Heaven 2024: May Book Group: Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter
MaryLouise
Shipmate, Host Emeritus
This is a novel I found fascinating, not just as an example of Romantic Gothic in American literature but for the insights Hawthorne gives into Puritanism in New England. It was first published in 1850 and is an early classic of north American fiction, set in the Puritan colony of Massachusetts Bay between 1642 and 1649. Hester Prynne is a young unmarried mother who has given birth to an infant while separated from her lawful husband, he is not the father. Hester is forced to wear the scarlet letter 'A' for Adultery as a badge of shame and ostracism, but refuses to name the father of her daughter Pearl.
In the next few days I shall give some (hopefully helpful) notes on Hawthorne's critique of Puritanism, one or two reviews of the book, as well as mentioning certain themes that interested me as a reader. Looking forward to the discussion!
In the next few days I shall give some (hopefully helpful) notes on Hawthorne's critique of Puritanism, one or two reviews of the book, as well as mentioning certain themes that interested me as a reader. Looking forward to the discussion!
Comments
I also saw the 1990s movie many years ago when it was in cinemas and when reading the book I wondered why I used to get 'The Scarlet Letter' mixed up with 'The Crucible' as they don't have many shared plot points. I went and read a plot summary of the movie and realised they pretty much changed the whole story and also that the movie also was rated one of the worst movies of all time. I think I didn't mind the movie as a teenager but never watched it again so had forgotten most of the plot. I can imagine that fans of the novel were horrified though.
Hope you enjoy it @Sarasa!
Some questions to hopefully prompt discussion:
1 How did the opening chapter on the Custom House work for you as a reader?
2 The plot of The Scarlet Letter is set in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay settlement of 1642 and has to do with the punishment and ostracism of Hester Prynne, separated from her husband, who has given birth to a child from an unknown local father. Hester has to wear a scarlet letter embroidered on her chest as a 'badge of shame', the letter A for Adultery. Her husband arrives in secret and is determined to find out who the father of his wife's child might be; we are told right at the start that the father is the Puritan minister Arthur Dimmesdale, an ex-lover tormented by guilt and vowed to silence. Some readers have described the story as 'holy melodrama,' and others as a penetrating study into religious 'cancel culture' and the shaming of women. How did it strike you?
3 The gorgeously embroidered scarlet letter Hester wears is more than just a 'badge of shame', it is also an object of beauty and symbolic of an artist's freedom to create and transform shame into pride. It may also stand for Art and the poetic licence of the artist in a moralistic and philistine society that outlaws beauty and yet craves it. We see the letter A in the shape of a meteor in the skies and branded on the chest of Dimmesdale. It may also be Hester's passport to freedom and a new life in Europe as a woman, mother and an artist. Did the symbolism work for you as a modern reader?
4 Hester's daughter Pearl is presented as unruly and disturbing, a solitary child who shares in her mother's ostracism, a child feared to be unregenerate and possibly a 'satanic imp'. How did the novel's attitudes towards a child like Pearl strike you?
5 Much of the plot is taken up with the obsessive relationship between Roger Chillingworth as a concealed 'stalker' and Arthur Dimmesdale as guilt-stricken and a religious hypocrite. Did you find this convincing?
6 References are made at various times to the 'Forest' as an ambiguous dark wilderness outside of the Puritan colony. This is where witches and law-breakers meet at night in defiance of the legalism and morality imposed in the colony, a place for romantic assignations and those wanting to escape the narrow world of the settlement. I'd be interested to hear how other readers found the ambiguous depiction of this wilderness surrounded the 'righteous' society.
7 Did the gothic and dramatic developments towards the end work for you?
Looking forward to hearing many different points of view.
1 How did the opening chapter on the Custom House work for you as a reader?
I hated the opening Custom House chapter so much! It could have been edited down to two pages with little loss, AFAIC.
The only minimal saving graces: (1) the cinematic point of view Hawthorne brings, decades before the invention of cinema. The reader 'approaches by water' from the wharf to the Custom House, moving from exterior to interior. (2) the charm and insight of the narrator in describing the other people of the Custom House. I feel like that's an attempt to establish relationship with the reader - that the narrator will be, if not wholly trustworthy, at least bring some charm and wit and depth to the journey.
2 <plot summary> Some readers have described the story as 'holy melodrama,' and others as a penetrating study into religious 'cancel culture' and the shaming of women. How did it strike you?
I loved that Hawthorne subverted the usual trope of the shamed woman, who pales and withers away as a result of her sin. In this case Hester is robust and Arthur withers away! I also wondered if there is a kind of pun on the word "confinement", meaning both imprisonment and giving birth.
The closing chapters seemed especially melodramatic, but that didn't seem to colour the whole book as strongly for me. (It also didn't seem especially holy to me, the religious atmosphere and Arthur's employment notwithstanding.)
3 Did the symbolism <of the scarlet letter> work for you as a modern reader?
I think that abundance of possible meanings enhances the power of the symbol. (The "A" could also stand for Arthur, written on Hester's heart.) I enjoyed that Hester made it as beautiful as possible, as a kind of "eff you" to the Puritans who imposed it on her, and a demonstration of her talent.
The genius of having a literal social label continues to have impact. (Noted fraudster Anna Delvey was out in public recently, wearing a dark suit with the scarlet letter A on it. Sure Anna, you're the real victim here.) Labels matter. How we label one another, and how we treat each other based on those labels, is very much a cultural hot topic.
4 How did the novel's attitudes towards a child like Pearl strike you?
The character of Pearl seemed to me a weird combination of literary device and a grasping toward describing a child who experiences the world in a very different way from other children. Did Pearl have ADHD or some other difference... for which we now have new labels??
Realistic dialogue was not a priority for Hawthorne. Fair enough, it wasn't a priority for Shakespeare either, but it seemed particularly grating when coming from the mouth of Pearl. Hawthorne also used the familiar (heh) device of having a witchy madwoman, Mistress Hibbing, say what cannot be said in polite society. But I found it really overused and tiresome with Pearl.
5 Much of the plot is taken up with the obsessive relationship between Roger Chillingworth as a concealed 'stalker' and Arthur Dimmesdale as guilt-stricken and a religious hypocrite. Did you find this convincing?
I tolerated it for the sake of moving the plot forward. I don't know how 'fresh' this idea was in Hawthorne's day - thinking of Iago, probably not - but it is certainly well-worn by now.
6 I'd be interested to hear how other readers found the ambiguous depiction of this wilderness surrounded the 'righteous' society.
I thought of this as a kind of symbol for (stereotypical cis) man-woman intimate relationships, with a wild passionate 'forest' side and a socially regulated 'settlement' side. I liked that Hawthorne presented this as a polarity to be lived with rather than a problem to be solved. Neither the wilderness nor the town are better than the other, they're just there.
[I realized that I may live closer to some of the geographic and colonial realities than other readers on these boards. The descriptions of indigenous people are a bit cringey. (That would be an Epiphanic conversation.) The tensions between indigeneity and wilderness, and rigid capitalistic colonialism, are still very much unresolved here.]
7 Did the gothic and dramatic developments towards the end work for you?
They felt appropriate to the novel. The part I liked most was the ambiguity about the symbol on Arthur's breast - was it there or not?
I found it hard to get into as it seemed to be a lots of tentative starts to a story that the author wasn't sure where it was going. Their were bits I liked the descriptions of the buildings and the people that worked, or rather hung around, there. I wondered if Hawthorne, a bit like Ann Bronte, whose Tennant of Wildfell Hall we read last year, found it hard how to actually start a piece of fiction.
Some readers have described the story as 'holy melodrama,' and others as a penetrating study into religious 'cancel culture' and the shaming of women. How did it strike you?
It was certainly melodramatic! I'm afraid I found the style rather hard to cope with and spent most of the time wishing the author would just get on with it.
Did the symbolism <of the scarlet letter> work for you as a modern reader?
I liked the way Hester owned the letter and made it her own, though I wish she'd just taken it off and headed elsewhere with Pearl rather than being all noble about it.
How did the novel's attitudes towards a child like Pearl strike you?
Pearl just struck me as a very intelligent young girl probably totally confused by her isolated lifestyle.
Much of the plot is taken up with the obsessive relationship between Roger Chillingworth as a concealed 'stalker' and Arthur Dimmesdale as guilt-stricken and a religious hypocrite. Did you find this convincing?
I spent a lot of the time wishing Arthur was a Catholic, confession and a good priest would have sorted him out. Because I wasn't reading it properly I didn't really get the stalking part till it was pointed out to me. I wanted to know how Hester and Arthur ended up in the mess they did, their backstory.
I'd be interested to hear how other readers found the ambiguous depiction of this wilderness surrounded the 'righteous' society.
I found the asides about Mistress Hibbings interesting, the acceptance of the wild side by seemingly 'respectable' members of the community. I liked the way Hawthorne didn't really comment on it, it just was.
Did the gothic and dramatic developments towards the end work for you?
Not really, by then I just wanted the story to end!
I'm glad I've read it, but it isn't a book I'd like to return to.
As stated earlier in the thread, I got stuck at the Custom House chapter when I first tried to read the novel. This time I persevered, but I skim read parts. I suppose the chapter was there to give the impression the novel was a true story, which seemed common in a time when some people didn't believe in reading novels.
Maybe initially Hawthorne wrote it as a reflection on his time working in the custom house and then decided to weave it into a novel. Perhaps some documents he found in that role did inspire the story and overcome his writer's block.
3 The gorgeously embroidered scarlet letter Hester wears is more than just a 'badge of shame', it is also an object of beauty and symbolic of an artist's freedom to create and transform shame into pride. It may also stand for Art and the poetic licence of the artist in a moralistic and philistine society that outlaws beauty and yet craves it. We see the letter A in the shape of a meteor in the skies and branded on the chest of Dimmesdale. It may also be Hester's passport to freedom and a new life in Europe as a woman, mother and an artist. Did the symbolism work for you as a modern reader?
I didn't really understand why Hester created such an elaborate 'A'. She didn't seem prideful in the novel and chose to stay and be an outcast even when she had opportunities to leave. I also would have liked to know what she was like during her relationship with Dimmesdale and how the relationship came about. Was he supporting her as a supposed widow in his congregation and the two ended up falling in love? Was she more bold and perhaps 'prideful' of her looks before her 'fall' was discovered? Maybe the elaborate 'A' was a symbol of her love for Dimmesdale.
At times she seemed repentant for her affair, but also seemed to reason that it wasn't fully wrong as she believed she was a widow at the time, she and Dimmesdale were truly in love and her marriage was consented too before she knew what love was and she had no love for her much older husband.
I wonder if she and Arthur would have married if Mr. Prynne had been proven to have died or perhaps if he never turned up and was declared dead. Could people ever marry if their spouse disappeared in the Puritan community of the time?
4 Hester's daughter Pearl is presented as unruly and disturbing, a solitary child who shares in her mother's ostracism, a child feared to be unregenerate and possibly a 'satanic imp'. How did the novel's attitudes towards a child like Pearl strike you?
It didn't seem that Hawthorne saw Pearl as a 'Satanic imp', rather then Puritan characters in the book did, including Hester at times. I agree that today we may wonder if she had ADHD or if her behaviour was in response to the trauma of being excluded and harassed in the town and only having a close relationship with her mother. It is pretty common for children to act the way Pearl did towards Hester towards their siblings and/or peers. She had no children to interact with and Hester had no husband, family or community support to raise Pearl, so perhaps they were more like friends or peers as well as mother and daughter.
5 Much of the plot is taken up with the obsessive relationship between Roger Chillingworth as a concealed 'stalker' and Arthur Dimmesdale as guilt-stricken and a religious hypocrite. Did you find this convincing?
It must have been pretty upsetting for Chillingworth/Prynne to finally gain his freedom and make it to the town he intended to settle in and find his young wife being punished for adultery with another man and having another man's child. He seemed like a good and well-respected man before these events and was respected by, if not loved by Hester. His revenge seemed a bit melodramatic, but I suppose if he had been open about his identity he may have been forced to take Hester back and support another man's child. Or at least he would have been shamed in the community by his wife not staying constant to him. As a doctor, he could have just secretly poisoned Dimmesdale instead of dragging his plan out so long, but that would have made a less dramatic novel.
It was interesting that he gave Pearl a large inheritance when he died and I wonder what his motive was for that. Also it must have been a surprise for the towns people who would have assumed his heir would be a male relative, since they believed him to be a single man.
7 Did the gothic and dramatic developments towards the end work for you?
I found it a relief when the truth finally came out through Dimmesdale's confession. Even though he then died it was better than his constant torture that may have gone on for much longer.
I think he would have been tortured by his sin and his inability to be a husband and father to Hester and Pearl even without Chillingworth's influence, however. He believed too much in his Puritan Christian faith and his cherished role as a beloved and influential minister (and perhaps his duty as well) to own up earlier or to run away with Hester and Pearl. However he suffered both by not being able to be with them, feeling unable to marry another woman and have more children and his guilt for seeing them suffer while he was revered in the town.
In real life I'm not sure if Hester would have come back after finally leaving for Europe and experiencing freedom there, however it's not unrealistic she would want to die and be buried near Arthur as she never loved anybody else and saw him as her true spiritual husband. Some people would have moved on and married somebody else, but there are people who only ever love one person deeply.
I also thought the Custom House opening chapter could have been a separate essay since it has so little to do with the plot that follows. I did find the narrator's self-presentation intriguing and his description of olden-day Puritans and the power they wielded.
@Leaf, yes, I agree completely that Hawthorne subverts the trope of the sinful woman withering away and shows Hester thriving while Dimmesdale goes into a decline! And I read an article in hich Hawthorne based Pearl on his own six-year-old wilful and charming daughter. I don't know she would be ADHD but that is possible because she is a puzzle to her mother too. I suspect most Puritan children at that time were schooled to be passive, compliant, obedient rather than allowed to be children. Shades at moments of Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale in this novel, for me. And I did find myself wondering why the author marginalised the indigenous peoples, but the contrast between forest and Puritan settlement was intended primarily, as you say, to show co-existing tensions that could not be resolved.
@Sarasa, I also wanted to know more backstory for Hester and Dimmesdale, what on earth she saw in him. And because I'm now used to contemporary realism in most fictions I read, the melodrama and gothic atmosphere did feel improbable. One aspect struck me was that seeming acceptance of the lawless 'forest' side, given the coming Salem Trials. What especially interested me was that Mistress Hibbins actually existed. Ann Hibbins, sister of Governor Bellingham, was executed for witchcraft in 1656.
@Mili I hadn't thought about historical veracity in the Custom House but I think you're right because Hawthorne did see himself as writing a kind of truthful if subversive history of the early Puritans ( his own ancestors) and he himself worked twice in Custom Houses in Salem and Boston. I also wondered if Chillingworth/Prynne wanted later to make amends for his secret obsession with finding Hester's lover.
I think it works very well to establish The Scarlet Letter as a frame story. I found the descriptions quite evocative.
2 The plot of The Scarlet Letter is set in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay settlement of 1642 and has to do with the punishment and ostracism of Hester Prynne, separated from her husband, who has given birth to a child from an unknown local father. Hester has to wear a scarlet letter embroidered on her chest as a 'badge of shame', the letter A for Adultery. Her husband arrives in secret and is determined to find out who the father of his wife's child might be; we are told right at the start that the father is the Puritan minister Arthur Dimmesdale, an ex-lover tormented by guilt and vowed to silence. Some readers have described the story as 'holy melodrama,' and others as a penetrating study into religious 'cancel culture' and the shaming of women. How did it strike you?
The story feels to me like a critique of Puritan sexual values. I think each generation will read it fro its own lens.
3 The gorgeously embroidered scarlet letter Hester wears is more than just a 'badge of shame', it is also an object of beauty and symbolic of an artist's freedom to create and transform shame into pride. It may also stand for Art and the poetic licence of the artist in a moralistic and philistine society that outlaws beauty and yet craves it. We see the letter A in the shape of a meteor in the skies and branded on the chest of Dimmesdale. It may also be Hester's passport to freedom and a new life in Europe as a woman, mother and an artist. Did the symbolism work for you as a modern reader?
4 Hester's daughter Pearl is presented as unruly and disturbing, a solitary child who shares in her mother's ostracism, a child feared to be unregenerate and possibly a 'satanic imp'. How did the novel's attitudes towards a child like Pearl strike you?
We only see Pearl through the eyes of others. She was certainly much less restrained than was expected of Puritan children in that time period.
5 Much of the plot is taken up with the obsessive relationship between Roger Chillingworth as a concealed 'stalker' and Arthur Dimmesdale as guilt-stricken and a religious hypocrite. Did you find this convincing?
I think the evil nature of this stalking could have been driven home more. That said the understated aspects of it made it more malevolent.
6 References are made at various times to the 'Forest' as an ambiguous dark wilderness outside of the Puritan colony. This is where witches and law-breakers meet at night in defiance of the legalism and morality imposed in the colony, a place for romantic assignations and those wanting to escape the narrow world of the settlement. I'd be interested to hear how other readers found the ambiguous depiction of this wilderness surrounded the 'righteous' society.
The wilderness was both a new opportunity and a threat to the Puritan constraints.
7 Did the gothic and dramatic developments towards the end work for you?
The worked reasonably well. I think a slower deterioration by Wilson over time would have been a better plotting.
I will admit to having skipped it (after reading Mary Louise’s earlier comment, and Nina Byam’s introduction to my edition). Have I missed much?
2. The plot of The Scarlet Letter is set in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay settlement of 1642 and has to do with the punishment and ostracism of Hester Prynne, ... Some readers have described the story as 'holy melodrama,' and others as a penetrating study into religious 'cancel culture' and the shaming of women. How did it strike you?
It's certainly about the shaming of women, even if the shaming to some extent backfires as Hester gains in respect. It’s also melodramatic. But I’d agree with Leaf that there’s nothing very ‘holy’ about the behaviour of the Puritans, or the book as a whole, really. Dimmesdale is a pitiful and rather pathetic figure, he seems to have no concern for Hester or Pearl, only his own reputation and perhaps his eternal salvation though that is not emphasised, while Chillingworth is a vindictive man – though he does leave his wealth to Pearl. It’s not clear to me why Hester was attracted to either of them, though her choice may have been limited. I was reminded of the old joke – Australia was founded by criminals and America by religious nutters; it’s hard to determine which has been more successful!
3 The gorgeously embroidered scarlet letter Hester wears is more than just a 'badge of shame', it is also an object of beauty and symbolic of an artist's freedom to create and transform shame into pride. It may also stand for Art and the poetic licence of the artist in a moralistic and philistine society that outlaws beauty and yet craves it. We see the letter A in the shape of a meteor in the skies and branded on the chest of Dimmesdale. It may also be Hester's passport to freedom and a new life in Europe as a woman, mother and an artist. Did the symbolism work for you as a modern reader?
Yes it did. As an embroiderer myself, I enjoyed the way that Hester used her skill to transform and subvert a badge of shame into something of beauty, and own it. The idea that Puritan society might condemn and yet at the same time crave artistic expression is an interesting one. Where do Amish quilts come into this? This is a very carefully constructed book, with the reappearance of the scaffold, and the role of the forest, the matriarchal community on the fringes. I did find it surprising that any American author would portray Europe as a source of freedom, rather than of corruption – this seems to go against most American myths. But why did Hester return?
4 Hester's daughter Pearl is presented as unruly and disturbing, a solitary child who shares in her mother's ostracism, a child feared to be unregenerate and possibly a 'satanic imp'. How did the novel's attitudes towards a child like Pearl strike you?
I found the portrayal of Pearl one of the weakest parts of the book. Maybe it’s her formal/old fashioned language, but she never came across as a real child. She is seen by others as unruly and thus seen as ‘impish’, cursed by the stain of her birth, conforming Puritanical ideas about the sins of the fathers (and mothers). But I just did not find her believable (not that it’s easy to write a convincing child character). On the question of the language, this reminded me of Walter Scott, another 19th century author who tries to convey the speech of an earlier era by the use of what was by then anachronistic language. It’s a challenge any writer of historical fiction has to confront, and not all succeed, perhaps including Hawthorne. It’s tough to find the balance between ‘cod-Tudor’ and sounding too modern. But probably Hawthorne’s language sounded less ‘cod-Tudor’ in 1850 than it does in 2024.
5 Much of the plot is taken up with the obsessive relationship between Roger Chillingworth as a concealed 'stalker' and Arthur Dimmesdale as guilt-stricken and a religious hypocrite. Did you find this convincing?
I found the psychological insights into the adult characters well drawn and convincing. But while
6 References are made at various times to the 'Forest' as an ambiguous dark wilderness outside of the Puritan colony. This is where witches and law-breakers meet at night in defiance of the legalism and morality imposed in the colony, a place for romantic assignations and those wanting to escape the narrow world of the settlement. I'd be interested to hear how other readers found the ambiguous depiction of this wilderness surrounded the 'righteous' society.
For the forest to have this role is an old European trope (eg the brothers Grimm) which has been imported into America. You can compare it with the view of the desert – dry, hot, burning, unrelenting – in some Australian fiction, where women and children are swallowed up and lost. I also found myself thinking about The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which we read recently.
Is The Scarlet Letter regularly banned in the USA? I seem to remember it being seen as a risqué book in one episode of Downton Abbey! Overall I enjoyed it more than I thought I might.
1 How did the opening chapter on the Custom House work for you as a reader?
I enjoyed some parts of it, but admit to skimming a lot of it. Some of the characterizations seemed a bit snarky to me!
2 The plot of The Scarlet Letter is set in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay settlement of 1642 and has to do with the punishment and ostracism of Hester Prynne, separated from her husband, who has given birth to a child from an unknown local father. Hester has to wear a scarlet letter embroidered on her chest as a 'badge of shame', the letter A for Adultery. Her husband arrives in secret and is determined to find out who the father of his wife's child might be; we are told right at the start that the father is the Puritan minister Arthur Dimmesdale, an ex-lover tormented by guilt and vowed to silence. Some readers have described the story as 'holy melodrama,' and others as a penetrating study into religious 'cancel culture' and the shaming of women. How did it strike you?
This story hit me as a complete shaming of women tale. The whole town knew about the child and her mother, so forcing Hester to wear the scarlet letter forever was an act of cruel humiliation. Hester took the high road in not naming Pearl's father, and he was (like so many religious muckety-mucks of my acquaintance) a coward for watching her stoically bearing the shame while he had the adulation of the townsfolks.
3 The gorgeously embroidered scarlet letter Hester wears is more than just a 'badge of shame', it is also an object of beauty and symbolic of an artist's freedom to create and transform shame into pride. It may also stand for Art and the poetic licence of the artist in a moralistic and philistine society that outlaws beauty and yet craves it. We see the letter A in the shape of a meteor in the skies and branded on the chest of Dimmesdale. It may also be Hester's passport to freedom and a new life in Europe as a woman, mother and an artist. Did the symbolism work for you as a modern reader?
I absolutely loved that Hester turned what was supposed to be a device of humiliation into a thing of beauty, much like Pearl was a person of beauty who didn't fall into the role of what would have been a typical child in the town. Dressing Pearl in beautiful clothing also showed the town that Hester valued her and was not at all ashamed of her.
4 Hester's daughter Pearl is presented as unruly and disturbing, a solitary child who shares in her mother's ostracism, a child feared to be unregenerate and possibly a 'satanic imp'. How did the novel's attitudes towards a child like Pearl strike you?
Pearl was a very intelligent and perceptive child. My thoughts are that the author himself was afraid of a child like Pearl who didn't hide her real self. It was a bright spot in the novel to enjoy Pearl's brightness and enthusiasm! I feel that the author would be terrified if his three children would have any of Pearl's traits.
5 Much of the plot is taken up with the obsessive relationship between Roger Chillingworth as a concealed 'stalker' and Arthur Dimmesdale as guilt-stricken and a religious hypocrite. Did you find this convincing?
It was convincingly repulsive. RC and AD both were horrible examples of men who were revered, but rotten and disgusting at their cores.
6 References are made at various times to the 'Forest' as an ambiguous dark wilderness outside of the Puritan colony. This is where witches and law-breakers meet at night in defiance of the legalism and morality imposed in the colony, a place for romantic assignations and those wanting to escape the narrow world of the settlement. I'd be interested to hear how other readers found the ambiguous depiction of this wilderness surrounded the 'righteous' society.
The fears and whispers about the forest remind me a lot of today's society where certain people cover themselves in their so called righteousness and can't see past their little bubbles of what they see as normal to find the beauty of 'the other'. These folks in the novel seemed to be very frightened of anyone or anything not like themselves and their homes.
7 Did the gothic and dramatic developments towards the end work for you?
I was disappointed. I'm glad the ex got the wind taken from his sails, but he didn't have consequences for his actions. The preacher, even after his public confession, was still honored. Actually, I think I was more angry than disappointed!
I almost deleted this entire post because I sound like a grumpy old woman!!
And this is a bad thing how?
'In the 1850s Hawthorne lived for a time at 10 Lansdowne Circus and a blue plaque recording the fact is attached to this house.' I know it well.