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Those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped.

Many, many years ago, my Honors 11 English class was assigned The Scarlet Letter by our teacher, Mrs. Janet Fuchs. Although I read a lot back then, when I was sixteen I was not very interested in delving into the wrongs wrought by the Christian patriarchy. Instead I relied on Cliffs Notes (to Mrs. Fuchs� dismay, I was not subtle about it). Over the last few years, I’ve been trying to read more classics—those never assigned and those that I bluffed my way through—but I hadn’t gotten around to this one. Well, Mrs. Fuchs passed away a couple of weeks ago. She was a great teacher, fondly remembered by a generation of students, and I’m sure I would have learned a lot more from her had I actually put forth the effort. So, as way of honoring her (though perhaps a very weird of way), I decided to finally read The Scarlet Letter.

Parts of the reading experience here were predictable. The language is a bit stilted in places. And there are just So Many Symbols: the rosebush, the scaffold, daytime v. nighttime, nature v. society, physical manifestations of emotional states, the names of Chillingworth, Dimmesdale, and Pearl, and last but not least, the titular scarlet letter itself, possibly the most famous symbol in all of literature. (That would be a fun list to try to come up with: the scarlet letter, the whale from Moby Dick, Harry Potter’s scar, what else?)

But I was surprised by how well the story holds up for a modern audience. Hester’s feminist choices and moral strength to accept society’s judgment while refusing to name her lover. Chillingworth’s willingness to accept his portion of blame for what happened between them. The story’s portrayal of the quotation* attributed to Confucius: “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.� The theme that the self-loathing born from some secret sin is even more destructive than the shame that comes with publicly owning your mistakes. And Hawthorne makes a mockery of Puritanical morality, and the ultimate futility of a patriarchal society trying to brand the women it can neither control nor do without.

The Scarlet Letter may be the quintessential** book for studying in school. The deliberate construction of the story, the actual early-American history blended into the fiction, the themes, motifs, symbols, and other literary devices, all beg for this book to be taught in English classes. Fortunately for future generations of students, it is a timeless story, with much to teach to those willing to learn. Recommended.

* “You quote someone. It is a quotation.� A classic Mrs. Fuchs correction of a student who dared to use the word “quote� as a noun.

** No one left Mrs. Fuchs’s class without being able to use her favorite word—quintessential—in a sentence. RIP, Mrs. Fuchs.