“Hawthorne, Nathaniel. Hawthorne intended The Scarlet Letter to be a work of humor, and was bitterly disappointed when no one seemed to get the joke.
“In a letter to his friend Oliver Wendell Holmes, he wrote that he would have to make the comedy much broader in his next novel, The House of the Seven Gables.”
Via Dr. Boli’s encyclopedia of misinformation.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
A work of humor? I would dare say on the level of a phone book…
It is funny in retrospect, now that fornication is as common as hydrogen.
You have got to be kidding! My memories of having to read and discuss “The Scarlet Letter” in high school nausate me to this day!
Come to think of it, if you change the story’s religion to Islam, it could almost be modern. If Nate had only included a stoning of Hester at the end.