Honors Literature Assignment #2: The Scarlet Letter

As exciting novels go, there aren’t that many that deal with the good old Puritan age. The reason for this is that the Puritans were a very uptight and boring people, who worshipped God with all of their being and never strayed from their hardcore Catholic views. However, with all of those harsh rules and standards, there were bound to be some black sheep, which brings me to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter. Written in 1850, yet set in the 1700’s, the Scarlet Letter is a novel that definitely seems like it would be the pinnacle of boring literature. Oh how wrong that assumption is. Because of its subject matter—which includes adultery, expulsion and clashing of beliefs—this novel is filled with thinking that didn’t exactly mesh with that of other authors during the 1800’s.

Back in the time period that the novel takes place, women were not thought of very highly in society. They were expected to look pretty and take care of a husband, all the while remaining pure and proper in the face of sinful and hypocritical men. The protagonist, Hester Prynne, on the other hand, doesn’t like the way that society expects her to act. As such, she has an affair with a priest named Arthur Dimmesdale and has an illegitimate daughter, who she names Pearl. Hester’s husband, a man who was apparently lost at sea when coming from Europe to their new America home in Boston, looks on at his wife’s public humiliation when her crime is discovered. Since he can’t reveal his identity, he goes by the name Robert Chillingworth. During the course of the novel, Hester is constantly reminded of her sin through the way that her fellow townspeople shun her. In turn, Hester and her daughter Pearl move to a house on the outskirts of town, when Hester’s wild nature can run free…well, as much as a woman’s wild nature can in the Boston of the 18^th century.

For the time, the ideas expressed in the novel were incredibly radical. Nobody in the Puritan age would even think of touching something as taboo as adultery. If one were to take a quick peek at the synopsis, however, it would seem like a very straight and narrow story. But just reading the synopsis doesn’t do it justice. While the plot may resemble something James Patterson would write, the novel is not as conventional as it seems. Upon first glance, it is a boring book about some woman who has sex with some guy. But after reading it, one finds that it is much more transgressive than that. Puritans were very adamant about adultery and sex before marriage and for a woman to violate that would mean harassment to no end, which is exactly what happens over the course of the book.

One of the main reasons for the success of The Scarlet Letter is the fact that it is so controversial and out there. If it weren’t for the unusual subject matter, this book would have gone unnoticed in the 19^th century. Just the fact that it dealt with some very different themes and motifs than other novels of that time period was enough to skyrocket it into high school classrooms around the globe—or at least around America. It’s in the way that Hawthorne tells the story of Hester and her sin that makes this book stand out. Without the controversial elements that lay at its core, this piece is nothing but a simple story of somebody’s struggle with adversity.

Nathaniel Hawthorne does a good job of weaving the wild in with the trite. While on the outside, a story about a woman’s affair with a priest may seem boring and uninspired. But, a closer look reveals the true inner workings of The Scarlet Letter. It tells of a woman’s public shaming in a time period where no one is allowed to make mistakes, all the while exposing the struggles that Puritan Bostonians had to face back in those time periods. These things all come together to make a novel that appears as tame as can be, but really explores some of the wildest concepts of the time period.