When we are reading an American classic, submission to the imagination expressed before us is paramount. And, paraphrasing C. S. Lewis from his An Experiment In Criticism, when masterly created, all—rests, movements, quick or more measured passages, easier and arduous episodes—all will be what we need at that moment. Glancing back over the whole experience, he says, we will feel that we've been led through a dance for which our nature cried out. In Hawthorne's dark aesthetic, shot through with the occasional thread of silver or gold, with here or there that jolt of red—this is what Nathaniel Hawthorne has given us with The Scarlet Letter.
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