The needle and the damage done
A handful of reasons to (re)read The Scarlet Letter, presented in no order:
1. As a contemplation of craft
The Scarlet Letter is the most important piece of embroidery-centric fiction ever published.
Sure, needlework isn't the sole focus of the book—there’s also cuckoldry, damnation, etc—but it is easily among the top 5 most important elements. Embroidery is the technique by which Hester Prynne's scarlet A comes into being. Embroidery is how Hester supports herself after having naughty sex and being shunned from her community. Embroidery represents art, beauty, domesticity, mysticism, AND economic freedom. (Everything a woman needs.) A major plot point turns on an embroidered glove.The novel takes place in 1640s Massachusetts, notoriously a low ebb in fashion history. The average person dressed like a mushroom. Government officials were an exception, though. They swung in the opposite direction and outfitted themselves much like the monarchs they'd emphatically rejected. For an American magistrate in 1648, fancy garb was an un-subtle way to signal validity / authority in a terrain where both were disputable.
In the novel, Hester Prynne is the only person in her settlement with the talent to create such glove excellence. As a result, she receives many commissions and is able to raise her child on the proceeds despite being an outcast whom everyone hates. (Or in some cases "because" rather than "despite"—Hawthorne hints that Hester's reputable clients find it kinky to wear items worked by her sinful hands.)
I originally picked up The Scarlet Letter to reread because I've been embroidering up a storm lately. Embroidery is inherently gratifying, like any handcraft, but it’s also a superb way to improve your memory after you've destroyed it by (for example) abusing the internet. This is because each stitch consists of a sequence of actions that you have to memorize—putting the needle in someplace, drawing it out someplace else, looping or twisting it, putting it back, etc.
When I began I could only store two stitch sequences in my brain at a time, and if I attempted a third it would annoyingly replace whatever stitch had the weakest purchase. Now I can store four stitches at once. Maybe one day…five? Dream big!
Hawthorne emphasizes Hester’s “preternaturally active” memory.
2. For sex stuff
I'd be remiss if I didn't highlight the sexual nature of needlework. Forgive me, but: to embroider is to penetrate a resistant but ultimately yielding material with a pointy erect needle. Unlike Shakespeare, Hawthorne is too classy to make dirty jokes involving “pricks”—but I’m not!
Then there’s Hawthorne’s conception of sexiness, which is indestructible. He never uses the word "sexy" to describe Hester, but his particular cloud of adjectives—imperious, passionate, enigmatic, intelligent—is an acute definition of that quality.
3. For bracing observations on parenthood
Here’s Hester on her daughter, Pearl: "She is my happiness!—she is my torture, none the less! Pearl keeps me here in life! Pearl punishes me too!”
4. As a lesson in how to structure a suspense novel in a non-corny way
The structure of The Scarlet Letter is bizarre. It begins with a scene of Hester being pilloried and refusing to name the man who impregnated her.
Hester resides among allegedly pious Christians and her refusal to name names drives the villagers insane. They pretend it's because Hester’s silence compounds her sin, but of course it’s because they are degenerate ghouls dying to know who she slept with. Nothing is more enraging than withheld gossip!
There's a version of The Scarlet Letter that is an Agatha Christie-style whodunnit, with Hawthorne proposing 8 possible “babydaddies” and revealing the perp in a twist ending. Thankfully he didn't go this route. In the first of several odd structural choices, the father’s identity is revealed nearly instantly. You’d think this would sap the novel of suspense, but no!
After Hester is pilloried, the story skips forward a few years and splits into parallel narratives. In one, she undergoes the tribulations of single motherhood. In the other, a creepy doctor becomes obsessed with a sick clergyman. The clergyman is Hester’s co-adulterer.
The novel’s suspense, then, isn’t the sort of short-lived mechanical satisfaction that arises from solving a crossword or detangling a lock of ratted hair. Instead, it comes from watching Hester and her estranged clergyman race toward collision at terrifying speed, like two trains in a Tony Scott movie. How will the two reunite? When? With what degree of devastation? And why would these apparently principled people conspire to pervert justice in the young and fragile social experiment that was America 1642-1649?
5. So you can educate me about whether or not a peculiar building material exists
Here is Hawthorne’s description of a governor’s house:
[The house had] a very cheery aspect; the walls being overspread with a kind of stucco, in which fragments of broken glass were plentifully intermixed; so that, when the sunshine fell aslantwise over the front of the edifice, it glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had been flung against it by the double handful.
Is glassèd stucco a real historical building material? Wouldn't you cut yourself if you touched it? For all the builders reading this, my inbox is open.
UPDATE: David. R came to the rescue and wrote to inform me that “Bottle dash or sparkle stucco is a real thing, apparently very popular in Vancouver for some reason. Was made up of bits of broken bottles, not sure if it would cut you but probably not a very comfortable surface for leaning!” He also linked to this informative post. Thank you, David R.
6. Because the book is available free online
Here.
Could be the only one!