Read with the book club of Nobody Listens to Paula Poundstone podcast.

I definitely got more out of it this time around than I did in high school. Interesting to see the distance between Hawthorne and the characters he's writing about. 

It's hard to take the story seriously in terms of characters. It's constantly popping the reader up to the level of allegory or message, in a somewhat heavy-handed way. Chillingworth in particular is such a caricature of a villain.

Podcasters resisted discussing symbolism or character layers, and therefore didn't have much to say about the book. Lol 

Would I read it again? No

I love Easy A so thought I'd give the book a go. I did like some parts of it, but I wouldn't really care to read it again. Really enjoy some of the themes though. I also just really felt for Hester the whole time.

this was a headache to get through but i didn’t completely hate it

The story of The Scarlet Letter is somewhat okay and the novel does follow a rather straightforward path starting with a women (Hester) and her baby being released from prison where she’s severed a sentence for adultery. She is made to stand on a scaffold baring a scarlet letter ‘A’ upon her chest where the townspeople of puritan Boston, New England gawk at here. The rev Dinsdale pushes her to reveal the baby’s father (who is himself) but she refuses. In the distance of the market place she see’s her husband who was captured by native Americans and he tells her to not reveal his identity. He then visits her in prison saying he forgives her (I think) and reinvents himself into Chillingworth as a physician with the taste of finding out the baby’s father. Hester then moves to a cottage away from the town and decides to make a living doing needlework and helping the poor as her child, Pearl, grows up. More goes on but then Hester and Dinsdale meet in the forest where he shares his guilt and how he’s an unhappy man, they both forgive each other and plan to sail to England to start a life together. Dinsdale makes his way back to town and now Chillingsworh discovers he’s the father. A few days after it’s Election Day and Dinsdale makes a great speech then comes out and onto the scaffold, reveals his sin in public and dies, Hester and Pearl then leave the colony and we don’t know what happens to the child. Hester returns later still baring the scarlet letter and her grave is placed next to Dinsdale but not too close. 

I think that’s the plot and is very simplified (unlike Hawthorn) and I think this is generally okay but I do feel it could have been nicer in a sense. How the narrator, Hester and other people talk to and about Pearl such as ‘elf-child’ or ‘witch-child’ and various names is horrible, she’s only a baby and then little girl and her whole life she has been made ‘othered’ so Yhh, I felt she was very disadvantaged and discriminated against - yes at the time children born out of wedlock were viewed as lesser but I couldn’t jam with it at all. It was hailed at the time as quite revolutionary but it’s definitely not as inspiring to women as I thought it was supposed to be. Mentions of morality, sin and ownership of it are again okay but I dunno not for me. 

What I disliked most was the writing style with paragraph-length sentences containing a plethora of syntaxes and messages within. It’s not unreadable but is certainly hard to read. I’m an inexperienced reader of classics so it says more about me then Hawthorn. However, I didn’t like it soooo yhh

If I am being completely honest, I only actually read the first half of this and a few chapters in class, but the final four or so were me reading the cliffsnotes summaries because reading this was just so tedious. I didn’t hate it and I kind of liked the story (I love when things call out religious hypocrisy) but it was just okay. I know it’s an older book and a classic so the language and pacing wasn’t exactly like how books are now, but there was far too much description of things for me to handle. The chapters (and the book)  would have been much shorter if Hawthorne had just cut out about half the descriptions. The story itself was interesting and pretty good, but it was a bit difficult to get through (hence the use of cliffsnotes towards the end).

ALSO if Dimmesdale was really feeling that guilty WHY DIDNT HE JUST CONFESS like he ranted about “oh Hester you’ve had it much easier than I” and blah blah blah as if he wasn’t the most beloved man in the town while she was shunned by literally everyone 🙄
Honestly, Pearl was my favorite part of the book because she was funny and just the most relatable (yes I know she’s 7)- doesn’t like people, hates affection unless it’s from someone she’s close to/ affection she starts, prefers to play with animals/ by herself rather than other children, etc. Pearl is the best and everyone else can go away (Hester can stay cus she’s her mom and also she pushed through everything so she’s cool)