Review: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Mistress of the House of Books is all about putting the spotlight on womxn writers. While The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne obviously does not fit into this criteria, I felt strongly that I needed to review it through a feminist lens this month.

Like most of the books I have reviewed so far, The Scarlet Letter is a classic. I’m sure many of you had to read this novel as a teenager, and I’m sure even more of you have seen the movie Easy A, which is loosely based on the book. 

The Scarlet Letter may have been written by a man, but the novel’s main character, Hester Prynne, is a strong female character, and I’d like to argue that Hawthorne gave her a very feminist mindset and attitude from the very start of the story.

If you’ve never read the story, I’ll give you a little bit of background information before I dive in. The Scarlet Letter (published for the first time in 1850) takes place in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony in New England in the 1640s. Puritans are notorious for their staunch religious beliefs, prudish sentiments, and harsh criticisms. The colony portrayed by Hawthorne is an excellent example of the high standards that Puritans were expected to live by, and how these pressures can have a negative impact on a group of people. 

Hester Prynne is the main character and heroine of the story. She is a married woman who came over to the colony before her husband. By the time we meet Hester, years have gone by since she arrived in New England, and her husband hasn’t shown up yet. She has also just given birth to a baby out of wedlock and is therefore being persecuted by her fellow townsfolk.  

The book opens with a scene of Hester being released from prison with her newborn baby in her arms, on the way to the town scaffold to be put on display. She also wears an elaborately embroidered red “A” on the front of her dress, which the reader can assume stands for “adulteress,” although Hawthorne never explicitly says the word. 

Hester is required to stand before the town in shame for 3 hours as a punishment, and she must wear the red “A,” or, “scarlet letter” for the rest of her life. The reader soon understands that Hester has not given up the name of the father of her baby. Even after much cajoling from the townspeople, governors, and religious leaders of the town, she refuses. The reader will not find out the identity of Hester’s lover until the end of the novel, although I personally understood who it was pretty early on.

While Hester stands on the scaffolds, she looks out across the crowd. She notices a man and suddenly realizes that it is her husband, who at this point she believed to be dead. The man takes the name of Roger Chillingworth (doesn’t his name just sound evil?), and tells the town leaders that he is a trained physician who has been living with Native Americans for some time. 

Chillingworth is shown to Hester’s cell, and the pair share a tense reunion. I’ll just say that Hester was less than thrilled to see Chillingworth again. The feeling is mutual when Chillingworth begins to press Hester for the name of the baby’s father as well. They part ways after agreeing to keep the fact that Chillingworth is Hester’s husband a secret. 

I won’t go into any more detail as I don’t want to spoil the surprise ending, but it is a really juicy read and I found it to be quite the page-turner. Now, I want to dig a little bit deeper into the character of Hester, who I grew to admire the more I got into this novel. 

Hester refuses to bring her lover and baby’s father down with her and stands up to the leaders of the town and the church, both of which would have been unheard of at the time. In Puritan colonies, not only were women expected to be mothers and housewives, but they were also expected to be discreet, pure, and virginal. Sex was only to be enjoyed maritally and only for the sake of reproduction. A baby born out of wedlock was like a death sentence for the mother, and in some cases it actually was. 

Hester’s rebellion against the strict Puritan way of life is an outright declaration of her agency and feminism. Rather than closing in on herself in spite of complete rejection from her peers, Hester settles into her new life with her baby, a girl named Pearl.

Hester’s decision to protect her lover and take on all of the backlashes of an extramarital affair also shows how unjust the climate of the day was for women. Hester was living in isolation, away from the community, while her lover is able to continue with his normal life. Whether Hawthorne was aware of it or not, he shines a light on the suffocating role of women in the 17th century. 

One passage in the novel really stuck out for me. Hester is reflecting on her situation, and the situation for women at the time in general: 

“...the same dark question often rose into her mind with reference to the whole race of womanhood. Was existence worth accepting even to the happiest among them? As concerned her own individual existence, she had long ago decided in the negative, and dismissed the point as settled. A tendency to speculation, though it may keep woman quiet, as it does man, yet makes her sad. She discerns, it may be, such a hopeless task before her. As a first step, the whole system of society is to be torn down and built up anew. Then the very nature of the opposite sex, or its long heriditary habit, which has become like nature, is to be essentially modified before woman can be allowed to assume what seems a fair and suitable position...”

- The Scarlet Letter, page 183

We can see clearly here that Hester is frustrated. She suggests that even the happiest woman doesn’t have very much to live for. She also goes on to realize that a complete upheaval of society as it exists would be necessary for women to ever truly be happy or regarded as equal. 

Isn’t this a feeling that we all have felt at some point as feminists? Haven’t we all felt overwhelmed and frustrated with the seemingly gigantic task of taking down patriarchy? I don’t think I would be remiss in saying that the answer is a resounding, “yes.” 

Let’s take a note from Hester Prynne and keep fighting. In the same way that Hester did not give up on living her life and searching for happiness, let’s not give up on making the world we live in a better place for womxn, and men, alike. 

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