Book Review : The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

 

Summary: The Scarlet Letter tells the story about Hester Prynne has a child out of wedlock when her husband isn't in town. When the society discovers this, she is branded with a scarlet A and she has to undergo public shaming. She refuses to tell anyone who the father of the child is. But then Roger Chillingworth arrives who the reader later discovers is Hester's husband, and he makes it his life goal to find out who the father of her child his. 

Background: Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in 1804 in Salem, Massuchusetts (so cool, right?). One of his ancestors, John Hathorne actually a lead judge in the Salem Witch Trials and that is why Nathaniel turned his surname from Hathorne to Hawthorne - so he could distance himself from that ancestor. After he graduated from Bowdoin College, he returned to Salem and that is where he wrote The Scarlet Letter in 1804. After the book was published, protests broke out in Salem as many of the inhabitants believed that the book portrayed the society and its Puritan tradition negatively. Despite this negative feedback from his hometown, this book is seen as a classic today and Hawthorne was admired by many writers. 

Review: 

I read this book for my book club for September. We chose the genre, Classics and then we decided on this book. I was actually quite excited to read this book especially because the movie Easy A was loosely based on this book and they even mention the book in the movie. It is one of those books which is always on your TBR and you always say you want to read it, but somehow that never happens. So I saw this as the perfect opportunity. I knew Classics is a challenging genre, but I have read Classics before and it wasn't that hard. Well, apparently I was wrong. Most of the Classics I read were Jane Austen books which was  only published a few years later so I didn't think I would struggle as much with The Scarlet Letter as I did. The language used was much more challenging. The language in the dialogue reminded me of Shakespeare (because words like "thy" and "thou" were used) and that was easy for me. Sadly there was hardly any dialogue. The parts in between like the descriptions and explanations almost felt like academic articles only it is written in the 19th century. I feel like I'm exaggerating a bit, but it definitely not easy to read. 

Another problem with this book is that the introduction is 50 pages long and then the first chapter is only two pages long which isn't as much of a problem as frustrating. The story also begins after Hester Prynne gave birth and I would have liked to know more like how she and the father got in that situation. A lot of the other book club members said that they would have liked a prequel (not that it is in any way possible). It felt like the story should have started with that so we could see the whole love story and what lead to her cheating on her husband. And sometimes it felt like you could just stop in the middle of the book and it would really not bother you if you never knew the ending and books aren't supposed to make you feel that way. It's supposed to hold your attention and this book definitely did not. I really believe that I would have put the book down after the second chapter if I didn't have to read it for this book club. The ending of the book is also very open and you don't quite know what happened. And despite all this negative feedback, the book leaves you wanting more. You want to know what happens after the end. 

This book was challenging for me, but it is really well written. I just think if you read this book you should either be comfortable with the language used or you must be someone who reads classics often. Because it isn't easy and this book is definitely not for everyone. So yes, I would recommend this book because it was really enlightening because I didn't know much about Puritan traditions and the story is definitely different to anything that I've read before. But I would only recommend it to people who are comfortable with Classics and who are genuinely interested in the Puritan society. I'm giving this book a 5/10. 

Thanks for reading this review and if you decide to read it, I hope you enjoy it!!