Why do people hate The Scarlet Letter?

With a quick search on google, you can easily find that The Scarlet Letter is one of the most hated novels of all time. But why?  
The prose is wonderful. 

“Discerning the impracticable state of the poor culprit's mind, the elder clergyman, who had carefully prepared himself for the occasion, addressed to the multitude a discourse on sin, in all its branches, but with continual reference to the ignominious letter. So forcibly did he dwell upon this symbol, for the hour or more during which his periods were rolling over the people's heads, that it assumed new terrors in their imagination, and seemed to derive its scarlet hue from the flames of the infernal pit. Hester Prynne, meanwhile, kept her place upon the pedestal of shame, with glazed eyes, and an air of weary indifference.” (Ch.3) 

Look at the imagery: 

“As night approached, it proving impossible to quell her insubordination by rebuke or threats of punishment, Master Brackett, the jailer, thought fit to introduce a physician. […] To say the truth, there was much need of professional assistance, not merely for Hester herself, but still more urgently for the child—who, drawing its sustenance from the maternal bosom, seemed to have drank in with it all the turmoil, the anguish and despair, which pervaded the mother's system. It now writhed in convulsions of pain, and was a forcible type, in its little frame, of the moral agony which Hester Prynne had borne throughout the day.” (Ch.4) 

That is such a good passage. 
So rich and vivid. This kind of language you can’t find in, say, Henry James. 

“In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it. Every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those with whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished, and as much alone as if she inhabited another sphere, or communicated with the common nature by other organs and senses than the rest of human kind. She stood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt; no more smile with the household joy, nor mourn with the kindred sorrow; or, should it succeed in manifesting its forbidden sympathy, awakening only terror and horrible repugnance. […] The poor, as we have already said, whom she sought out to be the objects of her bounty, often reviled the hand that was stretched forth to succour them. Dames of elevated rank, likewise, whose doors she entered in the way of her occupation, were accustomed to distil drops of bitterness into her heart; sometimes through that alchemy of quiet malice, by which women can concoct a subtle poison from ordinary trifles; and sometimes, also, by a coarser expression, that fell upon the sufferer's defenceless breast like a rough blow upon an ulcerated wound.” (Ch.5) 

I like “drops of bitterness” and “alchemy of quiet malice”. 
So why do people hate it? 
I’ve looked: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/37891-the-scarlet-letter--killing-literacy-since-1850 
https://www.reddit.com/r/literature/comments/22eayv/the_scarlet_letter_do_people_hate_it/ 
Most of the responses don’t answer anything. Usually people say they hate a book and can’t provide reasons—if anything, they say it’s boring, but what does that mean? There’s 1 person who says the 3 classic works they hate the most are The Scarlet Letter, Anna Karenina, and Moby Dick. That makes The Scarlet Letter in good company—the other 2 are in my top 3 favourites. 
I myself think Hawthorne’s novel would most likely not be my favourite, because of the subject matter. I dislike religion, I dislike the concept of sin and guilt, I dislike a society in which religion and law are mixed up and people have no sexual freedom. Hawthorne, I know, is not on the side of the Puritans, and he writes about the hypocrisy of the clergy, but personally I still can’t warm to the subject matter. 
Hester Prynne is punished and publicly shamed for committing adultery, but she herself accepts the punishment. 

“It may seem marvellous that, with the world before her—kept by no restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of the Puritan settlement, so remote and so obscure—free to return to her birth-place, or to any other European land, and there hide her character and identity under a new exterior, as completely as if emerging into another state of being—and having also the passes of the dark, inscrutable forest open to her, where the wildness of her nature might assimilate itself with a people whose customs and life were alien from the law that had condemned her—it may seem marvellous that this woman should still call that place her home, where, and where only, she must needs be the type of shame. But there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked event has given the colour to their lifetime; and, still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. […] The chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling to her inmost soul, but could never be broken.” (ibid.) 

She chains herself to the place, despite the banishment, despite the public shame, despite people’s malice. This is something I, with my 21st century mindset, can’t comprehend.