As a massive Austen fan who has never read Pride & Predjudice (I know, for shame and all that) I can safely say that classics are not my thing. BUT my three favourite 'classics', that I would recommend you read, have to be:
REBECCA by Daphne Du Maurier (she's very good writing 'mood' and building dread for the last quarter of the book)
ORDINARY PEOPLE by Judith Guest (Brilliant, heartbreaking, worth reading just for Conrad's perspective alone (son and father get alternating chapters) and I wish they would teach us this in English schools like in the US, instead of things like Of Mice and Men)
LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding (The only shining light in a year of reading poems about potatoes and digging, courtesy of Seamus Heaney)
p.s. I've not read The Scarlet Letter, but Easy A is awesome - I went to my friend's fancy dress party dressed as Olive with a scarlet A on my top