pearl and lives life on her own terms, undeterred by societal perceptions of her, except in matters concerning Pearl.

Also read: Book Review: The Good Girls By Sonia Faleiro

Corollary to Hester’s story is her lover, Arthur Dimmesdale’s, whose identity as Hester’s lover remains unidentified till the end of the book. Dimmesdale is the town “ Father “. He is young, charismatic and exceedingly revered by the people of his parish. However, Dimmesdale’s health fails incrementally throughout the book. His deterioration is linked to both – his secret “ sin ” with Hester and the doctor Roger Chillingworth who wishes to pry on Dimmesdale. He, unknown to the townspeople, is the “ jilted ” husband of Hester.

Nathaniel Hawthrone – the author and his private influences

Nathaniel Hawthrone , born on 4 July 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, was an American novelist and short-story writer known for his emphatic use of allegory and symbolism as effective literary tools in his writing. With its puritanical background, The Scarlet Letter may owe its existence to the strong Puritanical character of his ancestors. Hawthrone’s 17th-century ancestor William Hawthrone, a magistrate, sentenced a Quaker woman to public whipping and was a staunch advocate of Puritan Orthodoxy. One of William’s sons, John Hawthrone, was also among the three judges in the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. The trials were the result of mass hysteria and belief in supernatural phenomena that ultimately led to the execution of around nineteen women who were accused of witchcraft. Almost hundred men and women either escaped or suffered persecution in the form of these trials. Clearly, family history was a strong influence for this layered story on Puritanism and its practice in a new land.

The book anchors itself on four major characters.

Hester Pryne , the “ lustful seductress “, the resilient mother, the loyal lover and above all, a woman of grit.

Pearl , between being the “ elf-child ” and “ demon off-spring “, is perhaps the most reflective of all characters. Society’s treatment of Pearl, on the one hand, shows the superficial nature of Puritanism’s charities and love. Pearl’s unrelenting inquisitiveness on human relationships makes her a symbol of both – Hester’s adulterous transgression and Arthur Dimmesdale’s immorality, evident both in his act of passion with Hester, unsuitable to his office and his abandonment of Hester and Pearl in a society that constantly mocks them and keeps them on the fringe.

Arthur Dimmesdale is perhaps the only major Puritan Character – he is an ordained minister. However, his character paints the conflicting rigidity and inflexibility of Puritanism and the emergent consuming guilt that envelops us. He is suffocated by his “ sinful ” transgressions with Hester. After all, he is only a human. However, his religion and, more so, his profession forces him to be devoid of his humanity. His frailty is his most striking feature; it seems clouded by his outward charms as a minister. His sins are his own, and yet he has no way to claim them and redeem himself.  

Roger Chillingworth is an entitled and unavailable husband. He demanded a monopoly of Hester’s love when married. When Hester transgresses marital norms- he is not just a jilted husband, but a vengeful one too. However, Chillingworth’s vengeance doesn’t come from his love for Hester, as much as it seems to come from his own fragile ego and sense of self, that is rooted in feeding off and monopolising another person’s vulnerability; whether it’s Hester’s affection or Dimmesdale’s guilt.

The book then has four running themes that intertwine to produce a unified experience of truth. Hester’s life represents one lived in ever-loyal love; Pearl is symbolic of life – not only in her youthful vigour and force but also in her reflectivity and tendency to upturn the status quo. Dimmesdale’s life represents guilt’s all-consuming nature and how it corrupts and distorts one’s essence. Chillingworth is a leech, pure evil. He only serves one purpose – a reminder of what becomes of evil men, but also what allows evils to thrive.Finally, all these facets coalesce into truth. Truth is multi-faceted. There can never be the truth, only truths.

Also read: Book Review: The Last Queen By Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the truth.”

Feminist Flavours and Relevance

Any act of defiance in a patriarchal society by a woman may not necessarily be feminist but certainly carries a feminist undertone.

Hester’s act of having a sexual partner outside of marriage may not be a vindictive feminist act. In fact, it tantamounts to infidelity, which in most societies is immoral. Yet, Hester’s act is infused with a feminist vigour, for it happens against the backdrop of a soul-sucking marriage and occurs with the awareness that the transgression will only bring shame and dishonour.

However, the novel’s strength does not merely rest on Hester’s transgression of a socially mandated code of conduct but also in her prideful ownership of it. Despite her limitations, what the world sees as Hester’s badge of shame becomes an ornament for Hester. She refuses to abandon the living and constant reminder of her “ sins ” – Pearl. She takes ownership of her and leaves no stone un turned to retain her guardianship. Hester’s love for Pearl is not blind affection, like a mother’s love is often portrayed. She is aware of the trade-off and knowingly makes one, as the author notes “ purchased with all she [Hester] had—her mother’s only treasure!” because “in giving her existence a great law had been broken.”

Finally, Hester never abandons the Scarlet Letter. She prefers her identity to define the letter rather than her being defined by it. In this contradiction, the “ shame ” of Scarlet Letter comes to stand for “ Able ” – Hester’s resilience against all odds makes it so.

Also read: Book Review: The Bell Jar By Sylvia Plath

Hester’s story is not just a story of 17th century Boston, filled with religious Puritans. It is also a story that will resonate and recast itself always as long as women continue to live in a society shaped by the moulds of patriarchy and religion – both mutually reinforcing institutions. One only has to look around and see how we all, like Hester, are with each decision that we make, becoming either complicit in this kind of subordination or leading the way in breaking such moulds.

Harshita is a postgraduate student at the University of Delhi. She is interested in areas of Gender, History and Social History. Her research interests are at the intersection of gender, power and social categorisations.

Related Posts

10 Ecological Fiction Masterpieces Weaving India’s Environmental Ethos

By Sahil Pradhan

Book Review: In ‘Crying In H Mart’ Food Is Memory

By Shivani Yadav

Feminine Dichotomy In Cilappatikaram: Unveiling Kannagi And Matavi

By Samiya Chopra

Books of Brilliance

The latest book reviews and book news, book review: the scarlet letter.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Now and then, I’ll decide to read a classic book to see the hoopla. That is how I ended up reading The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Hester Prynne has given birth to a baby girl and while it is a time to rejoice normally, that is not the case. In Boston, Massachusetts, giving birth to an illegitimate child is a sin. And nobody knows who is the father of the child.

As punishment, Hester has to wear The letter “A” in scarlet color on her for the rest of her life. She is labeled and treated as a outcast in society. That forces her to live in a cabin outside the village and raise her daughter by herself.

We see how exiling Hester and her child impacts the lives of many people in town. Puritan values are questioned by us the reader and the punish Hester receives. Does the punishment fit the crime and the psychological effects that followed?

Published in 1850, The Scarlet Letter went on to sell a lot of copies. The novel was also one of the first to be mass produced and was well-received. probably because it checked off a lot things such as religion, sin, allusions to the Bible.

I was not a fan of the book or the writing. There is such a thing as being too technical and Hawthorne did exactly that. The novel is tedious and goes into too much detail about the scarlet letter on Hester’s chest. He over-explains it and tries to really make sure you understand what is going on because he thinks it will go over your head.

I am glad books are not written like this anymore because it takes the fun out of reading. Hawthorne is not the only one guilty of trying to explain things to a fault but he stands out to me. No other book has felt as tedious as this one. So I won’t be recommending this book but if you want to read a classic, give it a shot.

Share this:

One thought on “ book review: the scarlet letter ”.

Add Comment

• Pingback: 10 Classics That Everyone Should Read  – Books of Brilliance

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Discover more from books of brilliance.

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Type your email…

Continue reading

Why is Christian Science in our name?

Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The Christian Science Church, and we’ve always been transparent about that.

The Church publishes the Monitor because it sees good journalism as vital to progress in the world. Since 1908, we’ve aimed “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind,” as our founder, Mary Baker Eddy, put it.

Here, you’ll find award-winning journalism not driven by commercial influences – a news organization that takes seriously its mission to uplift the world by seeking solutions and finding reasons for credible hope.

Your subscription makes our work possible.

We want to bridge divides to reach everyone.

Get stories that empower and uplift daily.

Already a subscriber? Log in to hide ads .

Select free newsletters:

A selection of the most viewed stories this week on the Monitor's website.

Every Saturday

Hear about special editorial projects, new product information, and upcoming events.

Select stories from the Monitor that empower and uplift.

Every Weekday

An update on major political events, candidates, and parties twice a week.

Twice a Week

Stay informed about the latest scientific discoveries & breakthroughs.

Every Tuesday

A weekly digest of Monitor views and insightful commentary on major events.

Every Thursday

Latest book reviews, author interviews, and reading trends.

Every Friday

A weekly update on music, movies, cultural trends, and education solutions.

The three most recent Christian Science articles with a spiritual perspective.

Every Monday

‘Hester’ imagines a backstory to Hawthorne’s ‘The Scarlet Letter’

Hester Prynne refused to be shamed for her actions in “The Scarlet Letter.” Was Hawthorne writing about someone he knew? 

• By Heller McAlpin Contributor

October 3, 2022

Ever wonder if a real woman might have inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Hester Prynne? On rereading “The Scarlet Letter” as an adult, novelist Laurie Lico Albanese was so taken with its heroine, “who defies powerful men and vengeful villagers by wearing the symbol of her shame like a badge of courage,” that she fabricated a backstory behind the classic. Her new novel is colorful, in more ways than one.

“Hester” is told from the point of a view of Isobel McAllister Gamble, a young Scottish woman stuck in an unfortunate marriage. Soon after she immigrates to America, Isobel falls hard for the handsome, haunted, aspiring writer Nat Hathorne (the “w” in his last name was added later). She announces boldly at the start of her tale: “The true story of how he found his scarlet letter – and then made it larger than life – begins when I was a child in Scotland and he was a fatherless boy writing poetry that yearned and mourned.” 

Set in 19th-century Glasgow, Scotland, and Salem, Massachusetts – with flashbacks to 17th-century witch hunts in both places – “Hester” is a chronicle of ill-fated passion and female persecution. The book explores the weight of family history as Isobel and Nat each grapple with an ancestor’s role in the witch trials, one accused, the other an unrepentant prosecutor.  Albanese’s consideration of inherited guilt also encompasses questions about culpability for forebears’ enrichment through slave trade and labor. (One of the novel’s surprising subplots involves efforts to outfox bounty hunters on the trail of enslaved people who had escaped. The hunters were permitted by law to pursue their human prey even in the supposedly free North.)   

With “Hester,” Albanese has tapped into a rich vein of historical fiction that reimagines famous novels from a female character’s point of view. “Hester” joins books like Jean Rhys’ “Wide Sargasso Sea” (1966), which imagines a backstory behind Rochester’s “mad” first wife from Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre”; Sena Jeter Naslund’s “Ahab’s Wife” (1999), which offers a fresh angle on Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick”; and Christina Baker Kline’s “A Piece of the World” (2017), inspired by Andrew Wyeth’s iconic painting, “Christina’s World.” Like these novels, “Hester” dramatizes the challenges for women seeking freedom and autonomy in a male-dominated world. 

Albanese reminds us in an author’s note that of the five novels Hawthorne published in his lifetime, “The Scarlet Letter” is the only one whose source of inspiration remains murky. Conjectures that Hawthorne shared more with his hypocritical clergyman Arthur Dimmesdale than he ever let on, and that his book was written as a veiled penance, underlie the plot of “Hester.” 

Albanese’s version of the woman who inspired Hester Prynne will appeal to contemporary readers as both a proto-feminist and a forceful single mother. She comes from a long line of red-haired Isobels, beginning with the healer Isobel Gowrie, who barely escaped the murderous zealotry of witch-hunters in 17th century Scotland. One hundred and fifty years later, young Isobel, a gifted needlewoman, dreams of her own escape from the limited options open to women; her greatest desire is to own a dressmaking shop. Alas, she has hitched her star to Edward Gamble, an apothecary with a ruinous penchant for poppy that lands the couple in debtor’s prison. After Isobel’s father bails them out, they sail to Salem in 1829 in hopes of a fresh start. Things don’t turn out as planned.

In addition to her extraordinary talent for embroidery, Isobel is blessed – or cursed, in her late mother’s opinion, who feared its association with sorcery – with what we now know as synesthesia. Isobel’s form of this sensory phenomenon of “joined perception” leads her to associate sights, sounds, words, and letters with specific colors. Fittingly for the purposes of this novel, she associates the letter A with the color scarlet. But in a move that feels too much like narrative convenience, she signs all her needlework with a tiny, hidden scarlet letter A – not for adultery, but for Abington, her birthplace beside the River Clyde in Scotland.

Because most of Isobel’s experiences are literally tinted by the hues she associates with them, the novel is awash in color. Isobel hears her beloved father’s voice as soft caramel, her mother’s as sapphire and emerald. Most women in the book, however, generally speak in pastels. When Nat touches her, Isobel sees “explosions of color… persimmon, cinnamon, India-ink blue, lemon yellow, poppy red, tangerine.” 

Unfortunately, weaving this unusual condition into the narrative comes to feel like a heavy-handed distraction. “Hester” is already richly threaded with so many details, including vivid pictures of life in the bustling port town of 19th century Salem, where newcomers are not welcome and a young redhead with a brogue, however highly skilled, is spurned by employers. While Isobel’s way of seeing leads to rainbow gardens and vibrant tapestries that map her life story, it also leads to some – I hate to say it – purple prose.  

Albanese’s Hathorne is an intriguing character who does not come across well: He is a cad, both cowardly and arrogant. Still, he is not the worst person in “Hester.” Yet Albanese carefully offsets these villains with a wonderful, multiracial cast of supportive, heroic men and women whom Isobel comes to love. Her refusal to be a victim or to allow her daughter to become an object of scorn turns “The Scarlet Letter” on its head. “Hester” is an inspirational tale about the importance of self-determination and the power of women joining together to overcome oppression in its many forms.

Heller McAlpin reviews books regularly for The Monitor, The Wall Street Journal, and NPR.

Help fund Monitor journalism for $11/ month

Already a subscriber? Login

Monitor journalism changes lives because we open that too-small box that most people think they live in. We believe news can and should expand a sense of identity and possibility beyond narrow conventional expectations.

Our work isn't possible without your support.

Unlimited digital access $11/month.

Digital subscription includes:

• Unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
• CSMonitor.com archive.
• The Monitor Daily email.
• No advertising.
• Cancel anytime.

Related stories

Review ‘horse’ unfolds a riveting tale of a champion thoroughbred and his enslaved trainer, review a medici princess rebels against her gilded cage, review did the family of john wilkes booth miss the warning signs, review consolation in solitude: retracing the steps of henry david thoreau, share this article.

Link copied.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

Subscription expired

Your subscription to The Christian Science Monitor has expired. You can renew your subscription or continue to use the site without a subscription.

Return to the free version of the site

If you have questions about your account, please contact customer service or call us at 1-617-450-2300 .

This message will appear once per week unless you renew or log out.

Session expired

Your session to The Christian Science Monitor has expired. We logged you out.

No subscription

You don’t have a Christian Science Monitor subscription yet.

Review – The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Opening thoughts on the scarlet letter by nathaniel hawthorne.

To understand Nathaniel Hawthorne ’s The Scarlet Letter requires an understanding of the setting for the story. The Scarlet Letter was set in the puritan community of 17 th century Boston. The Puritans were a group of religious reformers who arrived in Massachusetts in the 1630s under the leadership of John Winthrop . The puritans were uncharitable, unforgiving and were known for their intolerance of dissenting ideas and lifestyles.

Religion played an important role in the puritan community, and religious leaders were highly regarded, respected and looked up to for guidance. Adultery was a major sin, and public discipline and punishments were used as a deterrent to prevent others from committing the same sin or other crimes as the offending person. The Scarlet Letter expresses relationships, religion, community, discipline and punishment in the puritan community, and is also a moral and psychological exploration of life. The book shows the consequences of sin on the individual as well as the community.

What is The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne About?

As punishment for committing adultery, Hester Prynne has to wear a flaming scarlet letter A embroidered on her dress, by her breast – the A standing for adulteress. During the public interrogation and punishment, she has to parade in front of the entire community with 1,000 eyes staring at and condemning her. For hours Prynne has to stand in the sun, with her baby daughter Pearl snuggled close to her chest.

““People say,” said another, “that the Reverend Master Dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart that such a scandal should have come upon his congregation.” “The magistrates are God-fearing gentlemen, but merciful overmuch, — that is a truth,” added a third autumnal matron. “At the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne’s forehead. Madam Hester would have winced at that, I warrant me. But she, — the naughty baggage, — little will she care what they put upon the bodice of her gown! Why, look you, she may so walk the street as brave as ever!” “Ah, but,” interposed, more softly, a young wife, holding a child by the hand, “let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart.””

While standing there on her pedestal of shame before everyone, Prynne recognizes her husband in the distance standing beside an “Indian” in his native garb. Unbeknownst to the community, her husband has returned as Roger Chillingworth , the town’s doctor, to witness the public persecution of his wife.

After Prynne returns to her prison cell, she is in a state of nervous excitement, and baby Pearl becomes ill and starts to writhe in convulsions. The jailer brings the physician to check both Prynne and Pearl. Her husband explains that Indians had captured him and makes her swear to keep his secret. They have a very frank discussion, and he too also tries to find out who her lover is, but once again she refuses to disclose the information. Chillingworth is not very compassionate in their meeting in the jail cell and you get the sense that he is also mocking her.

Prynne is now keeping secrets for the two men in her life.

Chillinworth makes a promise to himself that he will discover who the mystery lover is. When Prynne is released from her prison cell she is banished from the community and lives in an abandoned cottage on the outskirts. She survives by doing embroidery for people in the town – Prynne does embroidery on gloves, robes, dresses and so on. The hypocrisy of the people shines through – they despise and shun her for being an adulteress, yet they crave the creative designs of her work.

As the story unfolds you see Pearl growing up and following her mother into town when she has to deliver embroidery work. When Pearl is about three years old, Governor Bellingham suggests to Prynne that her child should be taken away from her care and “clad soberly, and disciplined strictly, and instructed in the truths of heaven and earth.” Prynne is having none of this and there is some back and forth between them. All this is done in the presence of Chillingworth and Dimmesdale. The governor decides to ask Pearl where she came from, and even though the little girl knows the answer she decides to tell him that her mother plucked her off a bush of wild roses that grew by the prison door.

Prynne observes her husband during the exchange between her and the governor and notices how much uglier his features have become. This could be symbolic for his ugly character. They still want to take away Pearl and Prynne refuses to yield. She turns to Dimmesdale and begs him to intercede on her behalf, and he nervously does so.  They relent and Pearl walks to where Dimmesdale is standing and takes his hand in hers and lays her cheek against it. He kisses her brow and she laughs and runs down the hall. The onlookers, except for Prynne and Dimmesdale believe Pearl has witchcraft in her, and Chillingworth remarks that the child is strange and that anyone can see her mother in her. Prynne departs with her child.

Dimmesdale health is failing and is wasting away from heart disease. In How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Thomas C. Foster tells us that it’s very important when a character is ill and we need to take note. Chillingworth becomes Dimmesdale’s medical adviser and they start spending a lot of time together as he tries to diagnose the illness. Chillingate also seeks lodging in the same house as Dimmesdale because as he investigates, he suspects that his patient has secrets. Chillingate is also changing and his features are becoming uglier and more evil. Chillingate suspects that the mystery man is Dimmesdale and finally confirms it. The physician treats the ailments, but tortures his patient emotionally. There is a long intercourse between Dimmesdale and Chillingworth, and the reader cannot help but wonder why Prynne would have married the doctor, who is obviously evil to the core.

Over the ensuing years, Dimmesdale condition worsens and he is seeking ways to atone for his sin, except by publicly admitting what he did. When Pearl is seven years old, while walking with her mother one evening they spot him on a scaffold and the two join him and hold hands. Pearl wants him to publicly acknowledge her but he refuses. But the family decide to flee to Europe. The day before they set sail, Dimmesdale gives the sermon of his life. After the sermon, he sees Hester and Pearl on the scaffold and joins them, and confesses his sin publicly, asking God for forgiveness. Very shortly after, he dies but he bids them farewell first. His features suggest that he is finally at peace.

Chillingate had also learns that Prynne, Pearl and Dimmesdale are going to sail away and also buys passage for himself. After Dimmesdale dies, all the life force is sucked out of him and he dies within a year – revenge is never a good thing. It’s interesting that this mean man bequeaths a substantial amount of property in Boston and England to little Pearl, the daughter of his wife Hester Prynne. Shortly after the physician dies, Prynne and her daughter leave Boston, and no one knows where they went.

I recommend that you read The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne but skip “The Custom House – Introductory,” it’s a waste of good time, instead begin reading the book at “The Prison Door.” Because I have read The Scarlet Letter before, I protected myself and didn’t get caught up in the story. I believe that the way the story ends is less than ideal. After how much shame Prynne suffered, why couldn’t she be allowed to experience happiness with Dimmesdale, even though at first he cared more about how he was perceived in the community?

Like most classic literature, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne is not light reading so you have to invest the time. The Scarlet Letter shows us a glimpse of history, and I’m glad it’s history. How can you use this information? What do you have to add to the conversation? Let's keep the conversation flowing, please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.

About the Author  Avil Beckford

Hello there! I am Avil Beckford, the founder of The Invisible Mentor. I am also a published author, writer, expert interviewer host of The One Problem Podcast and MoreReads Success Blueprint, a movement to help participants learn in-demand skills for future jobs. Sign-up for MoreReads: Blueprint to Change the World today! In the meantime, Please support me by buying my e-books Visit My Shop , and thank you for connecting with me on LinkedIn , Facebook , Twitter and Pinterest !

Enjoyed this article?

Find more great content here:

The Power of Noticing by Max Bazerman, Summary

How i lost 170 million dollars by noah kagan, summary, teach yourself how to learn by saundra yancy mcguire, summary.

Notice: All forms on this website are temporarily down for maintenance. You will not be able to complete a form to request information or a resource. We apologize for any inconvenience and will reactivate the forms as soon as possible.

Book Review

The scarlet letter.

• Nathaniel Hawthorne
• Drama , Historical

Readability Age Range

• Ticknor & Fields (1850), Penguin Random House (2014); currently a public domain novel

Year Published

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne has been reviewed by Focus on the Family’s marriage and parenting magazine .

Plot Summary

In 17th-century Boston, citizens of the town gather around the prison house as a young woman named Hester Prynne is led to the scaffold for punishment. Hester emerges from prison carrying her 3-month-old infant daughter, Pearl, who is the product of an adulterous affair. On the bodice of Hester’s dress is a beautifully embroidered scarlet letter “A,” which stands for adulterer. She must always display the letter prominently on her clothing as part of her punishment.

As she stands on the scaffold, she recognizes someone in the back of the crowd. Her estranged husband, Roger Chillingworth, signals for her not to reveal that she knows him. Chillingworth inwardly resolves to uncover the name of Pearl’s father. The community leaders also want to know Hester’s partner in adultery, and they request that Hester’s pastor, Arthur Dimmesdale, entreat her to reveal Pearl’s father. Dimmesdale tells Hester not to conceal the man’s identity out of pity because it’s better for him to have his sin out in the open than to hide it. However, she steadfastly refuses to reveal his name.

Hester returns to a prison cell after her three hours on the scaffold, and Chillingworth is assigned to attend her and her baby as a physician. He was held captive by Native Americans for two years and learned a lot about natural medicine from them. He gives Hester and Pearl medicine to calm them, and he tells Hester that he doesn’t seek vengeance upon her.

He says that although she has wronged him, he also wronged her when he married her, because he was an old and ugly man desperately trying to create a warm relationship with a young woman who didn’t love him. However, Chillingworth does want revenge on Pearl’s father. Hester refuses to tell him the man’s name, and he resolves to continue living in the town until he discovers the man’s identity. He makes Hester promise not to reveal to anyone that he was once her husband.

Hester moves into a little cottage on the outskirts of the settlement. She makes a living by selling her extraordinarily high-quality needlework, and she is content, even though she has no friends. Hester also performs many charitable works, such as donating money to the poor and sewing clothes for them.

As Pearl grows from infancy to childhood, she is very capricious, and Hester is at a loss over how to discipline her. Like her mother, Pearl has no friends and seems to understand that she can never interact with other children. Even when Pearl plays by herself, she doesn’t invent imaginary friends, as another child might do — she creates imaginary enemies and pretends to fight them.

Pearl is such a strange child that the inhabitants of the colony want to remove her from Hester’s custody and have her raised by someone wiser. Hester visits Governor Bellingham and requests that her child be left to her care.

Dimmesdale and Chillingworth also happen to be visiting the governor, and when it becomes clear that the governor will not listen to Hester’s plea to keep Pearl, she demands that Dimmesdale defend her rights. Dimmesdale adequately persuades the governor, and Chillingworth takes special notice of Dimmesdale’s passionate defense of Hester.

Over the last few years, Dimmesdale’s health has been failing. No one knows why he is wasting away, but he grows thinner and paler. He frequently puts his hand over his chest, as if his heart is in pain. Dimmesdale’s parishioners insist that he seek medical help from Chillingworth, so the two men become friends.

Eventually, they move into the same house so Chillingworth can observe Dimmesdale at all times, supposedly to tend to his heath. However, people observe that Chillingworth looks uglier and crueler as the days go by, a fact that makes Dimmesdale’s parishioners uneasy. By this point, it is clear to the reader that Dimmesdale is Pearl’s father and Chillingworth is fully aware of it.

Dimmesdale is tormented as Chillingworth uses subtle suggestions and references to make Dimmesdale feel guilty. One night, Dimmesdale is so overcome by his own inner distress, he rushes out to the scaffold where Hester was publically shamed years earlier. As he stands alone in the dark, it is revealed that he, too, carries a scarlet “A” symbol written on his own skin. He stands on the scaffold for a long time, then calls out to Hester and Pearl when he sees them walking by. He asks Hester to join him on the scaffold, since he did not join her there years ago as he should have.

The three of them join hands, and Pearl asks Dimmesdale to stand with her and her mother on the scaffold at noon on the next day. Dimmesdale is terrified of public ridicule, so he tells Pearl that he will stand with her and her mother on Judgement Day, but he can’t join them during the daylight hours. At that moment, a meteor streaks across the sky. To Dimmesdale, it looks like a giant red “A.”

By this time, Pearl is 7 years old, and Hester’s position in the community has risen slightly. She still lives by herself, but the townspeople now regard her with respect and kindness. Hester is so well known for acts of charity and for tending to the poor and sick, her scarlet “A” is often said to mean “Able” because she is so able and capable to help others.

Hester decides to help Dimmesdale by talking to Chillingworth. She tells him that she must reveal his real identity to Dimmesdale, and he scarcely cares. He so enjoys tormenting Dimmesdale, he won’t stop even if she discloses their real relationship.

A few days later, Hester meets Dimmesdale in the woods and tells him that Chillingworth was her former husband. Dimmesdale is angry and says he will not forgive Hester for hiding such a fact from him. Eventually, he forgives her, and they sit together on a fallen tree, sorrowfully holding hands.

He begs her to give him advice about what he should do, and she counsels him to escape from Chillingworth and take a ship back to Europe. He says that he has neither the energy nor the courage to start a new life alone, and she says she will go with him.

They resolve to escape together, and Hester removes her scarlet “A.” She flings it into the woods. Hester looks forward to properly introducing Dimmesdale and Pearl, but when she calls their daughter to rejoin them after playing in the woods, Pearl throws a tantrum and demands that her mother pick up the fallen letter and wear it again. Hester reluctantly does so.

Hester, Dimmesdale and Pearl make plans to board a ship for Bristol in four days’ time. Dimmesdale goes home and tells Chillingworth that he will not be needing his medicines or treatments any longer. Chillingworth knows that Hester has revealed his identity.

A few days later, all the townspeople gather in the marketplace for a holiday commencement. Hester hears from the ship’s captain that Chillingworth plans to sail to England with them, intent on tormenting Dimmesdale forever. Dimmesdale delivers the most moving, most beautiful sermon he has ever preached. He leaves the church feeling weak and frail.

He calls out to Hester in public. Hester is standing beside the scaffold, and Dimmesdale asks her and Pearl to join him on the scaffold. Dimmesdale announces to the whole crowd that he is guilty of the same sin as Hester, and he pulls back his shirt to reveal his own scarlet “A” carved into the skin over his heart. Dimmesdale collapses, and Chillingworth laments that he can no longer harm Dimmesdale after his confession. Dimmesdale asks Pearl to kiss him, and after she does, he says goodbye to Hester and dies.

After Dimmesdale’s death, Chillingworth no longer has a reason to live and passes away within a year. When he dies, he leaves a large amount of property in both America and England to Pearl. Pearl and Hester move to England, though years later, Hester returns alone to live in her old cottage, still wearing her scarlet letter.

The locals believe that Pearl is now a happy wife and mother in England, though no one is certain. Hester becomes a kind of town counselor, and people often come to her for sympathy and advice. Eventually, she is buried in the grave next to Dimmesdale, both of them using the same headstone, which is carved not with their names but with a single scarlet “A.”

Christian Beliefs

Some older women who gather to witness Hester’s public shaming say among themselves that they should have been in charge of her punishment, since they are good church members. They think Hester’s punishment is too merciful and that she should be branded on the forehead with a hot iron. One woman suggests that Hester deserves the death penalty and insists that the Bible supports this method.

When Hester stands on the scaffold holding Pearl, it is mentioned that any Roman Catholic person beholding the sight would immediately be reminded of the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus. While Hester is standing on the scaffold, Reverend Wilson initially delivers a lengthy and fiery sermon about all kinds of sin, especially dwelling on adultery. His audience is terrified by his harsh imagery.

Hester tries to attend church after her punishment, and often finds herself becoming the topic of the pastor’s sermon, as a warning to others. When Hester prays to God, she sometimes doubts whether God still views her as His child.

Dimmesdale is a minister devoted to the good of his congregation members. He seems genuinely committed to preaching God’s Word to them, but cannot bring himself to admit his own sin. After Dimmesdale decides to flee America with Hester, he briefly finds that all his godly impulses have nearly vanished, and he feels constantly tempted to do various small acts of unkindness. Ultimately, his faith in God is renewed when he confesses his sin publically just before he dies.

Other Belief Systems

These 17th-century townspeople develop superstitions about everything, including each other. Sometimes they intermingle personal impressions and scriptural truths to form a half-Christian, half-pagan opinion.

Hester’s scarlet letter takes on a magical quality in the minds of the local citizens. They imagine they’ve seen it casting red light against the walls of the prison. Over time, Hester herself begins to think that her scarlet letter gives her the ability to sense other people’s hidden sins.

Pearl is presented to the reader as an almost magical creature. The story suggests that because she was conceived during a time when her mother was overcome by both sin and passion, it affected Pearl’s soul and personality, making her wilder and more passionate than other people. She is frequently called an elf, sprite, fairy and demon. Neither Hester nor the other townspeople seem to be joking when they question whether she’s truly human.

There is a strange scene between Hester and a woman named Mistress Hibbins, where the book mentions that Mistress Hibbins was later executed for witchcraft. In the scene, Mistress Hibbins invites Hester to a nighttime witchcraft ritual in the woods and mentions speaking to Satan, whom she refers to as “the Black Man.” Hester replies that if Pearl had been taken from her custody she gladly would have joined the witches’ meeting and signed her soul over to Satan, but since she still has Pearl, she won’t attend.

Native Americans are believed to perform black magic through incantations. The townspeople believe that witches ride with Satan through the air at night. Dimmesdale says he might have found some inner peace if he were an atheist, not a Christian. Some citizens believe that Chillingworth is either an agent of Satan, or perhaps Satan himself, sent to tempt and torment Dimmesdale for a short while.

Authority Roles

Governor Bellingham and the leaders of the community try to be merciful to Hester but don’t seem to have any sympathy for moral failings. Hester loves her daughter and attempts to discipline her, but Pearl doesn’t respond well to correction of any kind. Hester does teach her daughter about God and the Bible, telling her that God is her heavenly Father, but the religious education does not have much effect. Hester eventually lets Pearl make her own choices, knowing she can’t sway her small daughter’s decisions.

Profanity & Violence

Lazy servants, disobedient children and people of different beliefs are said to be publicly punished with public whippings or scourging. Dimmesdale keeps a scourge in his closet. He uses it to whip himself until he bleeds.

Sexual Content

Although adultery is a prominent theme in the novel, it is never overtly described.

Discussion Topics

Get free discussion questions for this book and others, at FocusOnTheFamily.com/discuss-books .

Additional Comments

You can request a review of a title you can’t find at [email protected] .

Book reviews cover the content, themes and worldviews of fiction books, not their literary merit, and equip parents to decide whether a book is appropriate for their children. The inclusion of a book’s review does not constitute an endorsement by Focus on the Family.

Latest Book Reviews

The Minor Miracle: The Amazing Adventures of Noah Minor

The Eyes and the Impossible

Castle Reef 2: Bloodlines

Compass and Blade

Nothing Else But Miracles

Weekly reviews straight to your inbox.

Book Review: The Scarlet Letter

A cultural classic, The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne follows the story of a young woman named Hester, who is charged with adultery and punished in the Puritan town of Boston in 1642. The terminology and language used in this book is very old so it may be difficult for readers to interpret the plot or even the text, I know it was for me. The plot is somewhat dull, as it follows the life of Hester who has committed the sin of adultery with a man in the town, and when her husband, Roger Chillingworth, comes back for her, he is determined to find the man and seek revenge. After her punishment, Hester is banished and forced to live on the outskirts of town. With the aid of the minister Dimmesdale, Hester tries to live peacefully with her daughter, Pearl, but will Chillingsworth thwart their plans and get his revenge on the man whom Hester refuses to reveal? I read this book for my AP Lang class and the beginning was very confusing. This novel is very difficult to follow and I wouldn’t recommend it to many people other than those who enjoy old and classic works, but overall the plot is one of a kind and teaches morals that are very significant. Reviewer Grade: 11

• About Tubarks Consulting
• Read to Succeed Media Kit
• Evernote Media Kit
• 80 Ways to Use ChatGPT in the Classroom
• Strategies for Success: Scaling Your Impact as a Solo Instructional Technologist and Designer
• The New York Times® Best Sellers
• Book Review Sign Up

Book Review: The Scarlet Letter

I was really impressed by Hawthorne’s command of language and his ability to weave a story. In terms of language, this was another one of those books that expanded my vocabulary. There were a number of words that caused me to reach for a dictionary. Because there are a number of benefits to having a stronger vocabulary, I appreciated the lesson. I was also impressed with the way that Hawthorne described locations, appearance, and feelings. His description of even the most common item was rich in detail. When he talked about feeling, you could actually appreciate the heartache of the situation.

Personally, I thought Hester’s constant companion, Pearl, was important to the narrative of the story. Not only was Pearl a constant physical reminder of the sin, but she also helped to draw out the narrative by giving Hester someone to confide in.

In the end, I had hoped that Hester would roll Roger under the bus and name him as the other sinner. However, this did not happen. I had also hoped for a better ending, at least, I had hoped for a better ending for Hester.

I marveled at the number of different connections that Hawthorne had pulled together throughout the story. I would love to see his original notes and outline as he brought the story together.

Had I read this book in high school, I am not sure I would have appreciated it as much. I am glad I had waited, and more importantly, took the opportunity to read The Scarlet Letter .  Time to find some more classics to read for 2017.

* In the spirit of full disclosure, this is an affiliate link, which means that if you purchase this item through my link I will earn a commission. You will not pay more when buying a product through my link. I only recommend products & systems that I use and love myself, so I know you’ll be in good hands. Plus, when you order through my link, it helps me to continue to offer you lots of free stuff. 🙂 Thank you, in advance for your support!

Share this: