The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

Title:  The Scarlet Letter

Author:  Nathaniel Hawthorne

Narrated by:  Robert Bethune

Publisher: Dreamscape Media

Length: Approximately 9 hours and 40 minutes

Source: Checked out with Hoopla through the Kewaunee Public Library.  Thank-you!

Did you read The Scarlet Letter when you were in high school?  I did and I admit that I hated it.  I was only 14 at the time so when @Deesreads picked the book for the August read-a-long, I thought maybe I should give it another chance.  I’m glad that I did.

Hester Pryne is an outcast and punished by her Puritan community for having a child, Pearl, out of wedlock.  She refuses to say who the father of the child is, so she is forced to wear the letter “A” on her clothing.  She had come to America by herself, and her husband was supposed to join her later.  Years pass and she assumes that he has been killed in a shipwreck.  As she is being punished before the town, she is surprised to see her husband in the crowd.  He now calls himself Roger Chillingworth, and he is consumed with finding out the identity of Hester’s illicit lover.  Arthur Dimmesdale is Hester’s pastor and suffers from an unknown affliction.  Chillingworth decides to help Dimmesdale and treat him for his condition. 

I enjoyed listening to this on audiobook, especially as the story was written in the 1800’s, but is using language from the 1600’s.  What I didn’t enjoy was that Nathaniel Hawthorne’s forward was 18% of the audiobook!  It was long and tedious with Hawthorne talking about his custom house experience, his inspiration for Hester Pryne’s story, and throwing in the names of his famous friends.  I think if I had to read the forward in high school, it would have sealed my thoughts on the book from the beginning.  Robert Bethune was a good narrator.

The audiobook got much better once you got into the story.  I thought it was an interesting look at how a woman could be vilified for adultery back in the day.  Hawthorne chose to make Hester perfect in every other way.  It made me think, what did happen to women whose husbands disappeared?  You just had to wait forever even though they could be dead, and you would have no way of finding out?  I also thought it was interesting that the townspeople seemed to think that Pearl was a rapscallion child because of her parentage.  I wish the reader could have learned more about Hester and her inner thoughts.  I do have a couple more books on my list to read this fall that will hopefully help with that.

As a Catholic, I didn’t like that anti-Catholic sentiments that were expressed in the book.  I know it was the times, but I was annoyed reading it. 

SPOILER ALERT

The big reveal is that the pastor, Arthur Dimmesdale is Pearl’s father.  The book seems to imply that it’s because he is weak and goes along with Catholic sentiment.  I wanted more of the relationship between Arthur and Hester.  I couldn’t tell from what is written what the attraction would have been for Hester for Arthur in the first place.  And why exactly did he die at the end?  I guess his guilt?  It seemed over the top with melodrama.

 I liked Hester’s idea that her, Arthur, and Pearl leave and start anew somewhere else.  I think they should have just did that to begin with.  No one somewhere else would know they were not a married couple. 

Chillingworth seemed like a despicable person and just seemed to stay pushing Dimmesdale’s buttons to get him to admit his guilt.

SPOILER END

The Scarlet Letter had a lot more going on in it than I remembered from my youth and I’m glad that I gave it a try again. The language was beautiful and there was a lot of great symbolism.  I do feel like the characters could have been more well rounded and I would have liked a better ending.