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The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Why we're reading this: mentioned by Wyatt Cenac October 7, 2014
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last updated Jul 26, 2012 02:50PM

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What Members Thought

Jun 07, 2014 Jennifer W rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books

Better than I would have expected. If you're going at this for the first time, skip the intro Custom House, you will miss *nothing*.

I don't think I developed a relationship with any of the characters. I found the writing really good at parts and draggy at others. Chillingworth was a good bad guy, though why he didn't reveal the paternity of Pearl earlier on, I don't know. Was he really a devil who found it more fun to toy with his prey? Perhaps. I think in a modern writer's hands, we would have ...more

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Aug 06, 2014 Pang rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, classics, 1001-books-to-read

I first read the book back in high school, but I have to admit that I remembered nothing about it.

The story takes place around 17th century Boston, a Puritan settlement. Hester Prynne has been sent to America after her husband, though he is nowhere to be found and presumed lost at sea. Hester then gives birthday to a baby girl, Pearl, and is being punished for adultery. The identity of Pearl's father is unknown, and Hester wouldn't say. So they are banished to live on the outskirt of town, with I first read the book back in high school, but I have to admit that I remembered nothing about it.

The story takes place around 17th century Boston, a Puritan settlement. Hester Prynne has been sent to America after her husband, though he is nowhere to be found and presumed lost at sea. Hester then gives birthday to a baby girl, Pearl, and is being punished for adultery. The identity of Pearl's father is unknown, and Hester wouldn't say. So they are banished to live on the outskirt of town, with Hester bearing the scarlet letter A on her chest at all time. Hester later learns that her husband has become the town's physician. Meanwhile, the town's young minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, begins to wither away with some mysterious illness. Roger Chillingworth suspects that the minister is tormenting himself from some unspeakable secrets and vows to punish Dimmesdale for them. Hester plans to leave town with Pearl and Dimmesdale to live together as a family, but Chillingworth learns of the plan and tries to come along with them. Back into the corner Dimmesdale stands on the same scaffold where Hester stood seven prior, exposes the scarlet letter on his chest, and drops dead.

I thought it was a nice, simple story with little twists. Dimmesdale regretted not coming clean and had to live with all the guilt until the moment he died. Not only he didn't come clean, he preached about sins that he himself had committed!

I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!

Hester Prynne, on the other hand, accepted her punishment:

You have deeply and sorely repented. Your sin is left behind you in the days long past. Your present life is not less holy, in very truth, than it seems in people's eyes.

She's can be at peace with her sins. In the end, perhaps it wasn't those who were banished that are worse off...

It was due in part to all these causes, but still more to something else, that there seemed to be no longer anything in Hester's face for Love to dwell upon; nothing in Hester's form, though majestic and statue like, that Passion would ever dream of clasping in its embrace; nothing in Hester's bosom to make it ever again the pillow of Affection. Some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. such is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or--and the ouward semblance is the same--crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more.

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Jul 23, 2016 Judy rated it really liked it

I'm reworking my notes for my college level American History class for the fall and found myself wandering away from original sources and scholarly interpretations of the Puritans in New England and picking up this novel by Hawthorne again. And again fell under its spell. A must read for every American interested in our origins. ...more

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Feb 14, 2008 Celeste rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2008

I was rereading this novel as one of the few that I try to reread every so often. It was great. I honestly loved it as a high school junior, and I still love it today, although each time I read it there's a little less magic. Maybe it just seems that way because each time I read it I'm a little older!

I will reread this one again in a few years, and I would read other Nathaniel Hawthorne novels/short stories. ...more

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