Hester

Hester reimagines The Scarlet Letter—a story in which a woman is alienated due to patriarchy—as a story about a woman finding community in spite of patriarchy, written by a woman author. This iteration contrasts with Hawthorne’s novel, in which Hester Prynne is objectified by her husband Roger Chillingworth and once lover Arthur Dimmesdale, though she elicits sympathy from fellow women in the end. While both men suffer for their sins, Hester and her daughter Pearl, also suffer, though Pearl inherits the men’s fortunes. Albanese’s novel, with its title and narration, centers the woman who inspired the character of Hester, subverting the narrative of a “fallen” woman by recentering her desires and dreams—by allowing her to feel like a real person whose life continues beyond the tragedy of her “fall.” This recentering also applies to Isobel’s friends Nell, Abigail, and Mercy, as well as other local women who come to her aid at the end of the novel.

In her Notes and Acknowledgments, Albanese notes her identification with The Scarlet Letter, first as a high school student and later as the parent of students: “Pearl was a wild child and I saw myself in her” […] “I recognized Hester Prynne’s seminal importance as a heroic woman who defies powerful men” (387). Yet she also identifies with Hawthorne: “Much like Hawthorne, I was a desultory student and voracious reader, preoccupied with family matters and the question of how I might fit into the world” (387). While Albanese transforms Hawthorne from man to character—an inverse of what Nat does to Isobel—and suggests The Scarlet Letter is not his story at all, she still writes out of respect for him—even if he wouldn’t agree. This is evident in her references to Hawthorne’s life and work.

Evidence suggests Hawthorne would have resented Albanese’s interference in his work, as she is a woman writer who gives Isobel a happy ending with Margaret and Darling. In Chapter 20, Nat says, “Ladies can scribble their poetry by the fireside and no one cares as long as they’ve done their chores. But writing is suspect activity for a strong and able man” (239). This quote invokes the real Hawthorne’s famous 1855 lament, written to his friend and publisher, William Ticknor: “America is now wholly given out to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash—and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed” (qtd. in Frederick, John T, “Hawthorne’s ‘Scribbling Women’,” The New England Quarterly, vol. 48, no. 2, 1975, pp. 231-40, JSTOR). Aside from his blatant sexism, his description of the American literary landscape was not incorrect. While The Scarlet Letter is often held as America’s first bestseller, 1850 also saw the release of the bestselling Wide, Wide World by Susan Warner. By the time Hawthorne penned his letter in 1855, Maria Susanna Cummins’s The Lamplighter (1854) had been published, as well as the best-selling novel of the century, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Sentimental novels, overwhelmingly written by women, became the runaway successes of the decade. Albanese’s reimagining of The Scarlet Letter follows this tradition, suggesting the possibility of both appreciating a classic text and reshaping it to include marginalized voices.