excuse the weird edition this is the only one the high school library would lend me

tsl is a weird little classic mostly because i have no idea what hawthorne was going for here at all. we can assume we're supposed to take a pro-christianity stance since this was written in 1850 but literally everything about the plot and characters would lead us to a criticism of the church in the modern day. hawthorne clearly criticizes the puritans, but not so much that he dismantles organized religion itself; he criticizes the way these religious communities treat women, but also defines womanhood as the state of not being hardened by the world, implying that hester is not fully a woman because of how the town has discriminated against her. it's an extremely lukewarm take and any female author of this time period had better things to say about misogyny than this- but also i dont think hawthorne was interested in saying much about women at all? he's mostly focused on the foil between the two central characters, and the plot is defined by how characters move closer to and away from sin, with there being no real antagonist besides the devil himself (is that spoilers?) also the ending is a little lame. really only an interesting ending for one character and its not either of the main two. 

anyway the agony of being taught puritan christianity your whole life is definitely An Aesthetic but i did not care enough to have fun with a whole novel about it. at some point people are whipping themselves for their sins and you just have to lean in knowing you dgaf.