The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

I’d come across this book several times. At first the blurb didn’t quite convince me. What ultimately pushed me to buy it was the Hanser Classics series, which has consistently impressed me with its quality. I also wanted to read something from a different direction after a run of Russian and French authors. And the word “adultery” in the blurb of a classic somehow always gets me (as do “courtesan” and “dandy”).

At the centre of the book is Hester Prynne, a woman disgraced for committing adultery who must wear a scarlet letter on her chest as a sign of her shame. The backdrop is a Puritan colony in New England that, in the mid-17th century, settled on North America’s East Coast in the newly founded town of Boston. Following a Protestant model, the strictly devout Puritans led a very ascetic, God-fearing life—marked by fear of the devil, witch hunts, and harsh punishments for minor and major sins. Central themes, then, are morality, the effects of a strictly religious society, the ostracising of community members who have fallen to the devil and disgrace, and the inner conflicts that arise from this.

The reader gets a very interesting and detailed look at the customs and practices of that era. Hawthorne opens a window onto a time that feels wholly other and foreign, and from his vantage point in the mid-19th century he sketches social structures that lie almost two hundred years before his novel’s publication. A particularly fascinating factor is the notion of a truly original North America—a colony that today is a vast city, and it’s hard to imagine that America was then almost entirely wilderness and scarcely settled. The strict, God-fearing people; the rigid, slow-to-change structures; the obedient, pious inhabitants averse to pleasure and enjoyment—all this offers a completely different environment for a finely tuned psychological view into the protagonists’ inner lives. And that is precisely what Hawthorne does in this book: he presents several people, describes them in their lives and actions, and reveals to the reader a very detailed picture of their feelings, crises of conscience, doubts, religious strivings, and the conflict between strict religious morality and the emotional reality of the human psyche—between nature and society.

The book’s style is marked by long, nested sentences whose unnecessary length adds no advantage and dampens readability. This is offset by a steady tension generated by a fairly clear constellation of characters and a distinctly visible antagonist. At times the book moves very slowly and delves deeply into detail—especially when it comes to describing the characters’ thoughts, emotions, inner conflicts, and, in particular, their development. I liked these passages very much; they don’t become boring because Hawthorne’s descriptions peer into the protagonists’ mental worlds with a truly noteworthy delicacy. At the same time, he gets lost in patterns that are a bit too explicit and come off somewhat stereotypical, at times highly symbolic. In several places I couldn’t quite buy the decisions and conclusions Hester arrives at—even granting the strong religious indoctrination and socially imposed morality as a basis. And Pearl’s nature and character are rather exaggerated, pushed into a role too emphatically. It is precisely this symbolism that drew criticism from his colleague and contemporary Henry James—criticism I definitely find understandable.

Elsewhere he makes pronounced leaps in time that push the story forward but also create a certain distance from Hester. In only a few places did I truly feel with her. Rather, she is the object of Hawthorne’s observation—which was surely his intention. In this way, he renders the Puritan outlook on life comprehensible and, in a way, tangible. After the first third you already sense the harmful effects of any socially established and imposed theism, and you suddenly feel very grateful for the secularisation of our society.

Hawthorne’s name had crossed my path a few times before—most recently in the afterword to Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, which emphasised Hawthorne’s inspiring effect on Melville and the friendship between the two authors. The Scarlet Letter is the first novel Hawthorne published, in 1850, after several short stories that had yielded little. Hawthorne was born and raised in Salem and of course knew his hometown’s history—its witch trials and the shameful deeds of one of his ancestors.

Of interest is a brief introductory section titled “The Custom-House.” Over roughly sixty pages it offers an autobiographical account of Hawthorne’s time working as a customs officer in the Salem Custom House. There he describes stumbling upon documents that strongly inspired this novel. In doing so he attempts to lend the book something authentic—which almost never comes off, since he himself says he invented a great deal and draws no line between fiction and reality. The afterword draws connections between Hawthorne’s experiences in this introduction and the novel proper. I find that rather far-fetched and quite contrived, and I found “The Custom-House” very dull.

This Hanser edition is, as usual, very well done and once again comes with a generous appendix. I didn’t care for the afterword; there’s too much speculation and too many connections are asserted that, to me, aren’t sufficiently evident. As with the other volumes, there’s a chronology and very informative notes. Also included are three texts by Hawthorne that likewise deal with the first English settlements in North America and their culture, touching on several themes of the book. I found these very dull as well—many scenes and incidents are already present in the novel, but there they’re wrapped in a story and thus coloured by emotions that work quite differently than in an essay that merely reports certain events. By contrast, selections from letters and diaries are interesting; they offer a glimpse into Hawthorne’s creative process and show that many aspects of the story occupied him earlier. Not to mention the nicely sketched maps of Salem and Boston on the endpapers, which further enhance the book visually.

Conclusion: The insight into a society strictly shaped by religion in the early New England settlement period—along with the moral conflict and the finely wrought psychological portrait of people of the time—makes the book a worthwhile read. There’s also clear narrative tension: Hawthorne doesn’t forgo elements that grip the reader, so despite detailed descriptions of emotions and inner conflicts, an entertaining story emerges. The sentences, however, often struck me as needlessly complex, and the characters’ decisions were not always convincing to me—even considering Puritan social structures. Nor did the longer autobiographical opening chapter preceding the actual story make much of an impression on me. Still, the book is a recommended read that holds up the value of a secular society and the achievements of the Enlightenment clearly before the reader’s eyes.

Book information: The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne • Hanser Verlag • 480 pages • ISBN 9783446244900