A required read for my American Literary Class that I did NOT enjoy.

Hester Prynne commits adultery that results in the birth of an illegitimate child, the ministers then rule that she should be forced to wear a scarlet letter 'A' for the rest of her life so she will be publicly shamed. This is at the beginning in the first couple of chapters. After that, the story is about finding out the identity of the father, which is no mystery at all, interactions between Hester and her husband, and the growth of Hester's illegitimate and really annoying child.

Every man would say that the book is a classic because it is an excellent snapshot of a historical period. It has a narrative set within a framework that allows us to better understand the roots of Americans. The issues of people's perceptions of women and the rights of women are still very alive today. Overall, it gives us a chance to examine our own society through the lens of fiction, therefore re-framing the conversation to make it less personal and easier to examine without bias.

But I think this is a bad book. The prose itself is almost unreadable. The plot is melodramatic. The characters are single-dimensional, the women being constant victims of the time and the men being weak examples of humanity.

I rate this book 2 stars because I find the subject very interesting, but I don't much care for Nathaniel Hawthorne's writing style, and I hope won't have to read other works by him.