Tag Archives: The Scarlet Letter

April’s Classics Challenge at November’s Autumn

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This month I read The Scarlet Letter and the April prompt is about book covers. Unfortunately I can’t find an image of the edition which I read, but it wasn’t a great cover anyway. It just had a few Puritan men on it.

There are absolutely loads of book covers for The Scarlet Letter, these are a few of the ones which I think are quite good although I’m not so keen on the letter A in amongst the trees on the first one. The Manga version is more of an illustration of the books contents and in a modern sort of way I quite like it.

I think the cover designers have been a bit lazy over the years though and most of them are opting for the obvious letter A. Having said that I think my favourite version here is the Penguin cover as it seems a bit more restrained and classical than the others.

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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I bought this book twenty years ago, intending to read it then but I’ve just got around to it, I don’t do many things fast. It’s one of those books which always seem to be being mentioned which is why I wanted to read it as I had only a vague idea of what it was about. I’m sure everybody else has read it. The book was first published in 1850 and has been described as a romantic mystery. It is set in 17th century New England.

Hester Prynne is a young married woman whose husband has been absent for many years so when she gives birth to a daughter the powers that be in the American Puritan town in which she lives, decide that she must wear a scarlet letter on her breast as a punishment for the rest of her life. The letter is A for adulterer and Hester could have been condemned to death but instead she has to stand on a wooden platform/scaffold for three hours with her baby daughter, Pearl.

Hester’s misfortune doesn’t get her down and she shows great character in coping with the situation and refusing to divulge the name of Pearl’s father. As she is a talented needlewoman she embroiders her letter A in gold thread, using fancy stitches which gain the admiration of the women of the town.

The mystery is, who is Pearl’s father and is he amongst the observers.

I can’t say I really enjoyed this book because it was obvious who the father was and I was so annoyed that he was such a hypocrite and just left Hester to struggle on on her own. The fact that he had a bit of a guilty conscience didn’t go anywhere close to him redeeming himself. To my way of thinking he was more than a wee bit of a swine.

Poor Hester was not good at choosing men. Her husband, Roger Chillingworth turns up in town just in time to see the spectacle of Hester being shamed but they keep quite about their relationship and when Roger realises who has been ‘keeping company’ with Hester he sets about befriending the culprit with the intention of dosing him up with herbal ‘medicines’.

Anyway, there wouldn’t have been a story if Hester had been a good judge of men and I must admit that I feel a sense of satisfaction that I’ve read it at last. The Scarlet Letter was on my list of 55 classic books to be read within five years or so at A Room of One’s Own.