The various currents of American identity jump out of this novel’s pages, and then sing you to sleep with flowery, melodramatic Victorian prose.
The first of these currents is puritanism, sharply criticized by the narrative for its hypocrisy and unneighbourliness. That this streak remains within American culture despite the novel’s consistent place in school reading lists suggests the critique doesn’t quite land. Do readers laugh at the townsfolk who snub the lovechild of an adultress until she becomes a rich heiress (I certainly did), but not see themselves in these small-minded, selfish folk (I certainly didn’t)?
Another current is the pride and tenacity in standing up for one’s beliefs, no matter the social opposition — even if it demands braving the Atlantic to reinvent oneself. This theme, too, the author weaves into his work with intention. Adulteress Hester Prynne’s quiet rebellion in transforming the scarlet letter she is forced to wear into something beautiful, her refusal to cover the letter in shame… these passages are touchingly written, heroic.
Combining these two currents together, there is a deep mistrust in the state — which is, after all, composed of people, who tend towards being cruel puritans. Highlighted secular institutions are the prison and the cemetery. Elections are pompous, revered, capricious rituals. Social interventions callously and sanctimoniously try to part mother and child. Through personification in Hester, the virtues elevated by the narrative are individual charity and truthfulness to oneself.
Some currents perhaps less intentionally flow from the author’s pen. The noble savagery of the indigenous neighbours is an artifact of the author's era. There is a heavy christian morality that coats every character’s emotions — particularly that of guilt. It weighs so leadenly on the characters that I find the novel almost not worth reading for its lack of insight into human psychology, the focus of the novel.
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