The Scarlet Letter in Reading 1001

Dec 28, 2019 Bertrand Jost rated it it was ok

The book written by Nathaniel Hawthorne was published in 1850 but it takes place in Puritan Massachusetts in the years 1642-1649. The theme offered much to hope for when the story starts with this woman, Hester Prynne forced to wear the stigmata of a deadly sin: adultery. Hester Prynne gives birth to a child whose father is unknown. As a result, she is required to wear the scarlet letter “A” on her dress in public. Her sentence includes for her to be exposed in public on a scaffold for three hou The book written by Nathaniel Hawthorne was published in 1850 but it takes place in Puritan Massachusetts in the years 1642-1649. The theme offered much to hope for when the story starts with this woman, Hester Prynne forced to wear the stigmata of a deadly sin: adultery. Hester Prynne gives birth to a child whose father is unknown. As a result, she is required to wear the scarlet letter “A” on her dress in public. Her sentence includes for her to be exposed in public on a scaffold for three hours to feel the shame of her act. As she stands there, People comment on her beauty but when she is asked to name the father of the child she refuses to answer. At that point it becomes clear that the identity of the father will become one of the primary stakes of the book. As she stands on the scaffold, her husband appears in the crowd and when he learns of his wife’s sin, of course he yearns to know who the father of the child is in order to obtain revenge. Unfortunately, as the pages go by, Nathaniel Hawthorne fails to keep the reader’s interest focused on the characters.

The story drags on with the same lament and too simple a plot around the three characters: the adulterous wife, the husband and the lover. The story unfolds in the following steps:

- The planned revenge of the husband
- The penitence of the woman
- The conscience of the secret lover

The three main characters are for the most part mono-dimensional in their behavior. The wife’s resolve to keep her secret and to remain the only one to suffer the consequence of the sin to the end calls for admiration but as a result, the drama of the plot suffers greatly. The husband too leaves little to mystery with his restless search for vengeance. In the end, only the lover maintains some level of drama as he battles his conscience torn between guilt and the desire to escape punishment. But this theme is treated in a dull and straightforward manner. As for the town’s people, they are all Manichean and none expresses the slight beginning of a doubt in their condemnation of the mother and even the child. I believe that the town’s people was actually the topic that could have made the book real interesting if the author had spent more time focusing on the complexity and gradation of emotions that could have flourished in various types of characters, since no population is ever fully monolithic in reaction to a given event.

Before long, even though of course I felt deeply sorry for the two victims of the book (mother and child) I completely lost interest in the unraveling of the same theme and just rushed for the end.
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Apr 08, 2021 Zanahoria rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1001

Interesting.

Guilt and shame, public and private, and how they relate to the culture that engenders them. More than to the concept of virtue and sin... that also relates to the culture that engenders them. With just a pinch stab at the hypocrisy of gender inequality.

I'm really left wanting to have a chat with someone that read this but was raised outside western and christian mores for perspective. ...more

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