We know The Scarlet Letter is one of the books you're frantically finishing for the beginning of the school year, which is why we got Ramsey here to blog about it for you! Check out the first and second parts of The Scarlet Letter through Ramsey's eyes!
Chapter 5 - Hester at Her Needle
First of all, let's see if we can't spice these chapter titles up. I know it's been 160-ish years since the book came out, but maybe it's time for a "special edition."
Anyway, remember when Hawthorne spent all of Chapter One discussing the prison door? (I refuse to let you forget. It really wasn't that terrible, but I'm building it up to sound like the worst atrocity committed in literary history.) Well, all of a sudden he doesn't have any problem fast-forwarding ahead several years.
The narrator talks about the fact that Hester could choose to live anywhere at this point and be free of the scarlet letter. If I were her, I would head over to the West Coast and discover California. It's not a state yet (which means *cough cough* no laws), there's nice weather there, and it's a safe bet that people are going to remember me for discovering California and not that adultery thing so much.
Instead, Hester decides she's going to stick around in Boston. Not because she's a Red Sox fan or anything; she just wants to get the most out of being the town outcast.
She sets up her new home in a secluded area in the woods that was abandoned by its original builder. Hawthorne makes a big point of saying that she is completely excluded from everyone in town and she serves as a walking example of sin for all of them.
But the townsfolk have no problem asking her to embroider things for them. Hester is able to support herself with her needlework, and her handiwork becomes a fashion craze for the town. Puritan clothing, by law, needs to be simple and plain . . . but that doesn't mean I can't have the fanciest handkerchief the 1700s have ever seen. Those crazy Bostonians just can't get enough of that adulterer's needlework!
Chapter 6 - Pearl
So when you're the pariah, it's hard to be social when your only interactions with other people are asking what initials they'd like monogrammed on their baptism robes. This is why Hester's daughter Pearl is so important; she's a little ray of sunshine in an otherwise bleak existence.
Oh wait. Except for the fact that Pearl is a constant reminder of why the town hates her. Pearl got her name because according to the author, she's Hester's only treasure and was purchased with all she had. She loves her kid, obviously, but that love is multiplied because Pearl is her only contact with other humans.
I just feel bad thinking about what it's going to be like when Pearl goes to prom. My mom was super fussy as it was, but imagine if I was the only person she had to talk to for 17 years.
It turns out, though, that Hester isn't very good at parenting. She tries being easy-going with her daughter, she tries being super-strict, but ultimately she decides to "permit the child to be swayed by her own impulses." That's a really nice way of saying this kid is crazy-cakes. Think of those girls on "My Super Sweet 16," throw them in a Puritan bonnet, and then multiply that by 5 and you've got Pearl Prynne. But to be fair to Hester's parenting methods, if your options were to either let Pearl have an extra Puritan cookie or sit alone in a cabin away from town with a screaming child, you're going to give her the stupid cookie.
Because of the way people treat her mother when they are in town, Pearl knows that she is different from the rest of the world and has to deal with this same treatment. As a result, she becomes obsessed with her mother's scarlet "A." One day, Pearl, the charming young princess, is "playing" (which for her is torturing her mother by throwing wildflowers at the scarlet letter A) and Hester freaks out and shouts "Child, what art thou?" The three-year-old channels her inner sassy teen and basically says, "Hey, mom. You tell me."
The kid's only three! I can't imagine what's going to happen if she doesn't get a car on her 16th birthday.
Do you think Hester's going too easy on little Pearl? Do you want to go all Boston Tea Party on your copy of the Scarlet Letter? Vent in the comments!
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