The Scarlet Letter: Enriched Classics

Introduction

The Scarlet Letter:
The Americanization of Fiction

The Scarlet Letter was declared a classic almost immediately after its publication in 1850, and it has stayed in print and in favor ever since. It has been hailed both as the first symbolic novel and as the first psychological novel (even though it was written before there was a science called psychology). But what really secures the place of The Scarlet Letter in literary history is its treatment of human nature, sin, guilt, and pride -- all timeless, universal themes -- from a uniquely American point of view.

In the decades that followed the American Revolution, the United States struggled to distinguish itself culturally from Europe. There was a sense that if the United States were to become a great nation, it needed to have its own artistic traditions, not transplanted imitations of European models. Hawthorne rose to this challenge. The Scarlet Letter is set in the mid-seventeenth century in a Puritan colony on the edge of an untamed forest still inhabited by Native Americans. The landscape is wholly American. In the book, Hawthorne manages to put his finger on several thematic elements that came to define the American national identity: the effects of strict religious morality, the long struggle against a vast frontier, the troubled relationship between white settlers and Native Americans. These issues were just as relevant in Hawthorne's day as they were in Puritan times, and the way Americans and the United States government addressed these issues shaped the development of the nation.

What is perhaps even more remarkable about this 150-year-old story is that its characters face the same moral struggles as readers in the twenty-first century. In Puritan Massachusetts, morality was strictly legislated and Church and State were one and the same. Although Church and State have been separate legally since the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791, issues of morality, personal freedom, and public life are still hot topics of national debate. Should politicians be called to account for their personal lives? Must public figures serve as role models? Does our government have a right to make laws controlling private behavior? In Puritan colonies, sinners were often branded with a hot iron and put up on a scaffold for public mockery. We no longer use actual branding irons on the people whose moral failings we condemn. But modern media are far more effective than scaffolds for holding people up for public scrutiny, and the American public's readiness to judge the sins of others remains just as strong as it was 350 years ago. Modern readers will see much of themselves in the characters of The Scarlet Letter.