Here is an interesting piece from Justin Taylor, presenting an assessment by Leland Ryken on The Scarlet Letter.
Is The Scarlet Letter a Christian Classic?
In his excellent essay “Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter: What Is a Christian Classic?” (in Realms of Gold: The Classics in Christian Perspective [Wipf & Stock, 2003], pp. 133-154) Leland Ryken rightly says that The Scarlet Letter “is probably the most widely misinterpreted of all the classics. It is commonly mistaught in literature course. The misrepresentation comes from naive equation of the Puritans portrayed in the story with Christianity, accompanied by a suppression of the Christian elements late in the story. It is a particular pity that most people’s ideas of what the Puritans were like come from Hawthorne’s story.” (For a helpful corrective see Ryken’s own Worldly Saints: The Purtians as They Really Were.)Five Fallacies
He begins by identifying five fallacies at play in answering this question:
1. The Scarlet Letter is Christian if most readers and critics say it is.
“Majority opinion,” he writes, ‘is no guarantee of correct interpretation.” “The text itself must reveal the Christian allegiance of Hawthorne’s masterpiece.
2. The Scarlet Letter is Christian because it is well written.
“Superior artistry does not make it Christian.” Ryken distinguishes between form and content, and says “the religious element in literature is found primarily in the attitude that a work takes toward the man experiences that it portrays.”
3. To know whether The Scarlet Letter is Christian we need to know whether its author was Christian.
On the one hand, “that an author is a believing Christian does not guarantee that what he or she writes embodies a genuinely Christian viewpoint.” On the other hand, “it is possible for an unbeliever to embody a Christian viewpoint in his or her writing.” (And regarding Hawthorne: “what we know about [his life] is decidedly inconclusive on how he stood toward Christianity.”)
4. The Scarlet Letter is Christian because it contains Christian situations, terms, and allusions.
“The Christian element in a story is ultimately measured by the work’s implicit and philosophic patterns. Christian situations and allusions are often a signpost to, or a vehicle for, a Christian world view, but they are not the final test of Christianity in literature.”
5. The Scarlet Letter is Christian because it deals with profound issues.
“The fact that The Scarlet Letter is concerned with such issues as sin, guilt, prejudice, moral responsibility, and forgiveness does not make it Christian. It only means that the story deals with issues to which the Christian faith speaks. Whether Hawthorne’s story is Christian in orientation depends on how the work deals with these issues.”
Four Reasons The Scarlet Letter Is a Christian Classic
1. Artistry
“Although superior artistry does not make The Scarlet Letter a Christian classic, one thing that needs to be asserted strongly is that a Christian classic is first of all a classic.” In other words, “Before a work can be a Christian classic, it must be a classic. As such, it must display superior artistry that moves us to admiration and amazement. Hawthorne’s story is . . . one of the best-old stories the world has known.”
2. Truthfulness to human experience
“I want to insist that a Christian classic meets the criterion of truthfulness to reality and experience, even though that does not constitute the distinctively Christian aspect of a Christian classic.” “A Christian classic achieves that identity partly by doing what any classic does at that level of content: it touches upon life powerfully at many points. . . . One level of truthfulness in The Scarlet Letter is truthfulness to human experience in the social, moral, and psychological realms.”
3. Interpretation of life
“The Christian interpretation of experience in The Scarlet Letter consists partly of how the story get us to share the writer’s negative assessment of the Puritan and Romantic world views. Using the affective strategies of the storyteller, Hawthorne influences us to disapprove of the Puritan community’s behavior throughout the story and Hester’s Romantic values in the late stages of the story.”
4. The triumph of grace
“To merit the title of Christian classic, a work must do more than portray a Christian viewpoint on a chosen aspect of experience. It must also give a convincing presentation of what is most important in Christian experience—the triumph of God’s saving grace in the forgiveness of a sinner. Stated another way a Christian classic portrays a protagonist who attains belief in salvation and eternal life.” [This happens in The Scarlet Letter.] Ryken quotes a critic who observes that The Scarlet Letter “is a complete vision of salvation.”
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