Ever notice how Hawthorne's works border on unreadable? I've read some thick stuff: I love authors like Joyce and Faulkner, and I've even made it through some of Chaucer in the original Middle English, but I just can't do Hawthorne. I have to read it really quickly or else I forget what the sentence was about by the time I get to the end.
The Scarlet Letter was the worst piece of crap I've ever had to trudge through, next to some stupid mystery novel about a moonstone or something like that.
Granted, I read both when I was 12, but the enmity remains just as intense as it ever was.
Some authors have a very special kind of wrinting, a style that is, that corresponds to a certain train of thought, a certain perspective in seeing things.
You'll have to try and put yourself in that perspective, and then their style will seem way less obscure.