How would Nathaniel Hawthorne's sentence structure in The Scarlet Letter be described?

When you
read and come across a sentence such as this one:

The child's attire, on the other hand, was distinguished by a
fanciful, or, we might rather say, a fantastic ingenuity, which served, indeed, to heighten the
airy charm that early began to develop itself in the little girl, but which appeared to have
also a deeper meaning. (Ch. 5, " at her Needle")

You might be inclined to think that Hawthorne's sentence structure is just
hard. And his sentences are definitely long and complex, with embedded
clauses and phrases set off by commas. He could have just said, "But the child's attire was
distinguished by a fantastic ingenuity which heightened the little girl's charm, but which also
had a deeper meaning." Instead, the sentence is peppered with interjections like
"indeed," and "on the other hand," and hedging phrases like "we might
rather say" and "appeared to." In one place he even gives us a selection of
adjectives: "fanciful, or ... fantastic."

The sentences in
The...