The Scarlet Letter "A Work of 'Inexhaustible Charm and Mystery'"

Critics widely recognize that the way in which Hawthorne treated questions of sin and its consequences transcends the immediate seventeenth-century setting of his story and has meaning for the modern reader. The great nineteenth-century novelist Henry James gave The Scarlet letter a great boost when he applauded the book in his 1879 biography of Hawthorne. His evaluation of the way Hawthorne described "the subtleties and mysteries of life, the moral and spiritual maze" remains true today throughout the world, for James recognized that "The Scarlet Letter has the beauty and harmony of all original and complete conceptions . . . One can often return to it; it supports familiarity, and has the inexhaustible charm and mystery of great works of art."

Among many morals wich press upon us from the poor minister's miserable experience, we put only this into a sentence: "Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred."

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