The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

I'd been told this would be a tough read, so I was surprised to find that the opening chapters flew, and that I finished the book easily in 10 days. Written in 1850, using language described in Jonty Claypole's afterword as "eccentric" and which would perhaps be better suited to the 17th century of its setting, yet the prose has a simplicity and ease of comprehension which I enjoyed. The plot, likewise, is simple enough to carry elegantly the heavy central themes of sinfulness, penance, redemption, and the bonds between the individual and society. Encountering these themes early in the story I was uneasily reminded of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, but really The Scarlet Letter is quite different, while retaining certain similarities. Hardy's tale of a fallen woman has the typical Hardy hallmarks of despair, hopelessness and inevitability as the story draws to a tragic close. Hawthorne's, on the other hand, retains a note of hope to the very conclusion.

The story is that of New England woman Hester Prynne, a young woman alone in a strange country, who despairs of her elderly husband's return from Europe and seeks solace in another man's embrace. A child, Pearl, results from the encounter; Hester is tried and convicted of adultery, but the magistrates take into account her circumstances and spare her the usual death sentence. Instead she has to wear a scarlet 'A' on her clothing, so she'll be marked out as an adulteress to all who see her.

When her husband Roger Chillingworth returns, he refused to acknowledge her publicly as his wife, instead turning all his energies to finding out and extracting revenge upon the other man, who turns out to be an apparently pious young minister. From then on things start to go downhill, yet it's all lightened by Hawthorne's musings on the meaning of passion, on Hester's mode of dealing with her public shame and her eventual rebirth as a doer of good works, and on the private suffering of her lover as the increasingly evil Chillingworth works on his conscience.

Leaving the sin behind is not an option for either of them. Hester is irrevocably tied to her home soil, and her lover to his prestigious and well-respected public position. Seven years after their transgression they meet again, share their agony and agree to flee together; but the minister, so constantly in touch with the Almighty, knows that he can never escape. Instead of fleeing he confesses his sin before the entire town, then dies, at last content, from the weakness of seven years' incessant guilt. Chillingworth soon dies also, the only major character who is denied the opportunity of redemption, while Hester and Pearl travel overseas until Pearl is married. Hester returns at last to her home in New England and lives out her days as a friend and "figure of comfort to wayward women".

Hester clearly emerges the winner in this story. She outlives both her men, and makes more of her life in the end than either of them has managed to do since they met her. She is also the figure of good; at every turn Hawthorne sternly rebukes the minister for being too weak to confess, while Chillingworth is described many time as devil-like as his vengeful workings slowly corrupt his character. Hester, on the other hand, is the only one of the three who lives out her penance openly, and as such she is the nearest to being forgiven. Hawthorne never quite takes the step of actively forgiving her - in this Puritan community, sin can never be erased no matter how much penance is done - but his implication is quite clear: Hester's genuine, public sorrow on earth is worth more to purchase happiness in the hereafter than all the minister's holy sermons or Chillingworth's scientific achievements.

At the end, woman emerges as a purer figure than man - unusual in literary works of this age. The Scarlet Letter could certainly be described as a great feminist work. Here Hawthorne has more sympathy for women as people, rather than as merely the downtrodden of society, than all the works of later revolutionary writers Hardy and Dickens put together. The afterword speculates that this sympathy may be "a desire to redress the wrongs against women committed by his ancestors".

Interestingly, in this afterword I learn that Hawthorne's notorious judicial ancestor was not named Justice Hawthorne at all - his name was Hathorne. Such was Nathaniel Hawthorne's shame over the judge's deeds at Salem, and his fear of the curse placed on his family by one of the women tried, that he changed his own name "to distance himself from his forefather". This single fact perhaps gives a better impression of the thesis of The Scarlet Letter than any essays I could write. It is a great work, and it entirely deserves its high-ranked place in the annals of literary history.