The Scarlet Letter: A Book Review

At first glance, The Scarlet Letter seems to be a story about the adultery of two individuals and the consequences that follow. Yet, after actually reading through the story, the more careful reader really learns as much about the Puritan society as about the love life of one Hester Prynne. The story really revealed the true dichotomy that existed in the world of contrasts that was the Puritanic lifestyle. The more popular image of Puritans, the strict punishers, came out in the beginning with the sentencing of Hester Prynne, yet later on it showed the extremely rare forgiving side that arose years into the story.

The Scarlet Letter revolves around the life of Hester Prynne, a woman who at the opening of the story is being punished for committing adultery. She refuses to reveal to the town the identity of her accomplice in crime, as well as the father of her resulting daughter, Pearl. The governor sentences Hester to wear a scarlet capital letter A on her chest as a constant reminder of her adultery. We find that her husband, who had left town for years, has recently returned just in time to see Hester being sentenced on the scaffold. Since he did not want to live on as Hester's husband, and because many of the citizens thought that he was, in fact dead, he decided to change his name, and pretend to be a physician named Roger Chillingworth.

Over the course of seven years and several chapters, the story reveals the hardships that Hester endures both internally and externally by having to wear the scarlet letter, as well as raising a child who was born of sin. Also, Roger Chillingworth tries through stealth to discover the identity of Hester's lover. Through years of deception, he finds that the beloved Reverend Dimmesdale is in fact the adulterer. While claiming to be trying to heal the Reverend of his sicknesses, Chillingworth took inhabitance with the Reverend in order to try to pry into his heart and make him feel guilty by exposing the horrible secret. Meanwhile, the townspeople of the little village come to an acceptance, even gentle carrying of Hester. She decides to take up work not only as a very talented seamstress, but also as a nurse for the poor. She also helps out other women who think of committing sins. Over time, the villagers look at the letter with benevolence, and some even say that "the A doesn't stand for adultery at all, but for angel" (Hawthorne 123). However, Hester and Dimmesdale decide that they will run away and live alone with Pearl. But, Dimmesdale's overwhelming grief leads him to stand in the middle of the town on the scaffold, and bring Hester and Pearl with him. He proceeds to confess his sin, and dies immediately after proclaiming that the confession was "even better than what we dreamed of in the forest" (Hawthorne 150).

The gradual acceptance and kindness that is shown toward Hester near the end of the story by the townspeople especially surprised me, when reading the book. I always had the belief that Puritans were these stiff, hard nosed, feelingless beings that immediately stopped caring about a person after they broke their rules. But this was proven to be untrue (at least in the story), when the author reveals the almost forgiveness that the people show to Hester.

One of the purposes of the author in writing this book was to pose a question of which kind of sin is worse, a sin of passion such as that of Hester and Dimmesdale, or that of calculated, intentional cruelty displayed by the shadowy Chillingworth. It is in fact quite interesting that Hester, considered by most characters in the novel to be the wrongdoer, was in actuality shown more as a protagonist than the evil Chillingworth. The author was very effective in showing that while one type of sin, such as that of adultery, may get more coverage and weight in current society, another, deeper sin exists which is less talked about and referred to in everyday life.

Finally, I believe that the author also wrote the book in order to reveal more about the somewhat misinterpreted and little known society of the Puritans. Through Hawthorne's more popular and conventional tone, he tried to convey that the Puritans were not as bad as we made them out to be, and that they did have hearts too. While his story in fact turned out to be one of fiction, the story was so realistic that it was very easy to get attached to the characters and really believe that this could have happened.