The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

This month's meeting was in Billingshurst.

1. Our narrator goes through a lengthy (and frankly painful) description of the Custom’s House where he finds the actual Scarlet letter cloth and ‘unravels’ the story.  Is this frame device necessary?  Does it make an engaging start to the story?
2. What about the 3^rd person narrator?  How do you feel about him?  Is he self-conscious?  Does he create a tale you can engage with?
3. The text was published in 1850 but is set in Puritanical Boston between 1642 and 1649.  There are some very interesting colonial statements made.  Does this isolate readers outside of the US?
4. The text cannot be divorced from its Puritanical ideology.  Is that ideology so archaic that we can no longer engage with the narrative?
5. As a modern feminist, I have often struggled with this text.  Yet the text is about bringing a man to justice for his actions  (or at least torturing him for refusing to confess…).  Is the struggle again against the very ideology or the double standard through which women are judged?
6. To what extent are the characters merely stock players in a typical narrative format that develops no depth of feeling in the reader?
7. Can the reader feel any sympathy at all for Chillingworth?
8. The moralistic ending is to be expected; is it satisfying for a modern reader?
9. Does moralistic literature still find a place in modern fiction?