Snag The Scarlet Letter (No Fear) Produced By Nathaniel Hawthorne Accessible In Publication

who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped.
Many, many years ago, my HonorsEnglish class was assigned The Scarlet Letter by our teacher, Mrs.
Janet Fuchs. Although I read a lot back then, when I was sixteen I was not very interested in delving into the wrongs wrought by the Christian patriarchy.
Instead I relied on Cliffs Notes to Mrs, Fuchs dismay, I was not subtle about it, Over the last few years, Ive been trying to read more classicsthose never assigned and those that I bluffed my way throughbut I hadnt gotten around to this one.
Well, Mrs. Fuchs passed away a couple of weeks ago, She was a great teacher, fondly remembered by a generation of students, and Im sure I would have learned a lot more from her had I actually put forth the effort.
So, as way of honoring her though perhaps a very weird of way, I decided to finally read The Scarlet Letter.


Parts of the reading experience here were predictable, The language is a bit stilted in places, And there are just So Many Symbols: the rosebush, the scaffold, daytime v, nighttime, nature v. society, physical manifestations of emotional states, the names of Chillingworth, Dimmesdale, and Pearl, and last but not least, the titular scarlet letter itself, possibly the most famous symbol in all of literature.
That would be a fun list to try to come up with: the scarlet letter, the whale from sitelink Moby Dick, Harry Potters scar, what else

But I was surprised by how well the story holds up for a modern audience.
Hesters feminist choices and moral strength to accept societys judgment while refusing to name her lover, Chillingworths willingness to accept his portion of blame for what happened between them, The storys portrayal of the quotation attributed to Confucius: “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.
” The theme that the selfloathing born from some secret sin is even more destructive than the shame that comes with publicly owning your mistakes.
And Hawthorne makes a mockery of Puritanical morality, and the ultimate futility of a patriarchal society trying to brand the women it can neither control nor do without.


The Scarlet Letter may be the quintessential book for studying in school, The deliberate construction of the story, the actual earlyAmerican history blended into the fiction, the themes, motifs, symbols, and other literary devices, all beg for this book to be taught in English classes.
Fortunately for future generations of students, it is a timeless story, with much to teach to those willing to learn.
Recommended.

“You quote someone, It is a quotation. ” A classic Mrs. Fuchs correction of a student who dared to use the word “quote” as a noun,

No one left Mrs, Fuchss class without being able to use her favorite wordquintessentialin a sentence, RIP, Mrs. Fuchs. Hester walked across the room, She stepped upon her left foot, her right foot, and then her left foot again, One wonders, why doth she, in this instance of walking across the room, begin her journey upon the left foot and not the right Could it be her terrible sin, that the devil informeth the left foot just as he informeth the left hand and those bewitched, lefthanded persons amongst us Why, forsooth, doth the left foot of sin draggeth the innocent right foot along its wretched journey from one side of the room to the other She walked across the room, I tell you! Guilty feet hath got no rhythm.
. . "No hay una sola punta en esa letra escarlata que no le haya pinchado el corazón, "

Nathaniel Hawthorne ha quedado en la historia como uno de los iniciadores de la literatura de Estados Unidos en el siglo XIX junto con Herman Melville quien lo admiraba profundamente dedicándole el libro Moby Dick y Edgar Allan Poe.
Podríamos sumar también a Washinton Irving, Henry Longfellow y más tarde a Ambrose Bierce a este grupo de pioneros literarios.

Escritor fecundo, nos dejó dos grandes novelas como son esta y La casa de los siete tejados, así también como una gran cantidad de cuentos, algunos de factura realmente notable y maravillosa, incluidos en Cuentos dos veces contados y Musgos de una vieja rectoría.

Yo tuve este libro en el estante sin leer durante mucho tiempo años para ser exacto, y como estoy poniéndome al día con una gran cantidad de novelas sin leer, decidí empezar con esta de Hawthorne.
Debo reconocer la maestría del autor para plantearnos una historia que seguramente debe haber levantado críticas en la época que se publicó.
Cabe destacar que Hawthorne nació en Salem y su bisabuelo, que se apellidaba Hathorne, sin la w, había sido parte de los inquisidores puritanos encargados de “cazar” y condenar decenas de mujeres por brujería.

La letra escarlata, es una novela que nos deja una profunda reflexión sobre la moral, el castigo, las costumbres y la hipocresía reinante en la sociedad puritana de Nueva Inglaterra a comienzos del siglo XIX.
Hester Prynne se erige como una de esas grandes heroínas que podemos encontrar en la literatura,
Sufre la degradación, el desprecio y la condena durante siete años y es obligada a llevar el estigma de esa letra A en rojo escarlata, prendada al pecho, como castigo por concebir a su hija Pearl, en adulterio.

Esa letra escarlata echará raíces que se clavarán como dagas en su corazón, Pero no atravesará este condena sola, A partir de que es expuesta en el patíbulo a la salida de la cárcel, emprenderá esta vida dura y sacrificada con su pequeña “niñaduende”, quien, a lo largo de los años será su sostén moral y motivo principal para seguir adelante.

Lo maravilloso en Hester Prynne es que siempre mantiene su cabeza erguida, estoica, sin revelar nunca quién es el padre de esa niña, por la cual es obligada a lleva la A escarlata bordada en sus vestidos.
Y es en base a esto que gira toda la historia,
Es difícil ahondar más en el desarrollo de la historia porque se corre el riesgo de hacer spoiler, dado que no son muchos los personajes que desfilan por las páginas del libro, por lo que respetaré a aquel lector que se interese por leer la novela.

A mí me gustó, aunque tiene cierta forma un tanto intrincada de narrar por momentos los sucesos, Dicen que leerla en inglés es aún más enrevesado, Yo soy un gran admirador de Hawthorne y es uno de mis autores preferidos, Su “negrura”, como diría Melville, es lo que más me atrae, dado que, cuando de cuentos se trata, tienen estos cierta oscuridad que paradójicamente les da un brillo particular y hacen que atraigan poderosamente mi atención y me entusiasme leerlos.

Recomiendo fuertemente leer sus “Cuentos dos veces contados”, entre los que se incluyen Wakefield, de fuertes connotaciones existenciales en el que se puede percibir características que posteriormente desarrollaría en sus relatos Franz Kafka.

La letra escarlata es un libro que todo lector de clásicos debe agregar a sus lecturas, La forma en la que Hawthorne nos relata la historia nos hace plantear hasta qué punto a veces lo moral o lo correcto pueden influir negativamente en una sociedad y en las personas si estos valores son aplicados en forma equivocada.
“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true”
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

When I think of The Scarlet Letter, I think of all the things I hated about high school English.
Indeed, I think of all the things I see as wrongheaded in the way we teach literature to kids,

Ive loved reading for as long as I can remember, Yet, when I entered high school, it did not take long for that love to shrivel like autumnal leaves, there to break and scatter beneath the heels of a succession of wellmeaning teachers trotting out their ohsofamiliarsyllabi.
Despite being a prolific, aboveagelevel reader throughout middle school, I doubt I finished more than a handful of titles during those four years.


The reason, at least in part, is Nathaniel Hawthorne, an author who wrote dense prose about complicated themes, with little regard for pacing or dramatic set pieces.
It is a style found in many of the titles that make up the bulk of required reading lists,

When you are handed The Scarlet Letter at the age of fourteen or fifteen, and you open those pages, you are not about to enter a realm of wonder and enchantment.
Rather, you are thrust into a ruthless psychological excavation, not unlike the dissection of that fetal pig you did in biology.
You must trudge through sentences that cling like brambles, and divine meaning from Hawthornes gratuitous use of colors and symbols.
By the time its over, its hard not to hate the very idea of picking up a book,

Any book.

Lost are any of the simple joys of a welltold story,

Sure, there is good reason to study literature, and the important, lifelong tools you thereby gain such as critical thinking, attention to detail, and sitting still long enough to finish a page especially in this age of constant swiping.
Im certainly not calling for the abolition of English class,

For my money, though, its more important to get impressionable, distracted youngsters to love reading in the first place.
Drug dealers know all about getting their clients hooked on the good stuff, In this area, English teachers are lagging,

If I ran the world, Id be assigning popular contemporary fiction in high school, subjecting them to the same analyses with half the pain.


As you might have noticed, I dont run the world, Furthermore, in the universe in which we happen to coexist, The Scarlet Letter remains a classic, though it grows dustier with each passing year.
Thus, it was with a need for catharsis, as well as a sense of unfinished business, that I picked this up twentyfive years after I last set it down.


Full disclosure: I set it down inin order to pick up the Cliffs Notes version,

The big surprise here: I sort of loved it,

Like all literary masterpieces, The Scarlet Letter requires little by way of introduction, It is the story of a “fallen” woman, her vengeful and incognito husband, and a charismatic young minister harboring a terrible secret.


When the novel opens, the heroine, Hester Prynne, is stepping through the prison door, on her way to a scaffold where she is to be publicly shamed.
She wears the titular red “A” on her breast, marking her as an adulteress, In her arms she bears Pearl, the daughter born of sin, Hesters affair is well over by the time we meet her, and little mention is made of it, I cant even recall Hawthorne explicitly stating the meaning of the “A”, The focus here is not on the sin, but on the sinner, and her road to redemption,

My version of The Scarlet Letter opens with a thirtyplus page “introductory” called The CustomHouse.
This is a meandering, longwinded, semiautobiographical sketch of Hawthornes time as a surveyor at the CustomHouse in Salem, Massachusetts, During this time, Hawthorne claims that he came across the “true” story of Hester Prynne, which he goes on to relate in the actual novel.
Im not sure if The CustomHouse is technically part of The Scarlet Letter or not, I think not. Nevertheless, I read it, since I am a bit anal about things like that, Anyway, no part of this reading experience brought me closer to my impatient, highschool self than slogging through this unnecessary opening act.


Hester refuses to name her partnerinlust, even after the arrival of her mucholder husband, who now calls himself Roger Chillingworth excellent name, by the by.
Chillingworth is a physician who has spent time among the Indians, He takes it upon himself to discover the identity of Hesters paramour, so that he can enact his revenge,

The third character in The Scarlet Letters triad is Arthur Dimmesdale, a popular preacher much loved by the Boston townfolk.
He uses his clout to defend Hester when he can, He also happens to be wasting away for some inexplicable reason,

The Scarlet Letter is set in, and features a number of reallife personages and allusions to actual events, which is Hawthornes attempt to lend this verity.
Despite being just over twohundred pages long, The Scarlet Letter spans some seven years, as the stoic, isolated Hester proudly bears her shame, and gradually works herself back into the good graces of her community.
Since her community is made up of Puritans, this results in little more than a slightlylessgrim frown as she passes through town.


Hawthornes prose requires your attention, He tends towards long, clausestudded sentences, in which he uses both commas and hyphens to pack in as much information, digressionary or not, as he possibly can.
Though he has the shortstory writers knowledge of exactly where he is going, Hawthorne also displays a Dickensian tendency towards using five words when a period would have sufficed.
And of course, there is the PuritanSpeak, especially in the dialogue, which is clotted with

thees, thous, hithers and yons.


With all that said, he can sure describe a place, I really appreciated his ability to conjure a precolonial Massachusetts as an island in the midst of a wilderness that is both Edenic and forbidding.


The core story itself is so iconic that it is difficult to judge objectively, If this was written today, would anyone care Im not sure, In any event, the interplay between Hester, Arthur, and Roger is fascinating, Roger, especially, deserves a special guest star award, for enlivening every scene of which he is a part, Hester, too, holds her own, Though she is not quite a protofeminist bucking the patriarchy while blasting Liz Phair, she is tough, resilient, and hearteningly indifferent to the judgments of others.


The Scarlet Letter famously ends with scenes that are so overwrought and melodramatic that they bear little resemblance to reality.
Even taking into consideration the setting a period in which otherwisenormal men and women believed that witches were flying over their heads on a nightly basis Hester, Roger, and especially Arthur are extremely operatic.
They are so histrionic that one can be excused for thinking he or she has wandered away from Hawthornes haunted New England and stumbled into Dostoyevskys St.
Petersburg.

That said, I actually found the overthetop denouement to befun, I know, Im as surprised as you, All it took was an acceptance that this was a world ruled by emotion, in which reason and rationality have no place.
Unlike the Puritans themselves, I just went with the flow,

The irony, of course, is that I have come to enjoy this book about emotionally volatile adults so long after high school, where emotional volatility is the engine of the machine.
It is only with the relative calm that comes with age that I recognize how this is sort of the perfect novel to match the mental state of a typical teenager.


Not that your typical teenager is ever going to voluntarily read this, .