Her uncomplaining courage, noble beauty, and self-sacrifice
make her the center of this tragic story.
[Illustration: CUSTOMERS OF ONE CENT SHOP, "HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES"]
Shakespeare proposed no harder problem than the one in _The Scarlet
Letter_,--the problem of the expiation of sin. The completeness with which
everything is subordinated to the moral question involved, and the
intensity with which this question is treated, show the Puritanic
temperament and the imaginative genius of the author. Hawthorne is Puritan
in the earnestness of his purpose, but he is wholly the artist in carrying
out his design. Such a combination of Puritan and artist has given to
American literature in _The Scarlet Letter_ a masterpiece, somber yet
beautiful, ethical yet poetic, incorporating both the spirit of a past time
and the lessons of an eternal present. This incomparable romance is unified
in conception, symmetrical in form, and nobly simple in expression.
Far less somber than _The Scarlet Letter_ is _The House of the Seven
Gables_. This has been called a romance of heredity, because the story
shows the fulfillment of a curse upon the distant descendants of the
wrongdoer, old Judge Pyncheon.
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