Mortaine’s Blog

OK, I just finished reading The Scarlet Letter last night, and I wanted to kind of throw my thoughts out on the novel. First off, let me begin by saying that I had not read The Scarlet Letter before, though I had read “Young Goodman Brown,” which is Hawthorne’s short story about the devil, set in New England.

Anyway, I had seen the movie with Demi Moore, and thought it was good. Oh, how I wish I had read the book first. Here is a case where watching the movie without reading the book can really ruin the whole story! Ack! Demi Moore makes an OK Hester Prynne, though she is really too sensual an actress to carry off the later Hester (the one after wearing the letter for 7 years, though in the movie it seems more like 2?)

Anyway, enough of the movie/book review. My second hurtle in reading the book was time. I started the book, then finished it about 6 months later. I had forgotten many things. Fortunately, the book is short, and I was able to speed-skim the previous chapters to jog my memory. Still, I wonder if I would have gotten more out of the book if I’d read it straight through.

In any case, some thoughts:

The letter is the external mark of the internal sin– that much is stated outright by Hawthorne. But it is also a double-mark: the mark of sin and of shame, and also the mark of love and passion and intimacy. Pearl, too, is that type of external mark, and her personality is so over-done in its changeability, that one wonders if Hawthorne was setting out to portray an autistic child. A year ago, I read a terrific article (in researching criticism of an Ursula LeGuin short story) about autism and artistic ability. The disassociation of the autistic child from its mother, as described in the article, leads me to believe that Pearl really is autistic in her alienation from all of society, and especially in Hawthorne’s repeated descriptions of her loving estrangement from her mother. Many times, she is described in terms of not really connecting with her mother, sometimes even to her mother’s added sorrow.

But then, Pearl is also a symbol of Hester’s sin and passion– is this estrangement also the estrangement of Pearl’s father, the Reverend Dimmesdale? Or is it the estrangement of Hester from herself– the estrangement of a woman who knows she has done something immoral, but who is now, as a result, questioning the very morality of the world and society around her? Certainly, Hawthorne hints that Hester’s unique place inside and on the borders of her society has given her the perspective to be critical of society, and to consider other alternatives to what she sees around her.

Merging into queer theory, then, Hester is the transgressive figure– the out/not-out sexualized being. Her story, like so many homosexuals and trans-gendered narratives, is one of being shoved out, while still trying to hold true to herself. Ultimately, Hester’s voice, like that of so many other sexual and non-sexual minority identities, is the voice of criticism and reproach for the dominant society’s behavior and beliefs.

And, like so many minority voices, Hester’s voice goes unheard, and is almost entirely silent through much of the book and especially at the end, where she has taken on a role of untouchable female hermit– not unlike the cloistered nuns of the Catholic lands– or a saint.

The very last chapter of the novel really befuddled me, however, as it seemed to have no bearing on the story of Hester, or even of the town itself at all, except to make a very short statement about hypocrisy. I don’t entirely understand why this vignette– which stands alone even better than it does as part of the novel– should appear at the end of the novel, and I wonder if it’s an editorial decision not explained in the small and unfootnoted edition that I was reading.