Product Description

Set in the harsh Puritan community of seventeenth-century Massachusetts, this tale of an adulterous entanglement resulting in an illegitimate birth engendered the first true heroine of American fiction.

Introduction by Nina Baym
Notes by Thomas E. Connolly

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #131613 in Books
• Published on: 2002-12-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780142437261
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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About the Author
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1865) was born in Salem, Massachusetts, where he wrote short stories of American colonial history.

Nina Baym is the director of the School of Humanities and professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Customer Reviews

Sin, Redemption
I think the many readers who were forced to partake of this classic were angry at their English teacher for making them read a book so wordy, detailed, and archaic in language. Many of the reviewers' complaints are about the author's style, which is definitely an acquired taste. Hawthorne doesn't merely give you a scene; he tries to tell you what time it is, how and why it is happening, and what each character is thinking as they enter the room. In this way, this can be a turn off to a leisurely reader; it may even be a turn off to an avid reader. The bottom line is that The Scarlet Letter, maybe more so than any other classic, is definitely a matter of style. I tend to admire the book because I can over look some of Hawthorne's unorthodox styles and look for a deeper meaning; if you happen to feel this way, great, if not, then maybe it just wasn't your kind of book.

The main subject in The Scarlet Letter is sin--but not only the sin of adultery (Hester and Dimmesdale). There is also the sin of jealousy and revenge (Chillingworth) as well as the sin of hypocrisy and gossip (Puritan community). Hawthorne's opinion of the hypocrisy of the Puritans seems to be illustrated in the opening scene with Hester coming out of the prison door we hear the Puritan women making besmirching comments about Hester, and one even wanting death for Hester because of her sin--this reaction from a do-good community! The main crux of the story though, as alluded to, is about Hester and Dimmesdale's sin of adultery, and, more importantly, how each of the two protagonists deal with their sin. While Hester's sin is spread out in the public eye of the New England community, and she is shamed publicly, Dimmesdale's sin is hidden, as no one except he, Hester and Chillingworth knows about it. In this way, there are two very paths that follow for Hester and the Reverend Dimmesdale. Hester, after her initial public humiliation and shame, begins life anew, and is able to find a hobby (that of a seamstress) to make ends meet, and her suffering seems to make her able to take on the challenges in life. She is able to deal with the questions and mischievousness from her daughter Pearl, and seems to implore Dimmesdale, who is obviously overcome with guilt, to forget their sin and live free. Dimmesdale, on the other hand, takes his sin very harshly, and not only feels he must punish himself for it, but physically becomes a shell of his former self. Still, Dimmesdale has a remarkable power to still give amazing sermons to the community, even with guilt. Chillingworth, Hester's ex-husband, enters the scene early in the book, and begins to "peck" away at Dimmesdale, knowing full-well that he can break him down mentally and physically with such a weight on his shoulders. During the scenes where Chillingworth is probing the mind of Dimmesdale, there seems to be a symbolic parallel between Chillingworth and the devil (there are several references to Chillingworth being the "black man" in the novel). Dimmesdale can't save himself physically, but he can spiritually. Hester emerges as the novel's hero, mainly because she sheds her former faults, and becomes a stronger person in the process.

The Scarlet Letter is definitely "heavy" reading. It might take you a few times to get through a few of the chapters. But, alas, persevere, and you may find it worth reading. And, take some advice: skip the introductory chapter "The Custom House" and just begin reading with "The Prison Door." I can give you a quick synopsis of the introduction: Hawthorne wrote a book about two people who sinned by committing adultery, and the Puritans weren't happy. As much as people say this book is outdated, it really isn't. I mean, public scandals are a part of our culture just as much as they were then. Hester Prynne is that public scandal, the story you hear on the news or other media outlets. Public infamy, as well as changing public perception, seems to never go out of style.

3 ½ stars

Startlingly overrated (in my opinion, anyway)
The Scarlet Letter is an American tourist trying to ask one of the locals for directions; it speaks loud and slow, making gigantic explanatory hand gestures and nodding enthusiastically when it thinks you're catching on. What it doesn't seem to notice is that you speak English, you understand exactly what it's saying, and the hotel is just down the street. What could have been a meaningful, succinct five-second exchange has instead become an annoyingly elaborate, tediously awkward, and unnecessarily long social ritual. What could have been a poignantly rendered meditation on sin, redemption, and society winds up choking on its own ambitions. Indeed, had Hawthorne approached this novel with some sense of subtlety, allowing his narrative to unfold gracefully and naturally, ensuring that his characters and plot are compelling, allowing his themes to intertwine gently with the story itself, The Scarlet Letter would probably have struck me as the masterpiece that everybody else seems to think it is. But no; Hawthorne has a Grand Statement to make, and he'll be damned if anybody misses out on even a fraction of it! He loads up on symbolism, ensuring that every object that his characters might encounter is a metaphor for something or other. Nothing wrong with symbolism, of course, but Hawthorne uses it like a fire hose in a burning orphanage. He beats readers into the ground with the stuff, making painstaking effort to ensure that we don't miss a second of figurative goodness. He even goes so far as to explain what some of his metaphors represent. A bit like a magician explaining how he does his tricks, if you ask me.

All of which occurs at the expense of the usual indicators of literary merit. Hawthorne structures his novel like the most didactic of parables, glossing over plot, characterization, dynamics, tension, and emotional resonance while beating readers to death with the moral. The story itself could be compelling, but it's a missed opportunity: Hawthorne describes the actual events in the novel as if he's writing a general summary of something he heard elsewhere. The prose is distant, ponderous, and dry, without a sense of sympathy or suspense. Hawthorne doesn't give a damn about his characters, doesn't even want to craft a compelling narrative. He's too busy Writing A Great Novel to write a great novel. As a result, the novel comes off as hollow, pretentious, and condescending, not to mention painfully boring.

It certainly did have potential, though; the three main characters all have seeds of greatness in them, while the story itself is, Hawthorne's stumbling prose notwithstanding, a compelling one, and the author's thoughts on sin and redemption really are pretty interesting. Call it a good idea ruined by poor execution, then.

It's Like Being Given A Slow Mental Colonoscopy--Torturous!!!
It's impossible to know where to begin with this so-called "original" master of American literature, but I'll try: Hawthorne's work is horribly overwritten, to the point where he states the same thing over and over again using strained metaphors and ungodly verbal flourishes. His characters are either caricatured (such as the misshapen and humpbacked Roger Chillingworth, Hester Prynne's husband, who is unlike the other characters in that he is halfway interesting, though he receives the least amount of exposure in this book) or ridiculously emotional and self-pitying. This book relates the aftermath of an affair in a Puritan city between the town pastor Dimmesdale (who, despite his legions of admiring fans and women, seems to be passionate about nothing other than maintaining a lowly, miserable existence) and Hester Prynne, a boring seamstress whose every thought, reaction and twitch is used by Hawthorne to teach moral lessons that go on for pages with no paragraph breaks.
The story takes several chapters, about half the freaking novel, to really start revving; and even then the novel is a drag. Halfway through the book, Chillingworth becomes Dimmesdale's physician with the intention of torturing him subtly because he suspects that Dimmesdale is the adulterer who secretly deflowered Hester. Dimmesdale is completely ignorant of this, once again exposing how blind and idiotic he is--why else would a sinister, humpbacked doctor want to be your friend? Revelations about Hester and Dimmesdale's affair slowly start to spill out (and when I mean slowly, I mean SLOWLY--slower than it would take George W. Bush to learn to speak fluent Arabic). Much of this section concentrates on Hester's illegitimate daughter Pearl, who is the most overt symbol in the book and is constantly referred to as "elvish" though she is nothing like an elf; elves inspire cheer and contentment, while all Pearl does is bore the reader to death with her games in the forest, which are described for pages and include many twenty-letter-long words that Pearl undoubtedly does not know. One of the more notable aspects of Hawthorne's style is that all his characters speak exactly as he writes or would write: at one point Dimmesdale remarks that, "There is the child, standing in a streak of sunshine, there across this brook." What person would actually describe something aloud when they and their companion can easily see it with their own eyes? When I read "Scarlet Letter" (and I was forced to because of a school project--YUCK), I dreaded the chapters that concerned Dimmesdale; inevitably the chapters would contain no action and would instead simply be a meandering description replete with dozens of odious metaphors describing how exquisitely miserable this poor but brilliant pastor is. Ultimately, Rev. Dimmy, as I like to call him, is so physically and mentally weak that I have to wonder why Hawthorne would make one of his main characters such a horrible wimp.
One of my last gripes is that Hester and Dimmy are so wracked with moral guilt at their affair (as evidenced by the dozens of pages describing their moral agonizing, replete once again with several odious metaphors) that it's unbelievable that they would have had the affair in the first place--what the heck were they thinking when this contrived "sin of passion" consumed them? All that I can add to this is that everything in the book is either boring talking, metaphors or infinitely untalented description. I hope that someday Americans will reject such horrible writing as their cultural legacy, and will throw Hawthorne's title as an "original master" of American literature to a writer more talented and far more deserving.