One difficult book to get into is The Scarlet Letter, you can read it here. Hawthorne's classic work is much easier to enjoy if you think of it as Puritan gothic--a type of eerie, horror novel. Even the last scenes have this strange edge of creepiness. I find that being aware of the small, niche genre of an older work helps to have a good time with it.
Also thinking of older works as heavily symbolic helps--even thinking of Pearl, the child, as a literal manifestation of adultery [not just because Hester's husband wasn't truly dead as she thought, but because she was not married to the minister]. It explains a lot of literature, thinking that way. Nowadays we think of characters as people, but in older times it was common to have symbolic or archetypal characters, like in the Italian Commedia dell'arte.
Jung's archetypes are a great way to look at literature, a lens to pick up and set down, as are the Commedia characters. Regular Commedia personalities include: Arlecchino aka Harlequin, Pierrot and Pierrette, Pantalone, Il Dottore, Brighella, Il Capitano, Colombina, the Innamorati, Pedrolino, Pulcinella, Sandrone, Scaramuccia aka Scaramouche, il Somardino, La Signora, and Tartaglia.
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