January 16, 2015 by sydneyreadseverything

Your High School English Teacher Should Apologize for Making You Read The Scarlett Letter

hester prynne scarlet letter cosplay

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, 1850 (with some continued mention of The House of the Seven Gables)

I’m going to try to be Fair and Balanced like Fox News in this review of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s major novel. In other words, I am going to launch into a highly biased rant against Hawthorne’s many flaws whilst ignoring the perspective of anyone whose tastes, opinions and values may differ from mine.

I kid; I kid. I wanted to loathe Hawthorne, but certain elements of The Scarlet Letter reversed the tide of my affections. I will explain. First, some background information about the book:

Hawthorne wrote about New England. He was particularly interested in the Puritans and their cultural legacy. He had a relative who convicted “witches” in Salem, a judge who never expressed regret for his actions. Both of these novels have a strange vein of magic running through them. Is it or isn’t it magic? Are we superstitious or are we skeptics? Was my ancestor an evil man who sent innocents to the gallows, or was he a hero who eradicated witchcraft from Salem? Hawthorne seems to toy with these questions, but his novels ultimately express a belief in magic and witches, in my opinion.

Every American high school student is forced to read The Scarlet Letter, so I am sure that you remember that it’s about Hester Prynne, a woman who sleeps with her pastor after her husband disappears. She gets caught, because she gets pregnant, and she is forced by her strict, Puritan community to wear a scarlet “A” for adulteress on her clothing. She never gives up the identity of her lover.

I don’t have a problem with Hawthorne’s plots. The presentation is awful, though. In both novels, Hawthorne withholds the most interesting elements of his story. In The House of the Seven Gables, Clifford and his cousin have a secret drama that ruined Clifford’s, health, psychology and reputation. Instead of telling the reader about that, Hawthorne talks for about 15 pages about chickens. Just the stuff that chickens do in the yard. 15 pages. Yes, their behavior is a metaphor for some stuff, some stuff that the reader has already internalized and does not need to spend 15 pages thinking about, especially not in the form of an overlong chicken allegory.

Let’s think about the plot of The Scarlet Letter. Here are the plot elements:

A Puritan woman’s husband disappears into the wilderness for two years.
She has an affair with her reverend.
She gets pregnant.
She gets convicted of adultery.
She hides the identity of her lover.
Her husband returns.
He asks her to keep their relation to each other concealed.
Her husband moves in with her lover and torments his guilty conscious.
Her lover is super tormented by his religious guilt.

I would say that 1, 2 and 3 are the most interesting elements of this plot. 7 and 8 are the least interesting. Be honest, would you rather read about religious guilt or forbidden romance? Forbidden romance, obviously. As an irreligious person, I could not empathize with Reverend Dimmesdale’s guilt.

In fact, religious guilt is my absolute least favorite literary theme. So boring. Stop tormenting yourself and become an ubermensch! Obviously, his obligation is not to God or his flock. His obligation is to his child and the woman he impregnated. Run away! Make a life! Forget your guilt, it helps no one! Don’t waste your life feeling shitty about loving a very lovable woman. Dummy. Reverend Dumbsdale.

That rant really got away from me. My point was that Hawthorne dedicates zero pages to the romance between Hester and Dimmesdale and 150 pages to their feelings of sinfulness and guilt. Waste of their time and waste of my time as a reader.

Hawthorne’s management of his pacing in The House is equally bad. He moves in a Brownian motion between a small set of ideas: Phoebe is youthful and pure, Hepzibah is dour, Clifford is feeble and loves beauty, the Pyncheon bloodline is degenerating, the sins of the fathers are blah blah blah. He ping pongs back and forth between these few ideas with no sense of urgency or forward movement.

Rant over! Here’s what I love about Hawthorne: Hester Prynne. Hester Prynne! Based on my (exhaustive) knowledge of English literature, I think that Hester Prynne is the first woman in literature whose virtue is divorced from her sexual purity. Hawthornes depicts his fallen woman as admirable, which just doesn’t happen in other books. (Except maybe Nancy in Oliver Twist, who I also love.) I really loved Hester and wanted her to escape from her life of shame, which she never does.

If you think about it, Hawthorne’s ideas of women are feminist. He suggests that Hester would have been a “prophetess” of sorts if she hadn’t lived in such a judgmental society. He makes it clear that she’s the most badass person in her tiny, hater-filled town. He demonstrates that shaming people for their sexual behavior is unproductive, hypocritical and cruel. That’s a good thing for an author to do.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, American Gothic

The House of the Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1851

If you trudged through The Scarlet Letter in high school and never read another work by Nathaniel Hawthorne, you probably aren’t aware of his status as the premiere American writer of Gothic fiction. While his most famous novel doesn’t feature the paranormal, he sprinkled plenty of ghosts, ghouls, witches and curses into his other writing, including The House of the Seven Gables. In true Gothic fashion, Hawthorne never openly declares that magic exists in the world of his novel. Gothic is not Fantasy, because the ghosties turn out to be fake. Or do they?

As a Victorian New Englander, Hawthorne was fascinated with his Puritan ancestry, which makes sense to me. The ethos of the Victorian Era seems to channel some of that rigid, buttoned up, Puritan sense of moral righteousness. The story of The House of the Seven Gables starts with a rich and powerful Puritan, Colonel Pyncheon, who wants to build a house on land that belongs to a lowly farmer. That farmer, Matthew Maule, doesn’t want to give up the land, so the Colonel accuses him of being a witch. How else would you dispose of an enemy in colonial Massachusets? (Well, a musket would have worked.) Hawthorne laments Pyncheon’s corrupt use of his power and influence, implying that poor Matthew Maule was not a witch. However, this is a Gothic novel, so the Colonel mysteriously dies pretty much as soon as he finishes building his spooky mansion. . .and Maule’s curse haunts his family for generations. (Anyone else thinking about that Velvet Underground song, Ocean? Love that song.)

Hawthorne dwells on that time honored “sins of the fathers” theme for the rest of the book. He touches on the intervening generations, but the story mostly concerns the relationship between Judge Pyncheon—the spitting image of his ancestor the Colonel—and his cousins. Elderly cousin Hepzibah lives in the titular house, but she’s impoverished and struggles to look after her feeble-minded brother, Clifford. But wait, this is a Gothic novel; it can’t just be about old folks! We need a handsome hero who is bold and brave and a pretty heroine who is pure and sweet. Not to worry, not to worry. Holgrave, the first daguerreotypist character in my list, plays our hero. Young Phoebe, a cousin from the country (you know, where everybody is as innocent and pure of heart as an eensy fresh little daisy) comes to town to be our heroine.

Guess what finally overcomes the curse. Guess. Did you say True Love? Yep, it’s True Love.

This isn’t my favorite novel ever. I found it a bit dull. But, if anyone can get some edification and enjoyment out of a boring book, it’s me! Here’s what I liked:

It was kind of interesting reading Hawthorne equivocate about whether the troubles of the Pyncheon family were caused by witchcraft or Providence or coincidence. He sure can sit on a fence.
Best names ever! Hepzibah! Phoebe! Jaffrey! Clifford! Hooray!
You know me, I like wizards, witches and ghosts, even if they’re only maybe real.
Daguerreotypists are great.
Hawthorne seems a bit tortured and confused by the witch-burning antics of his ancestors. His tone is all over the place in this novel as he tries to reconcile his current moral sensibilities and his veneration for the past, which is interesting.

Here’s a Quote:

Old Matthew Maule, in a word, was executed for the crime of witchcraft. He was one of the martyrs to that terrible delusion, which should teach us, among its other morals, that the influential classes, and those who take upon themselves to be leaders of the people, are fully liable to all the passionate error that has ever characterized the maddest mob.

Truth!

However, Hawthorne later refers to Maule as “the wizard.” Fence sitter.

You might like The House of Seven Gables if:

You like Gothic fiction

You might not like The House of the Seven Gables if:

You didn’t like The Scarlet Letter. (Btw, you should rethink that opinion, but I’ll save that for another post.)

Final Thoughts:

Meh. I’m glad I read it, but I wouldn’t recommend it. This novel is short, but still too wordy. The word/idea ratio is too high for my liking. Also, I might change my name to Hepzibah. Will you call me Hepzibah?