The Scarlet Letter: The Rest a.k.a. In Conclusion, I'm Not Impressed.

Covering chapters ten to about twenty here, and I know that seems slightly excessive, but bear with me here. First off, let's get something straight here: this story ended up being pretty lame as a whole. Yeah, it has a definite beginning and end, some absolutely delightful prose, and some pretty lengthy threats of eternal damnation like every self-respecting piece of Puritan literature ought to possess, but those are pretty much its only redeeming facets.
The story is predictable by about chapter twelve. Dimmesdale is the father. Chillingworth got close to him with the hopes of exacting some peculiar revenge scheme. Pearl is confused. Hester is on the same level as Pearl literally and figuratively. It could've been a short story - or a horrible soap opera written in a play format.
Forget what I said about this covering to chapter twenty, I'm going to go ahead and rant about the whole rest of the book. Like, seriously. I actually liked Hester until the end when she agrees to Dimmesdale's plea that the three of them run off somewhere. She automatically agrees, and that made me so unbelievably angry because that crooked preacher was a total tool! (And some other things I thought better of typing aloud.) He lets Hester spend seven years being tormented by the townspeople. She's publicly humiliated, jailed, shoved out of town and forced to wear an eternal reminder of her indiscretion that puts her at odds with her daughter repeatedly throughout the story.
All Dimmesdale does is angst about it so dramatically that he drops dead.
It makes me angry because Hester's life literally turned to shambles because of their actions. However, she still protected him through everything and never gave away his identity. Even when it caused a strain in her relationship with Pearl, she wouldn't tell. Dimmesdale is so worried about his precious morals and reputation that he chooses to run away from it all rather than stand and face the controversy like Hester had to. It makes me mad because I consider it another example of how not even gender, but being a female is so frowned upon in this story and in this society.
I'm not really sure how I wanted to the story to end, but I do know that I wish Hester had some more character development like Pearl did. Her dying a creaky old adulteress seems wrong to me. Maybe if Hester had something to say to Dimmesdale that didn't pretty much translate to her fawning all over him when they met in the woods, I would have been pleased. (Not likely.) I'm literally seething over this. People say Twilight destroyed women's power, but if you ask me this book really isn't any better.
I guess a good thing that I took from reading this book was that the person in charge of making the story more modern for Easy A missed a few key points. Not that I'm complaining.
So basically, what I learned in boating school from this book is that Puritans were total sexist losers.