Dealing with SL as a Romantic Novel

The Scarlett Letter was obviously a Romantic novel. Novels written in the Romantic time period tended to be a little darker, based mainly on emotion and not on actual facts. SL fits perfectly into this mold. The book includes all sorts of dark concepts, from sinning and revenge to shame and death. The overall tone was also dark and slightly depressing.

Nature and transcendentalism were huge parts of the book. The scene in the woods was a Romantic place, and the imagery that Hawthorne used to describe nature had Romantic written all over it (very wordy). Also, Pearl seemed connected to the woods, and a quote in the book described her as being more at home in the forest than she was at her typical house with Hester. This is an example of transcendentalism, because it described Pearl "becoming one" with nature.

Gothic concepts filled the plot, and many of the characters were dark as well. Chillingworth was described as creepy and evil, which is not exactly an observation based on solid fact, but instead based on others' intuition. Dimmesdale was a very complex and dark character, the perverse (vocab word!) side of him coming out after his conversation with Hester in the forest.

As far as dealing with this Romantic novel, I think that it was a very good book. I'm so glad we were assigned a book from the Romantic time period instead a book from the Enlightenment because I think that teenagers in general are more intrigued by emotions rather than logical thinking (again, I agree with Mrs. D's theory that typically, teenagers are Romantic). SL had almost every "buzz word" of Romanticism incorporated in the story, so I think it represented the time period very well.