Book vs. Movie
April 7th, 2009 at 7:48 pm (books, movies)
The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is the epic tale of trust, heartbreak, and forbidden love before it became a cliché. It examines the concepts of law and sin, analyzing it so that the reader thinks, “Is this really what life is about?”
The plot goes something like this. It is the 1660’s. Hester Prynne is a young wife who had been sent by her husband to the New World to start a new life in a Puritan village in Boston while her husband tied up some loose ends in England. About a year after her arrival, before the book starts, Hester’s husband’s ship sunk. No survivors. Her husband is dead. Two years after her arrival, and at the start of the book, Hester is on display on a platform in the middle of the village, a newborn child in her arms, a scarlet A on her dress. The A stands for adultery, which is when a married person has an affair with someone who is not their spouse. Now, you might not think this is such a big deal, but in the seventeenth century—and especially in a Puritan village—adultery is considered one of the worst crimes a person can commit besides murder. Also, her husband is dead. Why should she be punished for having an affair after her husband died? According to seventeenth century Puritans, a person must wait seven years after a spouse’s death before he or she can date again—which is unfortunate because most people (in those times) lost spouses when they were middle aged and seven years later it would be almost too late to date anyone.
Anyway, on with the summary. So Hester is condemned to live the rest of her life in shame, made clear by the red A on her chest. Who is the father? No one but Hester and Nathaniel Hawthorne know, not even the reader. The governor or the minister, Reverend Dimmesdale? Or perhaps the mysterious stranger. No, scratch that. It cannot be the mysterious stranger, for early in the book he is revealed to be Hester’s long lost husband, going undercover as the physician Roger Chillingworth, and Hester never really loved him anyway. He came to the New World expecting a warm home and a loving wife, ready to bring him back into her life after being lost at sea for months. Instead, he arrives to find his wife had given birth to another man’s child and is shamed and scorned by the public, living in a cold cottage by the cliff overlooking the furious, foaming ocean. He warns Hester never to tell anyone his true identity, for he too would be scorned for not looking after his wife, and so he could seek revenge on the father of his wife’s child. Half the book is spent in mystery: Who is the father of the strange child?
It is later discovered that the father is none other than Hester’s minister, Arthur Dimmesdale. Chillingworth—Prynne—suspected this and became Dimmesdale’s personal physician. Dimmesdale was going mad with guilt. He knew it was his fault for his love’s suffering and he often tore out his hair or whipped or cut himself when no one was looking. He occasionally thought about suicide but dismissed the idea, thinking that maybe, one day, he and Hester might escape with their child and live their life happily ever after. A few years later, Hester meets Dimmesdale in the woods and they both agree that they will both catch the next ship to England and live there as a family. But it can’t be too soon! The election ceremony is a few days away and Dimmesdale must speak there, for he is, after all, the minister. It is a great honor to speak at an election ceremony and Dimmesdale cannot turn it down. There is a ship leaving the day of the ceremony, and they plan to leave then.
The ceremony comes and Dimmesdale gives his speech. Unfortunately, Chillingworth is more cunning than they had anticipated. He learned of their plan to get away and he booked a spot on that same ship. Long, agonizing story short, Dimmesdale dies from supernatural causes. This leads me to believe, since this book was written in the 1800’s when adultery was still a crime, that Nathaniel Hawthorne, the author, wanted to punish Dimmesdale for leading Hester to “sin.” Fortunately, though, Hawthorne punishes Chillingworth as well, killing him off a few pages after Dimmesdale. He dies from lack of someone to seek revenge on, thus illustrating Hawthorne’s message that revenge is just as bad as adultery and if you seek revenge on someone you’re just as much at fault as the person on whom you seek revenge. Hester and her daughter survive, though. They go back to England. Hester never loves another man, but Pearl grows up, marries, and reproduces.
The theme of this book? Adultery is a terrible crime. Even now, in a time of bad break ups/divorces and cheating spouses, it really hurts someone when they feel their lover would rather be with someone else. I think people can change their mind when they want, but they should break it off with their current spouse first. Also, revenge does not solve anything. Eventually, it will turn around and bite you in the behind. Sure, it might work. But when it is done, you will hae gotten so caught up in your revenge you won’t know what else to do with yourself.
Now, The Scarlet Letter was also made into several movies. The most recent one, and the one I saw, was made in about 1995. You know the book’s plot. Here’s the movie’s.
In the first scene, young Hester Prynne arrives in the New World, sent ahead by her husband. She is an outcast already, wearing blue and purple dresses and lace where the other women wear black, white, and gray. She loves to stroll in the woods and follow birds, especially one bright red one that does not seem to have anything to do with the plot whatsoever, except for the scene in which Hester’s mute slave seems to be flirting with it, which is…strange to say the least. But that comes later.
So Hester is out in the woods and she sees a young man bathing in the river. Don’t worry: despite the movie’s R rating, no male body parts are shown. Even though the man is concealed by the surface of the water, Hester falls in love with him. Turns out later that he is her minister, Mr. Dimmesdale (who, in the book, is not described as nearly as handsome and smooth as he is portrayed in the movie). About forty-five minutes into the movie, Hester’s husband’s ship is attacked by Native Americans, although all the Puritans in the movie call them Indians. No survivors. Dimmesdale brings Hester the news and she is anything but upset. For the next fifteen minutes, Hester and Dimmesdale are having some quality time in the barn and Hester’s slave is flirting with a bird in the bathtub. I know, weird. Then Hester is arrested for being pregnant with another man’s child. She refuses to tell who the father is. Soon after, her real husband appears. He is much crueler than in the book, dumping water over her head to “wash away her sins.”
At home, Hester receives a surprise visitor. Brewster Stonewall is a vile man who…well, actually, I could not tell how he felt about Hester. He has long, shoulder-length hair and looks somewhat like Dimmesdale. He visits her in her house and tries to rape her. She grabs a candle and thrusts it into his eye. When you next see his face, his left eye is a mess. In the confusion, she pulls out her rifle and kicks him out. He rides home furiously, and is attacked by Chillingworth armed with a knife who mistakes him for Dimmesdale. Chillingworth graphically stabs him repeatedly, and when Stonewall is dead, Chillingworth guts him and cuts of the flesh on the top of his head, holding it by the long hair. Dimmesdale finds his gutted, eyeless, unrecognizable body the next morning. Despite his arguments that Stonewall was murdered by one of them—meaning a white Puritan man—the village’s government blames it on, you guessed it, “the good-for-nothing, backstabbing Indians.” A war is declared and Chillingworth, realizing what he did, hangs himself in his room.
There is another character, Harriet Hibbons, a Quaker who is thought to be a which. She is condemned to hang, and when Hester defends her, she is condemned to hang as well. They stand on the platform in the center of town, nooses around their necks. Dimmesdale stops the executioner, revealing to the crowd that he is Hester’s child’s father and that if anyone is to be hanged, it is him. He lets Hester and Mistress Hibbons down and puts the noose around his own neck. Before the executioner can pull the lever, kick the stool, whatever, an arrow is shot through his neck. Dimmesdale escapes and a war follows between the Puritans and the Native Americans.
By the end of the epic battle, Hester, Dimmesdale, and their daughter are still alive. They run off together to start a new life.
The message? Revenge solves nothing. The other messages the book gave were omitted. Being the 1990’s I suppose the screenwriters wanted to say instead of “adultery is bad and every husband or wife who cheats is going to die a painful and agonizing death” they might be trying to tell you to follow your heart and do what you think is right.
So, long story short (too late!) I loved the book but I did not love the movie. The movie wasn’t terrible but I think it was WAY too dramatic and didn’t do the movie justice.