The Scarlet Letter (1850)

Tried it. Made it to chapter 3. Moves slow as mud. Done. ( )

Sensational book written with amazing talent. Always great to reach back a couple of centuries to appreciate the changes for good and bad in the world around us. ( )

high school ( )

To end 2016 and to meet a Modern Mrs. Darcy reading challenge category, I elected to read The Scarlet Letter* by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Scarlet Letter is a book that I should have read in high school but never did. If it were not for the challenge, I am not sure I would have ever picked up this book. However, now that I have read it, I am glad I did. Because I was under a deadline, I finished the book in one sitting. Overall, I enjoyed the story even though I had hoped for a different ending. Read more ( )

I admired this novel increasingly more as it went along. It is structurally fantastic, conservatively written, every chapter moving the story forward like perfectly wound clockwork. It is filled with careful analysis of the characters' inner lives and moral quandaries. A couple of standout chapters are especially admirable. It is only Hawthorne's ponderous style that is not my cup of tea. He is in love with words, as am I, but he presents them in immense blocks of exposition that can fill an entire page. He is very fond of telling rather than showing, so I was forced to view practically everything through his narrative voice. The stiffness might be intentional to fit the Puritanical setting, but I suspect it's just him. This alone has probably killed enthusiasm for the novel in more than one young scholar who has it pressed upon them.

The plot outline creates a problem by what it withholds in order to provide a hook. Or I have a problem, in being unwilling to take what an author shows me at face value. Hester has admirable traits, but her entire character rests on the true circumstances of her affair, and those are the novel's primary mystery. I had to assume that her backstory would prove sympathetic. Her daughter Pearl is an even greater enigma, born as innocent as any child but portrayed as if oddly otherwise. I judged this was a realism story and I should not read too much into that; assuming, again. Dimmesdale's implied role looked like a red herring. Chillingworth was the one character I did take as given, probably from a reader's sympathy for his want of answers. The second half of the story clears all of these problems away. I wonder whether I would have enjoyed the first hundred pages more had I known the plot in advance, but I would have enjoyed the second half less. There's some good tension as Hawthorne's 19th century mores head towards playing out in a 17th century setting - or not. With the the entire picture before me, I'm giving this a higher rating than I expected. ( )