Banned In Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Scarlet Letter'

The Scarlet Letter

Imagine standing on a lunch table in the center of the cafeteria in which the wrongdoer’s peers throw harsh judgments at their victim, one by one for an hour or more. This is the equivalent to what Hester Prynne endured: a public shaming. Luckily public humiliations are not common in this day and age. The person who was receiving the attention often has the instinct to cower and think lowly of themselves, but that is not how Hester Prynne reacted. The novel in which Hester Prynne is introduced is thought to be worthy of banishment, but plenty of others disagree. Whether or not the novel is deserving of being banned is a diverse topic. Even though Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter has been banned for its questionable content, the book is commonly put back on the shelf because of the things one can learn and gain from reading this novel. With this in mind, The Scarlet Letter has been banned and challenged in various places and for various reasons across the globe. A ban occurred in Russia in 1852 while Czar Nicholas I was in power (parenthetical). The novel also received a challenge in the 1990s because people believed that the book was “conflicting with the values of the community” (parenthetical). A parent challenged the book in 1982, declaring that it was too mature for

A single reason for banning the book was given by Reverend Arthur C. Coxe when he proclaimed that The Scarlet Letter did not teach the reader proper convictions (parenthetical). Meanwhile parents in Michigan did not believe that the novel was the best choice of book for their children to read because of the content best-suited for more mature readers (parenthetical). The book is “too frank and revealing” claimed the high school principal who accomplished getting The Scarlet Letter taken off the recommended reading list