What's the Use?

Your faithful correspondent has been giving some consideration to literature lately and how modern life seems to have made some of the works in the American canon somewhat passe'.
A case in point is Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. The whole point of the novel is a exposition on "hypocrisy."
In the novel Hester Prynne, an unmarried woman, gives birth to a child. Because of this she is, by law, required to wear on her clothes the letter "A" (for adulteress). The father, Rev. Dimsdale, never cops to the fact that he is the father of the child until the end of the novel when he is in a pinch.
Now, disregarding the fact that Miss Prynne is unmarried and thus would be properly more described as a fornicator (since the father was not known to be married or unmarried) and, thus being forced to wear a scarlet "F", modern life, due to situational ethics, applies no shame to either adultery or fornication. It is not unusual for one to be acquainted with women who have given birth out of wedlock or given birth to children not sired by their husbands.
How can the modern young person in school realize the shame that Hester Prynne suffered? That young person, unless attending a Christian or Catholic school cannot. How can a young person in school realize what hypocrisy in sexual matters really is when that young person is sitting next to one or more other children who do not know their fathers.
There was a time when drunkenness was a shame and the smoking was the norm. Now we live in a world where drunkenness is considered a disease, smoking is considered the worst of sins, and while, giving birth out of wedlock, while not the norm, is not unusual; just look at the crowd in Hollywood.
Drunkenness may affect a family, smoking affects an individual, but bastard children affect the society with welfare and care.
Could it be time, because of the idiocy of society, to chuck The Scarlet Letter? It seems so quaint.