The Scarlet Letter and Red Bear's 51st State

The Beer

I first read about Red Bear in Craft Beer last summer, right before I moved to DC. I didn’t make it to the brewery in person, though, until Red Bear hosted a panel of women in craft beer during DC Craft Beer Week. That night, I sampled Skookum, their red ale - very much a Pacific Northwest red, as the Simcoe really cuts through the maltiness. I was really doubling down on the “scarlet” of Hester’s letter when I thought to pair Hawthorne’s classic with a red ale from Red Bear, so maybe it’s for the best that when I made it back to Red Bear last weekend, they had kicked Skookum to make way for their OktoBEARfest, a Marzen.

But they did have a New England IPA on tap, an appropriate style for a book about Puritans, the creators of a “New” England. Red Bear’s NEIPA, called “51st State” (an aspiration with which I am very familiar after just a few months of living in a district), is exactly what you’d expect from a NEIPA these days: supey hazy, light orange, tons of juicy citrus on the nose, and just 36 IBUs. I also got some apricot and papaya in the aroma, balanced by just a bit of bitterness at the end.

It doesn’t hurt to drink something easy and sweet while reading Hawthorne’s tale of woe. As I took notes at Red Bear, I thought of poor Hester Prynne, the adulteress who follows her heart and suffers the consequences, so far ahead of her time that she dares to imagine that love might one day be established “on a surer ground of mutual happiness.” I love that Red Bear celebrates that love is love.

The Book

** This section is chock full of spoilers, as it focuses on the final paragraph of The Scarlet Letter. But even if you didn’t read it in high school, you probably know the gist of this classic story, right? **

This is a contrast pairing for sure, since a West Coast IPA - one that plays up the bitterness - would better suit the dour Puritans. After all, for committing the sin of adultery, they banish Hester to the woods and stigmatize her. Her lover, the hypocritical Reverend Dimmesdale, makes due with his own private punishments, self-flagellating literally and figuratively for seven years. Finally, he stands on the scaffold with his lover and their daughter, confesses to the entire community, and immediately, dramatically, drops dead.

This long weekend, I’ll be reading stacks of papers that argue the extent to which either Hester or Dimmesdale triumph over their punishment. So I’ve been thinking a lot about the final chapters of the book, and especially the final paragraph, which describes Hester’s grave:

And, after many, many years, a new grave was delved, near an old and sunken one, in that burial-ground beside which King’s Chapel has since been built. It was near that old and sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle. Yet one tombstone served for both. All around, there were monuments carved with armorial bearings; and on this simple slab of slate […] there appeared the semblance of an engraved escutcheon. It bore a device, a herald’s wording of which might serve for a motto and brief description of our now concluded legend; so somber is it, and relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow:— “ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES.”

This is such a great paper prompt (thanks, Jeremy!) because there are so many ways to read the end of this story. Just its closing paragraph has me going back and forth about whether Hester’s story has a happy ending or a tragic one. On the one hand, Hester finally gets to be with Dimmesdale, if only in death. And yet, there’s still that “space between” their graves, “as if the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle.” Instead of her name, her tombstone has only a red (gules) A on it, which might suggest that she doesn’t triumph over her punishment - it looms over her, even in death. Then again, by the end of the book, “the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma,” we are told, “looked upon with awe, yet with reverence, too” (154). To some of the people of Salem, it symbolizes Able rather than Adulterer. So maybe this she has triumphed over her punishment. And the letter, ultimately, is an “ever-glowing point of light” - that sounds good, right? And yet, somehow, that very light is “gloomier than the shadow.”

It’s ambiguous! You could make any number of arguments about whether The Scarlet Letter is a tale of triumph or one of woe. I’ll let the 51st State influence this reading and go with the former.