Dr. George B. Loring, of Salem, wrote at the time an excellent reply to
this article in "The Church Review," though he recognized, as all
readers of general intelligence must, that the author of it did not by
any means represent the real enlightenment of the clergy and laity for
whom he undertook to be a mouthpiece.
Considered as a work of art, "The Scarlet Letter" is perhaps not so
excellent as the author's subsequent books. It may not unjustly
be called a novel without a plot, so far as this touches the
adroit succession of incidents and the interdependence of parts, which
we call "plot." Passion and motive and character, having been brought
together in given relations, begin to work toward a logical issue; but
the individual chapters stand before us rather as isolated pictures,
with intervals between, than as the closely conjoined links of a drama
gathering momentum as it grows. There is succession and acceleration,
indeed, in the movement of the story, but this is not quite so evident
as is the hand which checks each portion and holds it perfectly still,
long enough to describe it completely. The author does not, like a
playwright, reflect the action swiftly while it passes, but rather
arrests it and studies it, then lets it go by. It may be that this is
simply the distinction between the dramatist's and the novelist's
method; but probably we must allow it to be something more than that,
and must attribute it to the peculiar leisure which qualifies all
Hawthorne's fictions, at times enhancing their effect, but also
protracting the impression a little too much, at times.
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