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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The first masterpiece of American literature, 5 Nov 2006
"All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God," might well be Nathaniel Hawthorne's theme in The Scarlet Letter. Certainly, by all community standards Hester Prynne's adultery is a sin. Worse yet Arthur Dimmesdale has triply sinned since he has had carnal knowledge of a member of his flock, and through a deep and abiding cowardice has failed to acknowledge his sin; and what is even worse yet, he allows Hester to bear the weight of public condemnation alone.
However the worse sin of all belongs to Roger Chillingworth, Hester's husband who is not dead at all, but returned in disguise as a physician who has learned the efficacy of various medicinal concoctions from the Indians during his captivity. He pretends to befriend Dimmesdale in order to extract his long and torturous revenge. But it is Chillingworth's character itself more than anything that marks him as the worse of the sinners. He lives only for revenge and to give pain and suffering. He cares nothing for his wife and her child. He cares nothing for anyone, not even himself. He lives only to avenge.
Dimmesdale's sin is that of a weak character. In a sense Dimmesdale is Everyman, the non-heroic. We see the contrast between the proud bravery of Hester and the all too human weakness of Dimmesdale who cannot bring himself to confess his sin, but looks to her strength to do it for him. We see this in the first scaffold scene as he pleads along with Chillingworth for Hester to reveal the father's identity. "Reveal it yourself!" we want to say.
While some have seen Chillingworth as the devil incarnate--and indeed I suspect that was Hawthorne's intent--it might be closer to the truth to see him as the vengeful God of the Old Testament with his lust to mysterious power and his desire to see the sinful suffer. At any rate, Hawthorne's masterpiece--and it is a masterpiece, one of the pillars of American literature, to be ranked with such great works as Melville's Moby-Dick and Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn--is about sin and the effect of sin; and this is only right since the central tenet of Christianity itself is sin and the forgiveness of sin.
By employing and investigating deeply three types of sin--Hester's from love and even something close to innocence; Dimmesdale's from lust, pride, neglect and cowardice; and Chillingworth's from hate--Hawthorne came up with a most felicitous device for examining the human soul.
The Scarlet Letter is regularly taught at the high school level, but surely this is a mistake. The novel is difficult and challenging even for honors students. The architectured sentences, with their points and counterpoints, their parallel construction, their old school rhetorical cadences are strange and even wondrous to the modern eye. It is a good practice for the teacher and for the student to read aloud Hawthorne's prose so as to grow accustomed to his words the way one must for Shakespeare. If this is done and the edifice of Christianity and especially the fatalism of the Puritan mind brought to bear, then with leisurely pace and a steady concentration, the terrible beauty of Hawthorne's novel might be made immediate.
Although the story itself is compelling, and the prose rich and poetic, the real strength of this great novel is in its characters. How true to life are all of them including even little Pearl who is defiant and willful in her beauty and her promise, so like a heroine-to-be of a modern novel. And how despicable and loathsome is this bent old man who embodies the very soul of the despised! And how attractive on a superficial level is this pretty young pastor whose actions are not the equal of his looks. And how strong and faithful and heroic is Hester who invites both envy and admiration, something like a flawed goddess of yore.
What stuck me when I first read this, and remains with me today, is that it is those who presume to punish sin who are the real sinners. Chillingworth's life is one devoid of human feeling, devoid of any real joy as he lies in the stone cold bed of hatred and revenge. And to a lesser extent so it is with Dimmesdale who cannot forgive himself, who secretly flagellates himself so that his life becomes a hell on earth. On the other hand there is Hester who finds forgiveness and love with good works and in the joy of her beautiful and precious Pearl and in her unstinting love for Dimmesdale and her hope and faith that a better life will come.
This is a deeply Christian novel although it is usually seen as a criticism of Christianity in the sense that the Christian community condemns the least of the sinners while the hypocrisy of its clergy is made manifest. Looking deeper we see that it is forgiveness of sin and the redemption that comes from good works that is exemplified. Hester knows the joy of life because she is a loving and giving person; and on another level she is forgiven because we the reader forgive her. How could we not? And most of the Puritan flock also forgave her since it came to be said that the scarlet "A" she wore upon her person stood not for "Adultery" but for "Able."
It is also good to realize that when Hawthorne published the novel in 1850 the scene of the story was nearly two hundred years removed. Thus Hawthorne looked back at Puritan America from the standpoint of a more secular society greatly influenced by Jeffersonian deism and the transcendentalism of Emerson and Thoreau. In some respects, Hawthorne's brilliant treatment of the ageless theme of sin, guilt and redemption was a serendipitous, even unconscious, artifact of his literary skill. No artist composes a masterpiece without some deep talent at work independent of his conscious efforts.
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8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A classic American tale, 26 Sep 2005
In this classic tale written in 1850, N. Hawthorne tells the tragic tale of a fallen woman, Hester Prynne. In his essay entitled "The Custom House", the author pretends to have found a mysterious relic of cloth in the shape of the letter along with a manuscript in which a certain Jonathan Pue described the letter's wearer.
Thus the character of Hester Prynne was born, this adulteress who has to wear the shameful letter A embroidered on her garment in scarlet letter and insolent gold thread. Her error is adultery and the Puritan magistrates of colonial Boston decided that she should wear the bright letter affixed to her breath. In the opening scene, Hester is standing dishonoured before the town holding another man's child just as her long-lost husband Roger Chillinworth arrives in Boston. The story is tightly constructed and takes place in 24 chapters with the action in the first, the twelfth and the last revolving around the scaffold on which Hester suffers her punishment. The structure is taught and essentially limited to the description of the three adult characters of Hester Prynne, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth, each in turn wearing various masks to hide themselves from the failures of the human heart. Hester never reveals her lover's identity thus protecting her from public disgrace but not from his interior sense of guilt. At any rate she is a strong character, a rebel dwelling in solitude which grants her freedom of thought, particularly concerning the fate of women: "The world's law was no law for her mind" the author writes. To the reader she appears as a fascinating creature, captivating, rebellious, even intimidating. The dénouement is equally startling. After Hester's daughter Pearl marries, she returns to the small abandoned cottage and resumes her former life, not being able to remain an expatriate, the scarlet letter now voluntarily clamped to her bosom as if it were part of her true identity. Her triumph finally lies in her willingness to take up the mark that identifies her as a woman.
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8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A classic with a timeless message, 9 Sep 2004
The aims of The Scarlet Letter are not a critique of the puritans per se, a comment on the plight of single mothers or indeed to even fully develop its characters. The primary aim is to show the potential and power of any individual to question the status quo, philosophically, religiously and socially; and where such quo is shown to be logically wrong, to live with pride and honour and to achieve personal triumph over adversity and irrationality. Hawthorne quite ingeniously communicates his message through the powerful and poetic symbolism of the scarlet letter, the puritans, the setting and indeed his incomplete characters. Arthur Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth, Pearl and to an extent Hester are perhaps slightly two-dimensional characters but this is by no means a weakness as they serve the purpose of the book rather than the other way around. One only has to look around at the multitude of prejudices and indeed silent discrimination against many groups that still exist in society today to realise that the Scarlet Letter is still very relevant. The scarlet letter remains a placeholder for any prejudice that still burns the heart of so many unfortunate bearers and unquestionably, a literary classic.
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by Herman Melville
