Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
Publisher: Undon Entertainment
Rating: WORTHY!
Illustrated excellently by SunNeko Lee
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often enough reward aplenty!
I negatively reviewed The Scarlet Letter audio book in May 2014, but this version I'm rating as a worthy read..
Nathanial Hathorne was born July 4th. He later changed his name to the commonly used spelling, because he didn't want to be associated with John Hathorne, a relative who was the only judge at the Salem witch trials to never acknowledge his murderous guilt in condemning so many innocent women to death in the name of the supposedly Holy Bible. The novel is an historical romance by two means: it was written going on for two hundred years ago, but it's set some two hundred years prior to that, in Puritan Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
Most people think of The Scarlet Letter as being a novel about one woman's dignity in the aftermath of what was then (and still is by all-too-many) believed to be a grave sin: adultery (by extension, sex between two children is infantry…). This novel isn’t about that at all. It’s about the complete and utter failure of organized religion. This novel is fiction, but it illustrates all-too-starkly how religion has failed: failed in and of itself, and predictably failed the people who invented it out of their blind ignorance and weak desperation.
It shows how Christians were (and even today still are in too many instances) hypocritical to their roots, and while you may rail at that, claiming that this is fiction, not a documentary, the fact remains that there isn’t a single thing depicted in the novel which has not actually happened in real life - and which continues to happen even today. Indeed, Hawthorne based this story on what he knew of several people from the era in which his novel is set. Prynne seems to have been named after Hester Craford and William Prynne.
Salem resident Hester Craford was convicted of adultery in 1668 by Judge William Hathorne, who was the very ancestor from whom Hawthorne sought to distance himself by adding a 'w' to his name! Another source for Hawthorne was undoubtedly Boston resident Elizabeth Pain, who was buried in the same graveyard in which Hawthorne depicts Prynne being buried. All three of these people lived during the same period (early to mid-17th century) in New England.
One of the central tenets of Christianity is forgiveness, yet we rarely see it, so it's hardly surprising that no one was willing to forgive or forget in this novel! Why is Christianity so lasciviously in bed with hypocrisy? This is a religion which claims to follow Jesus Christ. Not that Jesus or Christ were ever his name. There's no evidence that there ever really was such as person as is depicted in the New Testament: a miracle-working son of a god. But Yeshua (Joshua - the real name we should be dealing with), was a very common name at that time (as were Mary - Miriam - and Joseph - Yusef), and it would be foolish to assert that there were no rabbis ever carrying that name, but I’d be willing to bet that not a one of them was crucified and then returned from the dead.
The funny thing is that even if we grant the Christians all of that: everything they claim for their founder, they're still hypocrites, because their founder was not a Christian! He was a Jew who practiced Judaism, not Christianity. He was explicitly clear that he came only for the lost children of the House of Israel, not for gentiles (that's was Paul's derailment of the cult). Any so-called Christian who is not practicing Judaism is not a follower of the Yeshua depicted in the New Testament. The even more funny thing is that those self-same believers who fled Europe to escape persecution (because they had no faith in their god's ability to protect them!) then turned right around and started a persecution of their own!
The graphic novel begins in 1642, (as does the original which I reviewed a while ago) when Hester Prynne is publicly condemned and humiliated as one of the original scarlet woman, for an adulterous relationship she had after her husband, who intended upon following her to Boston, was lost at sea, and presumed dead, so in her own mind, she was a window, not a married woman per se. In reality her husband was living amongst the natives where he no doubt learned his alternative medicine. Why Prynne was condemned so strenuously whilst no effort at all was expended upon seeking out her deflowerer is at the feet, again, of the Christian church, which has been down on women ever since Miriam the Magdalene was fictitiously turned into a prostitute at the behest of a dumb-ass pope (and you know the Pope is infallible right? Ri-ight!
Prynne is condemned to wear a scarlet letter 'A' visible on her person at all times. Any woman with the virtues with which Prynne is typically invested would have worn it on her ass. Prynne wears it on her breast as if to say, "Thanks for the mammaries". For reasons which are never revealed, she refuses to name her despoiler. It turns out, no surprises here, to be one of the local clergy, Arthur Dimmesdale, who only 'fesses up when he's dying.
By amazing coincidence, when Prynne is up on the scaffold, doing the first part of her penance, her husband shows up, but such a lowlife is he that he pretends to be an itinerant physician, takes the name of Roger Chillingworth, and never acknowledges that Prynne is his wife. He takes up residence in the town, obsessed in finding out who the father of Prynne's child is, rather than striving to support his wife!
At one point, the local governor tells Prynne that he's considering taking her child away from her to have young Pearl raised in a home which has a mom who is not a 'loose woman', but Prynne swears that she will never give up her child. Dimmesdale at least, sides with her on this and talks the governor out of taking Pearl away; then he toddles off home to flagellate himself and re-ink the scarlet 'A' which he has tattooed secretly on his own chest. Way to man up!
Prynne settles in a cottage upon her release from jail, although how she affords it, and even makes a living selling her needle-point is a mystery. At that time, the population of Boston was minuscule. The city had been founded only a decade before this novel is set. It's a bigger mystery why no god came through for her with his long-suffering forgiveness and helped her out by asking everyone "Who wants to throw the first stone?" At this point in the story, Prynne has paid three penalties for this same 'crime': confessing and standing for three hours on the town scaffold, time in jail, and the permanent wearing o' the A. Wanna go for triple jeopardy?!,/p>
Eventually, Dimmesdale (no explanation is offered as to why he never married Prynne) dies in her arms after finally 'fessing up; then Chillingworth magically dies. Prynne and Pearl travel to Europe, where Pearl stays and marries, but Prynne for reasons unknown, returns to her cottage in Boston and lives out her years still wearing the 'A' instead of creating a new life for herself in Europe. What a moron!
I was unable to positively review the original novel, but I am going to positively review this graphic version, because it cuts to the chase, eviscerates the crap, and tells a decent story - all of the things Hawthorne failed to achieve with his original. It’s also really well illustrated, so kudos to both author and artist.
I have to say that I find these "manga" versions of classic novels to be absurd (but in this case not enough so to negatively rate it!). This is written in Japanese style, so you have to begin at "the end" and read backwards through the book - from the last page to the first, and from the top right of the page to the bottom left, completely contrary to how we westerners typically read a book.
I can see how this would be necessary if we were taking an original Japanese work and merely putting English words into blanked-out Japanese speech balloons: the format has already been fixed, so why not go with it? To artificially create such a comic from scratch when it’s intended for western audiences, however, makes no sense at all to me.
Maybe the publishers think that they'll reach more people that way, but I don’t see how that follows. People are either going to want to read this 'comic-book version' or they're not. I doubt that one of the factors in their decision will be the orient-ation! Unless the plan is to also market this in the east, with the speech balloons filled with eastern language characters (which I guess is possible), it makes little sense to me, and the eastern countries are so westernized now in many regards that I doubt it’s even an issue with them as to whether this issue is to be read forwards or backwards. But that's just me!
