victorjup

I first read The Scarlet Letter back in high school. It and "Young Goodman Brown" are the two pieces most often used to teach Nathaniel Hawthorne but they are the most different from his other works. The different ones, or maybe better put, the ones that stand out, seem to be the ones taught. The standouts are often the experiments and therefore the more challenging to read. By the time I read The Scarlet Letter I was already a Hawthorne fan so I went into the novel determined to like it. Were it the first of his books I had read, I might not have gone back for more. I don't want to scare you off the novel if you haven't read it. Rather, I want to encourage you to use it as a starting point for his other novels. Much of the analysis of the novel focuses on Hester Prynne and her crime (adultery) and her life of redemption and the punishment both of jail time and of wearing the scarlet letter as a reminder of her crime. I personally find her daughter, Pearl Prynne the most compelling character of the novel. Pearl is born a marked child, a living remember of Hester's crime and the minister's sin. She spends her infancy in jail and her childhood alone except for the company of her mother. She can overhear the other villagers debating whether or not she is a demon child and whether or not she should be removed from her mother's care. She's ultimately not removed from her mother's care because none of the other families wants to risk having her in their homes. As Hawthorne ends the novel not with a note on Hester's fate but on Pearl's instead clearly the book is more about Pearl, the innocent victim of Puritan society's meddling in private matters.

2022-12-10 13:52