The early American tradition has always been something I’ve wanted to dive more deeply into, and since I am still currently reading Melville’s Moby-Dick, I decided it would be a good idea to read the most famous work of an early American author who Melville admired: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. The Scarlet Letter is a famous story I understood well before I had even read it, where Hester Prynne (I have no idea how to pronounce her last name!), who lives in the morally strict Puritan colony of Salem, is forced to wear a scarlet letter A on her chest because she committed adultery out of wedlock with an unknown man. The man, as it is quickly revealed, is none other but the most respected and venerable minister Arthur Dimmesdale. Hester keeps Dimmesdale’s role in the adultery secret out of love for him and bears the brunt of her guilt and shame, while Dimmesdale suffers very differently, feeling like an impostor of a minister for having committed a sin which he will not fess up to. To complicate matters, Hester’s husband, Roger Chillingworth, comes to Salem in disguise and becomes the physician of Dimmesdale. Once he figures out Dimmesdale’s secret he begins finding ways to make him continue tormenting his own self out of the Puritan ethos of guilt and moralistic shame. 

The plot ends simply enough with Dimmesdale confessing his sin to the multitude and dying and Hester, unable to break free, living to be an old woman with the scarlet letter. However, I have made the error of starting the summary of the plot not at the beginning, but rather at the second chapter. In fact, The Scarlet Letter begins with an autobiographical account of Hawthorne’s time as a custom house officer. Here, Hawthorne lays out three important things: (1) He is a somewhat morose man who feels tied to Massachusetts because of his ancestry. His ancestors were Salem witch hunters who murdered many innocent women in the name of Puritan values. As one might imagine, Hawthorne felt generational guilt for this fact. (2) Hawthorne tends to judge people for their morals and qualities himself, as in much of the first chapter he judges his own self for his purity and other traits as well as many members of the custom house. (3) A small anecdote to get the story rolling, where Hawthorne finds the scarlet letter somewhere and decides to tell a story based on it. 

With the plot out of the way and many themes established, it is time to delve into what I actually thought of this book. Overall, The Scarlet Letter seems to me a very good work of literary art, but certainly not a great one. Stylistically, virtually every choice Hawthorne makes seems to come at some cost. The story and themes of The Scarlet Letter are inarguably good, well-written, and well-paced. If I had to assign one moral to The Scarlet Letter it would be to not live in a Puritan society, or, i.e. not live in a world where you are judged and you judge yourself so harshly for mistakes that you cannot even repent to make them up. Hester and Mr. Dimmesdale both have different approaches to dealing with their guilt and shame, with Hester admitting to it and Dimmesdale hiding it, but ultimately, they both end up much worse for it.

The main issue I have with The Scarlet Letter lies in Hawthorne’s prose itself. It is incorrect to say his prose is bad, as his style holds many merits which I do understand and appreciate. However, it would also be incorrect to say his prose does not come with trade-offs. Take this sentence at the start of chapter 10 for example: “Old Roger Chillingworth, throughout life, had been calm in temperament, kindly, though not of warm affections, but ever, and in all relations with the world, a pure and upright man.” Hawthorne seems to do what many 19th century novelists do, which is to cram many ideas and sentiments (often opposing or nuanced ones) into a single sentence. The value to doing this is it lets the author play around with more ideas within a short sentence. It would be impossible to have the reader understand Mr. Chillingworth as a calm, kindly, pure, and upright man who is, nonetheless, not very warm in a more succinct way than this. However, the adjectives of clunky, ineffective, and redundant (at times, perhaps not in this sentence) can also be used to describe Hawthorne’s writing, and I would have to largely agree with them. 

Overall, for a great work in the literary pantheon of great works, Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter definitely deserves a place (especially in the American tradition), but perhaps not on the toploftiest pedestal. For many novelists, Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is a masterwork of fiction, morals, and confronting one’s past, while compared to the leading 19th century novelists I’ve read, such as Austen, Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Hardy, Zola, Flaubert, and Dostoesvky, he is a fumbling mediocrity. At times powerful and at times as white-haired and dry as the old, venerable men he satirizes, The Scarlet Letter is a book I would recommend for those serious about understanding America’s literary history, albeit without grading it an A.