The Scarlet Letter

By Nathaniel Hawthorne

Enriched Classics offer readers accessible editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and commentary. Each book includes educational tools alongside the text, enabling students and readers alike to gain a deeper and more developed understanding of the writer and their work.

Set two centuries before Hawthorne’s own time, The Scarlet Letter follows heroine Hester Prynne who is compelled by her Puritan society to wear a scarlet letter ‘A’ on her clothes as a symbol of her sin: adultery. Accompanied by colorful and flawed characters, including the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale who broods over a long-hidden secret, and Hester’s husband Roger Chillingsworth who thirsts for vengeance, The Scarlet Letter, America’s first psychological novel, is a masterpiece that explores humanity’s unending struggles with pride, sin, and guilt.

Enriched Classics enhance your engagement by introducing and explaining the historical and cultural significance of the work, the author’s personal history, and what impact this book had on subsequent scholarship. Each book includes discussion questions that help clarify and reinforce major themes and reading recommendations for further research.

Read with confidence.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pocket Books
• Release date: May 1, 2004
• ISBN: 9781416503057

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was an American writer whose work was aligned with the Romantic movement. Much of his output, primarily set in New England, was based on his anti-puritan views. He is a highly regarded writer of short stories, yet his best-known works are his novels, including The Scarlet Letter (1850), The House of Seven Gables (1851), and The Marble Faun (1860). Much of his work features complex and strong female characters and offers deep psychological insights into human morality and social constraints.

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Cover: The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Supplementary materials written by Margaret Brantley Series edited by Cynthia Brantley Johnson

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INTRODUCTION

The Scarlet Letter:

The Americanization of Fiction

The Scarlet Letter was declared a classic almost immediately after its publication in 1850, and it has stayed in print and in favor ever since. It has been hailed both as the first symbolic novel and as the first psychological novel (even though it was written before there was a science called psychology). But what really secures the place of The Scarlet Letter in literary history is its treatment of human nature, sin, guilt, and pride—all timeless, universal themes—from a uniquely American point of view.

In the decades that followed the American Revolution, the United States struggled to distinguish itself culturally from Europe. There was a sense that if the United States were to become a great nation, it needed to have its own artistic traditions, not transplanted imitations of European models. Hawthorne rose to this challenge. The Scarlet Letter is set in the mid-seventeenth century in a Puritan colony on the edge of an untamed forest still inhabited by Native Americans. The landscape is wholly American. In the book, Hawthorne manages to put his finger on several thematic elements that came to define the American national identity: the effects of strict religious morality, the long struggle against a vast frontier, the troubled relationship between white settlers and Native Americans. These issues were just as relevant in Hawthorne’s day as they were in Puritan times, and the way Americans and the United States government addressed these issues shaped the development of the nation.

What is perhaps even more remarkable about this 150-year-old story is that its characters face the same moral struggles as readers in the twenty-first century. In Puritan Massachusetts, morality was strictly legislated and Church and State were one and the same. Although Church and State have been separate legally since the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791, issues of morality, personal freedom, and public life are still hot topics of national debate. Should politicians be called to account for their personal lives? Must public figures serve as role models? Does our government have a right to make laws controlling private behavior? In Puritan colonies, sinners were often branded with a hot iron and put up on a scaffold for public mockery. We no longer use actual branding irons on the people whose moral failings we condemn. But modern media are far more effective than scaffolds for holding people up for public scrutiny, and the American public’s readiness to judge the sins of others remains just as strong as it was 350 years ago. Modern readers will see much of themselves in the characters of The Scarlet Letter.

The Life and Work of Nathaniel Hawthorne

Captain Nathaniel Hathorne and his wife, Elizabeth Manning Hathorne, welcomed their son Nathaniel on Independence Day, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts. When Captain Hathorne died at sea in 1808, his widow took young Nathaniel and his two sisters and moved in with her family, the Mannings. Nathaniel suffered an injury to his foot when he was nine that kept him out of school for more than a year, during which time his love of books emerged. His early teens were spent with his mother and sisters on property owned by the Mannings on the shore of Sebago Lake in Raymond, Maine.

He attended Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, where his classmates included Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the future writer, and Franklin Pierce, the future president. He graduated in 1825, and spent the next twelve years living with his mother in Salem and writing. He published his first novel, Fanshawe: A Tale, anonymously and at his own expense in 1828. Throughout the 1830s he published more than seventy tales and sketches, some of which would later appear in his Twice-Told Tales, published in 1837. When he became engaged to Sophia Peabody in 1839, he decided to find a way to earn a better living than he could at writing, so he took a position as an inspector in the Boston Custom House. He would spend the rest of his life balancing nonwriting work for financial security with his artistic drive to write.

Nathaniel and Sophia were both followers of the Transcendentalist movement that held that divinity manifests itself everywhere, particularly in nature, and that people should foster individual relationships with the divine, rather than seek it through structured religion. They married in 1842 and moved to the Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, where he earned his living as a writer and they entertained the prominent thinkers of the day. Their first child, Una, was born in 1844. Seeking greater financial security, the family returned to Salem the next year. Mosses from an Old Manse was published in 1846, the same year he was appointed Surveyor of Customs at the Salem Custom House, thanks to his friendship with then former senator Franklin Pierce. Their second child, Julian, was also born that year.

The election of Zachary Taylor, a Whig, to the White House in 1849 led to the removal of the Democrat-appointed Hawthorne from his post at the Custom House. Shocked and disillusioned, he channeled his energy into The Scarlet Letter, which was published in 1850 to popular and critical acclaim. The semiautobio-graphical satirical essay The Custom House was included in the second printing as an introduction to The Scarlet Letter because Hawthorne felt that the book was too short and too dark on its own.

In The Custom House, he mentions his great-great-great-grandfather William Hathorne, a Puritan who arrived in Massachusetts in 1630, and his son John. William became the Speaker of the House of Delegates in Massachusetts, and was an active participant in the persecution of Quakers, a sect whose beliefs were a threat to the Puritans. Posterity remembers John Hathorne for being a judge in the infamous Salem Witch Trials of 1692, where dozens of people were executed for or died awaiting trial for practicing witchcraft. Hawthorne was both fascinated and repulsed by his forefathers’ roles in the country’s earliest days. His fascination with the period moved him to use a Puritan setting in many of his stories, such as Young Goodman Brown and The Minister’s Black Veil. So much of his most famous work takes place in early colonial times that many readers mistakenly assume that he was a Puritan himself.

The success that followed The Scarlet Letter allowed Hawthorne to focus on his writing. In a short period of two years he published The House of the Seven Gables, The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales, Feathertop, The Wonder Book (a children’s book of classical myths), The Blithedale Romance, and a biography of Franklin Pierce, who was elected president in 1852. A third child, Rose, was also born during this time.

Following his friend’s election to the presidency, Hawthorne accepted an appointment as U.S. consul in Liverpool from 1853 until 1857. The family remained in Europe until 1860, moving first to Italy, where he began work on The Marble Faun, and then returning to England, where he finished his last novel. He spent the last years of his life suffering from gastrointestinal cancer, and died in 1864 while on a short vacation in New Hampshire with Pierce.

Historical and Literary Context of The Scarlet Letter

America’s Puritan Past

The earliest settlers in America were religious separatists who wanted to reform the Church of England, feeling that its Roman Catholic roots had shifted its focus too far from true doctrine. The movement arose during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I in the late 1500s. Threatened with persecution, many reformers left England seeking greater religious freedom. They settled first in Holland and later set sail for America, which they envisioned as a new Promised Land. The reform movement ultimately led to revolution in England and an interruption in the rule of the monarchy from 1649 until 1660.

Puritans in America established a theocracy, government by religion, where political leaders were supposed to protect the Church. Central to the Puritan belief system was the concept of total depravity: They believed all people were born sinful because they inherited Adam’s sin. Puritans also believed in predestination, the idea that everything, including whether they would achieve salvation, was predetermined. They reasoned that fate would favor those who lived according to the word of God as revealed in Scripture, but believed they had no control over God’s decision to save them or condemn them. Strict adherence to God’s will was central to Puritan life. Believers were supposed to live in constant awareness that they were at the mercy of a God who was inclined to be angry at them for their depravity and might at any moment cast them into hell. Any frivolity or luxury that caused one to focus on the temporal world—wearing fancy clothes or jewelry, using ornate or decorative objects in the home, dancing and listening to lively music—were considered evil distractions.

Puritans also believed in literal heaven and hell, and that real saints and devils walked among them. To the Puritans, nature and the wilderness were dangerous, godless places where actual demons lurked to tempt them. In an ancient Christian concept called typology, events and people in the Old Testament correlate to events and people in the New Testament. Based on that concept, Puritans believed that the Bible forecasted events in their modern world, that God’s intentions are present in human action and in natural phenomenon. To the Puritans, the physical world in which we exist was not the real world. To them the real world was invisible and they could only get clues about the real, invisible world through signs and symbols here in the visible world. As everything was predetermined, interpreting signs of what was to come was taken seriously.

The history of the Puritan settlements is characterized by harsh frontier living conditions, attacks by Native Americans reacting against the settlers’ expansion into their land, and severe punishments meted out to those judged guilty of sin. The most notorious episode in Puritan history was the Salem Witch Trials. In the late 1680s, Cotton Mather, a famous Puritan theologian, became convinced that witchcraft was responsible for some strange behavior in a family of Boston boys, and published his conclusions on witchcraft in a pamphlet called Memorable Providences. A few years later, five judges, including three of Mather’s friends and Hawthorne’s great-great-grandfather, convened the Salem Witchcraft Trials after several young girls appeared to suffer hysterical fits of torment and began calling out the names of townspeople they said were witches responsible for their pain. Between June and October 1692, fourteen women and five men were hanged after being convicted of witchcraft.

American Romanticism and Transcendentalism

The period in American literature from 1830 to 1865 is sometimes referred to as the American Renaissance. But since those years saw the birth, not the rebirth, of the United States’ literary identity, renaissance is really a misnomer. The time frame is better described as the Romantic Period in American Literature. In the mid-nineteenth century, there was a flood of American classics from Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Edgar Allan Poe, and Walt Whitman—all literary contemporaries.

Less than a century since the American Revolution and on the eve of the Civil War, the young nation felt destined for greatness and struggled to find the identity that would lead it to its destiny. The United States’ first generation of creative minds wanted to help establish a distinctly American cultural identity to liberate their new country from Europe’s cultural imperialism just as it had been liberated from political imperialism. American Romanticism is what emerged as that expression of national spirit based on native resources. A romantic movement was also under way in Europe at the time, and while both emphasized the individual and emotion, European writers favored historical and gothic topics and American writers were more nationalistic.

To the Romantics, inspiration, intuition, and imagination were seen as divine sparks that pointed to Truth. They strove to be more emotional and less rational and to follow their instincts rather than arbitrary rules. A hallmark of American Romanticism is the rejection of the earlier strict, narrow confines of religion and aesthetics, namely Calvinism and Classicism, in favor of individual expression, be it with the divine, through creativity, or in nature. This viewpoint could not have been more different from that of the Puritans, who considered wilderness to be dangerous and full of demons.

Elements of the Romantic American identity included high regard for the individual; the western frontier, wide-open space, and freedom from geographic limits; optimism for what the frontier held; scientific experimentation and advances; the melting pot as immigrants arrived from all over the world; and the polarization of North and South with the rise of industrialization in the North. The subjects of the literature of the Romantic Movement focused on the quest for beauty; the faraway, the long-ago, and the lurid; escapism from contemporary problems; and nature as a source of knowledge, refuge, and divinity. To explore these subjects, Romantic writers stressed emotion and subjectivity, and often asked their readers to suspend their disbelief.

To understand the philosophical underpinnings of American Romanticism, we must look to Transcendentalism, the belief in the essential divinity of everything, people’s innate goodness, and the importance of insight over logic in the quest for truth. Avenues through which to seek truth included meditation, communing with nature, good works, and art.

The Enlightenment of the previous two centuries emphasized logic and the scientific method. Stifled by two hundred years of rationalism and discipline, truth-seekers in Europe and the United States mounted an attack on Reason and called it Romanticism. In New England, the branch that flourished was called Transcendentalism.

Ralph Waldo Emerson described the ideals in 1837, before the name for those ideals had yet been bestowed: We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds… A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.

The Transcendentalist Movement was centered in Boston and Concord, Massachusetts, the home of many of the literary members such as Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and the Alcotts. They led such contemporary reform movements as utopian communes; women’s suffrage; abolition of slavery; workers’ rights; temperance; free religion; and advances in education. Hawthorne himself participated in one of the better known Transcendentalist experiments in communal living: Brook Farm, a utopian commune located just outside of Boston. The 175-acre farm only operated as a commune—a community in which all residents participated equally in the management and cultivation of the farm—between 1841 and 1847. Hawthorne spent about six months at Brook Farm, but ultimately decided he was not suited for communal living. Many of the people Hawthorne knew at Brook Farm were active in the abolitionist and women’s rights movements. Margaret Fuller, for example, was a famous lecturer and prominent feminist whom Hawthorne knew at the commune (she was the model for his character Zenobia in The Blithedale Romance). Horace Greeley, writer and editor, was also a women’s right supporter, but he attracted national attention in the 1850s for his antislavery articles. Hawthorne’s position on such issues is less clear. His approach to religion and nature was distinctly Transcendentalist, but he was more socially conservative than his Massachusetts cohorts. He did not participate directly or actively in the national political debates.

Literary Context

In understanding the context of The Scarlet Letter, it is also important to understand the way it was viewed by its author; as a romance, not as a novel. To consider himself a writer of romances had nothing to do with the cultural American Romantic Movement of the time. It has to do with the way the author approached his work, and the latitude he took with it.

The distinction between novel and romance is largely lost today, but in its time they referred to two different approaches to fiction. As Hawthorne states in his Introduction, The Custom House, … if a man, sitting all alone cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances.

Today, we consider any long work of fiction to be a novel. But in Hawthorne’s day, novels were supposed to deal with realistic representations of human experiences to depict external truths, while romances were allowed to employ fantastic representations of their characters’ experiences to arrive at inner truths.

A novel pays close attention to detail in creating its reality. It focuses on its characters and its audience’s feelings for the characters, rather than action or plot. The events that occur in a novel tend to be plausible. On the other hand, the romance is less focused on realism than on symbols; less concerned with a story’s credibility than its resonance.

C. Hugh Holman give us this definition in his A Handbook to Literature: Romance is now frequently used as a term to designate a kind of fiction that differs from the novel in being more freely the product of the author’s imagination than the product of an effort to represent the actual world with verisimilitude.

CHRONOLOGY OF NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE’S LIFE AND WORK

1804: Nathaniel Hawthorne is born on July 4 in Salem, Massachusetts.

1808: His father dies of yellow fever in Dutch Guiana, and, with his mother and two sisters, Nathaniel goes to live with his mother’s family.

1821: Enters Bowdoin college in Brunswick, Maine, where his classmates include Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the future writer, and Franklin Pierce, the future president.

1828: Publishes his first novel, Fanshawe: A Tale anonymously and at his own expense.

1830: Signs from a Steeple is published in The Token, and The Hollow of the Three Hills is published in The Salem Gazette.

1831: Publishes the first three of more than seventy tales and sketches that would appear in The Token through 1839.

1836: Edits and writes for the American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge in Boston.

1837: Twice-Told Tales is published.

1839: Becomes engaged to Sophia Peabody and becomes an inspector in the Boston Custom House. 1840: Publishes Grandfather’s Chair, a history of New England for children.

1841: Lives at the Brook Farm, a utopian Transcendentalist commune outside of Boston founded by George Ripley, from April to November.

1842: Marries Sophia Peabody and moves to the Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts.

1844: Daughter Una is born 1845: Moves with his family back to Salem.

1846: Publishes Mosses from an Old Manse. Son Julian is born. Becomes Surveyor of Customs at the Salem Custom House.

1849: Is dismissed from the Custom House. Begins writing The Scarlet Letter.

1850: Publishes The Scarlet Letter.

1851: Publishes The House of the Seven Gables, The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales, Feathertop, and The Wonder Book, a children’s book of classical myths. Daughter Rose is born.

1852: Publishes The Blithedale Romance. Publishes a biography of Franklin Pierce, who is elected president that year.

1853: Publishes Tanglewood Tales, another children’s book of mythology. Is appointed United States consul in Liverpool, England, a post he holds for four years.

1860: Publishes The Marble Faun and returns to the United States.

1863: Publishes Our Old Home, a reflection of his time in England.

1864: Dies of gastrointestinal cancer while on a trip with Franklin Pierce.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF

The Scarlet Letter

Puritan Timeline

1608: England’s religious Separatists go to Holland.

1607: First permanent English colony in North America established at Jamestown, Virginia.

1620: Pilgrims land at Plymouth.

1630: Massachusetts Bay Colony established.

1630: Major William Hathorne emigrates from England.

1636: Roger Williams founds Providence Colony for religious liberty.

1636: Harvard College is founded.

1637: Anne Hutchinson is banished from Boston for traducing the ministers, and settles Portsmouth, Rhode Island.

1637: Pequot War.

1641: John Hathorne, son of William, ancestor of Nathaniel, and a judge at the Salem Witch Trials, is born.

1641: Richard Bellingham is governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1642: English Civil War begins.

1643: Anne Hutchinson dies.

1649: King Charles I of England is executed.

1649: John Winthrop, frequent governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, dies.

1654: Richard Bellingham is again governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1656: Anne Hibbins is hanged for witchcraft.

1660: Charles II restored to the throne of England.

1665: Richard Bellingham is again governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, this time until 1672.

1678: John Bunyan publishes The Pilgrim’s Progress.

1681: William Penn establishes Pennsylvania as a religiously tolerant colony.

1686: England ends Puritan control of Massachusetts’ government, founding King’s Chapel to provide worship facilities for new rulers.

1692: Salem Witchcraft Trials begin.

AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

Much to the author’s surprise, and (if he may say so without additional offence) considerably to his amusement, he finds that his sketch of official life, introductory to THE SCARLET LETTER, has created an unprecedented excitement in the respectable community immediately around him.¹

It could hardly have been more violent, indeed, had he burned down the Custom House, and quenched its last smoking ember in the blood of a certain venerable personage, against whom he is supposed to cherish a peculiar malevolence.²

As the public disapprobation would weigh very heavily on him, were he conscious of deserving it, the author begs leave to say that he has carefully read over the introductory pages with a purpose to alter or expunge whatever might be found amiss, and to make the best reparation in his power for the atrocities of which he has been adjudged guilty. But it appears to him, that the only remarkable features of the sketch are its frank and genuine good-humor, and the general accuracy with which he has conveyed his sincere impressions of the characters therein described. As to enmity, or ill feeling of any kind, personal or political, he utterly disclaims such motives. The sketch might, perhaps, have been wholly omitted, without loss to the public, or detriment to the book; but, having undertaken to write it, he conceives that it could not have been done in a better or a kindlier spirit, nor, so far as his abilities availed, with a livelier effect of truth.

The author is constrained, therefore, to republish his introductory sketch without the change of a word.

SALEM. March 30, 1850

THE CUSTOM HOUSE

INTRODUCTORY TO THE SCARLET LETTER

It is a little remarkable that—though disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends—an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public. The first time was three or four years since, when I favored the reader—inexcusably, and for no earthly reason, that either the indulgent reader or the intrusive author could imagine—with a description of my way of life in the deep quietude of an Old Manse.¹

And now—because, beyond my deserts, I was happy enough to find a listener or two on the former occasion—I again seize the public by the button, and talk of my three years’ experience in a Custom House. The example of the famous P.P., Clerk of this Parish,²

was never more faithfully followed. The truth seems to be, however, that, when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside his volume, or never take it up, but the few who will understand him, better than most of his schoolmates or lifemates. Some authors, indeed, do far more than this, and indulge themselves in such confidential depths of revelation as could fittingly be addressed, only and exclusively, to the one heart and mind of perfect sympathy; as if the printed book, thrown at large on the wide world, were certain to find out the divided segment of the writer’s own nature, and complete his circle of existence by bringing him into communion with it. It is scarcely decorous, however, to speak all, even where we speak impersonally. But, as thoughts are frozen and utterance benumbed, unless the speaker stand in some true relation with his audience, it may be pardonable to imagine that a friend, a kind and apprehensive, though not the closest friend, is listening to our talk; and then, a native reserve being thawed by this genial consciousness, we may prate of the circumstances that lie around us, and even of ourself, but still keep the inmost Me behind its veil. To this extent, and within these limits, an author, methinks, may be autobiographical, without violating either the reader’s rights or his own.

It will be seen, likewise, that this Custom House sketch has a certain propriety, of a kind always recognized in literature, as explaining how a large portion of the following pages came into my possession, and as offering proofs of the authenticity of a narrative therein contained. This, in fact—a desire to put myself in my true position as editor, or very little more, of the most prolix among the tales that make up my volume,—this, and no other, is my true reason for assuming a personal relation with the public. In accomplishing the main purpose, it has appeared allowable, by a few extra touches, to give a faint representation of a mode of life not heretofore described, together with some of the characters that move in it, among whom the author happened to make one.

In my native town of Salem, at the head of what, half a century ago, in the days of old King Derby,³

was a bustling wharf—but which is now burdened with decayed wooden warehouses, and exhibits few or no symptoms of commercial life, except, perhaps, a bark or brig, half-way down its melancholy length, discharging hides; or, nearer at hand, a Nova Scotia schooner, pitching out her cargo of firewood,—at the head, I say, of this dilapidated wharf, which the tide often overflows, and along which, at the base and in the rear of the row of buildings, the track of many languid years is seen in a border of unthrifty grass,—here, with a view from its front windows adown this not very enlivening prospect, and thence across the harbor, stands a spacious edifice of brick. From the loftiest point of its roof, during precisely three and a half hours of each forenoon, floats or droops, in breeze or calm, the banner of the republic; but with the thirteen stripes turned vertically, instead of horizontally, and thus indicating that a civil, and not a military post of Uncle Sam’s government is here established. Its front is ornamented with a portico of half a dozen wooden pillars, supporting a balcony, beneath which a flight of wide granite steps descends towards the street. Over the entrance hovers an enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she appears, by the fierceness of her beak and eye, and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the inoffensive community; and especially to warn all citizens, careful of their safety, against intruding on the premises which she overshadows with her wings. Nevertheless, vixenly as she looks, many people are seeking, at this very moment, to shelter themselves under the wing of the federal eagle; imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of an eiderdown pillow. But she has no great tenderness, even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later,—oftener soon than late,—is apt to fling off her nestlings, with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound from her barbed arrows.

The pavement round about the above-described edifice—which we may as well name at once as the Custom House of the port—has grass enough growing in its chinks to show that it has not, of late days, been worn by any multitudinous resort of business. In some months of the year, however, there often chances a forenoon when affairs move onward with a livelier tread. Such occasions might remind the elderly citizen of that period before the last war with England,⁴

when Salem was a port by itself; not scorned, as she is now, by her own merchants and ship-owners, who permit her wharves to crumble to ruin, while their ventures go to swell, needlessly and imperceptibly, the mighty flood of commerce at New York or Boston. On some such morning, when three or four vessels happen to have arrived at once,—usually from Africa or South America,—or to be on the verge of their departure thitherward, there is a sound of frequent feet, passing briskly up and down the granite steps. Here, before his own wife has greeted him, you may greet the seaflushed shipmaster, just in port, with his vessel’s papers under his arm, in a tarnished tin box. Here, too, comes his owner, cheerful or sombre, gracious or in the

Reviews for The Scarlet Letter

[stipe168 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

yawwwn, shutup hester. not hester.. shutup nathaniel.

[schmal06 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is one of the most beautifully and intelligently written works I have ever come across. It's just brilliant.

[jenniferrobb · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was required reading for English class. Now that I think about it--it does seem odd that a school would have us reading about a woman being punished for adultery--well, the adultery part in a school book seems odd--though if they were going to have us read about adultery, I don't find it so odd that they would have it be this book. I remember our teacher saying "if you're reading the Cliff Notes, you already know who the baby's father is"--and it was true! The Cliff Notes did reveal the baby's father long before the book did. (But I won't reveal who it was here to avoid any spoilers.)

[thursbest · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of the best classic books I've read.This book seriously got me thinking about the terms of sexism and feminism. The story was very easy to follow, and just overall a great read.

[john257hopper · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This mid 19th century American classic novel is very much set within the ethos and mores of the Puritan community in New England in the mid 17th century. A young woman Hester Prynne with a baby (Pearl) is humiliated by the community and marked with the eponymous letter A for adultery (though the word is never used in the book). The story is about her relationship with her daughter, with an old doctor who is revealed to be her ex-husband, and with the clergyman who is Pearl's father. The story is told within a framework narrative, with an over-long introduction describing the author's personal experiences working in a custom house, where he purported to have found old documents describing Hester's story. Hawthorne is clearly sceptical of the grim joylessness of extreme Puritanism, when he describes one of their rare festive events thus: "Into this festal season of the year ............the Puritans compressed whatever mirth and public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity; thereby so far dispelling the customary cloud, that, for the space of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely more grave than most other communities at a period of general affliction." The novel is very well written and needs to be read in relatively small doses truly to appreciate the language, though it is short at only 138 pages.

[kellyholmes-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is one of the best books I "had" to read in high school. I think it had something to do with teaching me how wrong it is to judge others.

[cyderry · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'm not a big Classics fan but I do try to read a few each year. This time my Book Club chose A Scarlet Letter because of the Puritan connection and Thanksgiving time-frame. I had never read this book even in high school though I thought I knew the basics. There were aspects of the story to which I was unaware and it added a bit to the story IMO. However, the treatment of anyone - man, woman, or child - in manner, saddened me so I think that it did give me a greater reason to be thankful for the blessings I have.

[robertmorrow_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Hawthorne was a much better short story writer than a novelist. I've read this book twice and have yet to understand why it is a classic. His stories like Wakefield and The Birthmark are far superior works.

[karin7-11 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

After a very slow beginning, I really enjoyed this novel. There is a lot to it beyond the surface, but I can see why so many teens don't care for it.

[susanbevans · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What do you say about a classic like The Scarlet Letter? I'm going to skip the synopsis this time - trusting to pop culture to give you an adequate summary - but I will give you my thoughts on the novel.Modern readers will no doubt find that The Scarlet Letter drags in places, but if you can get past the ba-jillion commas, 15-letter words, and page long paragraphs, the quality of the plot is exceptionally good. The language is archaic, but the novel is in no way boring. Hawthorne uses intense symbolism and dizzying imagery to transport us back in time to Puritan New England, and gives us an insight into the life of Hester Prynne that we are not likely to forget.The Scarlet Letter is a brilliant, gripping, thoroughly human novel that's characters and themes continue to reverberate in our collective consciousness more than 150 years after its initial publication. The story is thoroughly compelling, the prose rich and poetic, and characters complex. The book moves rather slowly, but it does give the reader time to think about the timeless issues of love, betrayal, and deception.

[babs605 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I know it's a "classic", but I thought it was only average.

[valerieandbooks · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I read The Scarlet Letter (as an e-book) because my daughter (high school junior) was reading this in class. All I knew beforehand was that this is a famous classic novel and that the main character's name is Hester Prynne and that she wears a scarlet A indicating she was an adulterer.I guessed almost right away who her baby's father was. I wonder how shocked people back in the day were when they read this revelation (which happens later in the novel), and/or if they guessed as quickly as I did.Some bits were interesting, but too much of this read like sermonizing and went on and on. This is not a classic that struck a chord with me. My daughter feels pretty much the same way as I do.

[seriousgrace · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Scarlet Letter opens with Hester Prynne being led to the stocks. She is the sinner and as a result is being publicly ridiculed. Her crime is having an adulterous affair that resulted in the birth of a baby girl. She not only won't disclose the father of her child, but she won't repent for her affair. She is condemned to wear the letter 'A' as a punishment, as a constant reminder to the community that she is an adulteress. While there is residual shame, Roger Chillingworth does not want the public to know Hester is his wife. There is honor in Hester's scandal - because she refuses to give up the name of her lover. Dignity prevails and she outwardly bears the burden of shame alone. Her lover also shoulders the guilt of sin in his own way as he plays an important part of the community.

[berbels_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A good story with an ending that seems to depend on your viewpoint of life. This was actually a debate between my brother's children and myself last time we were home. I felt she was a strong character and they thought she was weak. Books that create this type of debate are always welcome in my library.

[charlie68_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A dark, gothic tale that seeps into the conscious, perhaps wordy for modern readers, but satisfying.

[atillahoney · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

One of the more boring books I've ever had the displeasure of reading. Sure, I've heard the themes of being out casted are well portrayed, but it's hard to see them if the damn book puts you to sleep.

[lit13_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An extremely well-written book about the tensions that rock a small puritan town. Though it may not be to everyone's taste, it is a definite must-read for any fan of the classics.

[jgcorrea-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The story is slow and, honestly, nothing too exciting happens. The development is minimal. But I suppose I'm the odd man out, because I like The Scarlet Letter very much. It is wordy, chapters are sometimes long and uninvolving, there is a lot of symbolism, many details of emotions and thoughts are explored and sometimes you have to really concentrate to understand the full meaning. Through all this, a fascinating story is told. FYI In other books, Hawthorne was a very boring and wordy author who spent an entire chapter obsessing over a rose bush, for instance. An author too flowery and purple for me to truly enjoy.

[kathleen586 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I just re-read this book for school and I'm re-rating it. I think I was too young to appreciate it when I read it the first time. The three-star rating is changing to five stars because The Scarlet Letter is pretty amazing.

I'm also changing the read date because I don't think I read "The Custom-House" and a few other parts of the book before.

[est2lm · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Like many others, I first encountered this book in high school, and at the time, I liked parts of it. As I read it a second time, I recall a sort of Jane Eyre or Frankenstein sort of romantic Gothic tone. It is a haunting example of the american Gothic; Roger Chillingworth is undoubtedly the face of the devil himself, and the child Pearl could be a sprite come from the darkest pits of hell - not because she does anything surprising fr a child, but the things she says to her mother are spot on. Pearl, who may not realize it, is aware of a lot of different things concerning her mother's guilty feelings and has the uncanny ability to remind her mother of her sin without necessarily reproaching her. It is as if she were possessed by a demon taunting Hester Prynne int he guise of a child.

But, as it is observed even now, Hester's and Reverend Dimmesdale's guilt is so strong that religious superstition engulfs what they experience in everyday life. Guilt leads people to fear and see the worst until finally, they must confess.

Not that Chillingworth's feelings of revenge are imaginary - here is a man who would poison himself with hate in order to bring the cruelest kind of revenge to his enemy.

Hawthorn's writing style is kind of long-winded and dry at times (much like that of his puritan ancestors) but I found the story interesting enough to suffer through his didactic digressions and his characters' self-inflicted sermons.

[mbmackay · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An American classic. Great to read and experience, but I found it a bit Henry James-ish - a good concept tiresomely told. Read Samoa Jul 2003

[engpunk77 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'll admit that this book was too hard for me in 11th grade. I used it mostly to learn about 50 vocabulary words, but after reading the Cliff's Notes, I actually loved the story and wish I could have comprehended it on my own.

[jalenv_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's been decades since I read Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, but I thought it would be interesting to listen to it while I cross stitch Christmas gifts. I had mercifully forgotten that Mr. Hawthorne had blathered on about his job and colleagues at the Custom House before he even started the story of Hester Prynne, Although the sketch of the Custom House and its employees isn't bad, I grew impatient to get to the real story. I'm not saying one should skip the entire first CD -- it does reach the point where our author finds the papers of Jonathan Pine and the old scarlet letter near the end. I just want to prepare you.The discussions about sin, guilt, remorse, and penance along the way are interesting, but the attitude of Salem townspeople toward Hester is infuriating, as is Pearl's father's cowardice and Hester's husband allowing the lust for vengeance to poison his soul. Hester was too self-sacrificing where Pearl's father was concerned. He wasn't worthy of her love. I don't care how guilty he felt because the town thought him a godly man when he was the sinner whose identity they tried to get from Hester. He still let her bear all the public infamy that belonged to both of them. Hester's husband was just as bad for placing all the blame for his behavior on her partner in adultery. He refused to take responsibility for freely choosing evil over forgiveness.You'll probably recognize human behavior that is still present, such as making up tidbits of gossip and refusing to believe the truth when told it.The book does provoke thought, but it also provoked considerable anger in this reader, at least.I liked Ms. Gibson's narration.

[rosenstern · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While I enjoyed reading Hawthorne's commentary on the corrupt and illogical behavior of Puritan Americans, I thoroughly disliked his syntax. It was a laborious task to read a page. Once again, I agree with all his themes. I just wish he had written it better.

[benuathanasia · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I don't see why Chillingworth is presented as a "villain." He does nothing heinous that I've seen. He's merely getting revenge on his wife for being a cheating whore (I have zero sympathy for adulterers) and her lover. If she had shown any repentance or turned aside from her lover when he returned, I might be able to see him in a more negative light. However, she continued to protect his identity throughout the story and even goes back to him in the end. I enjoyed the story, but would have much preferred is Hester was not the focus and Chillingworth's quest for revenge (justice) had been.

[darzzled · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Despite its age, the Scarlet Letter is an excellent exploration of morality, religion and hypocrisy in a setting that's obsessed with morals. If you're not the kind of person who likes the sometimes over-written style of 19th century novels, you'll probably lose Hawthorne's message in the language but it's well worth the read and shows surprisingly modern thinking for such an old book.

[pilgrimjess · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.” In many respects this book is the tale of a love triangle but one based on denial rather than passion. Hester Prynne, is sent ahead to settle within a Puritan community of New England. After two years alone she falls pregnant by another man and gives birth to a daughter. The ultra religious community are horrified and decide to punish Hester by making her wear a letter "A" (as in adulterer) on her bosom for eternity. On the day of her sentencing within sight of her peers she refuses to name the child's father leading to more damnation. Coincidentally this day also marks the final arrival of her husband, an aptly named fellow of Chillingworth, and Hester also agrees to not naming him as her cuckolded husband thus allowing him to settle down within the self same community with an unsullied name. Once there Chillingworth sets out not only to discover the child's identity but also to take his revenge against him. It soon become apparent to the reader that the third party of this triangle is Hester's vicar, a weak man who is wracked by his concealed guilt. Hester, however, by steadfastly refusing to give up her secret gradually gains the grudging respect of her peers by merely doing good. So introducing forgiveness and loyalty to the themes of love and betrayal.In many respects Hester becomes the first real female heroine of English literature and is so much more strong willed than any of the Austen or Bronte counterparts but for me her character is ultimately not fully developed instead the "A" and religious bigotry takes real centre stage. For me the more interesting characters are Chillingworth, a cuckolded man who is totally heartless, sustained by revenge and hatred alone and Hester's daughter Pearl, so named because of the hefty price her mother has to pay for her. Pearl is likewise ostracized by her fellows but becomes an enigma, sometimes loving sometimes fierce, attuned with nature about her like a bird or butterfly barely marking the ground she alights upon. I also felt that the mentions of witchcraft and in particular the Salem witches did little for the plot.This is beautifully if somewhat ponderously written book, I almost gave it up in the first 60 page introductory chapter because of its very verbose nature, which would have been a shame. That said,whilst I can see why it might have caused a stir when first released, but feel that in our hopefully more enlightened age has lost some of its relevance and potency. I believe that this book is seen as necessary reading in US colleges, in which case I feel rather sorry for them because perhaps this is a book better read when the reader has a few more miles on the clock and has developed some of life's woes.

[wang01142 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Scarlet Letter is a great novel whose strength, I feel, lies in its development of the ambivalent characters, or characters who are considered neither "good" nor "evil." Hester Prynne, though viewed as a shameful adulteress at first, eventually elicits sympathy and understanding from the Puritan townspeople and readers as well. Once readers find out that she was almost forced into her marriage with Roger Prynne (Chillingsworth) because of her family financial circumstances, they begin to almost "root" for her to run away and live a normal life with the Arther Dimmesdale, a minister. Arther Dimmesdale is also an "ambivalent" character in that he is a coward for not stepping up and admitting to the townspeople that he was the father of Hester's child, but he also tries to repent through self mutilation and torture. This book is definitely worth to read because Hawthorne's allegory is by far better than the Demi Moore, Hollywood alteration of the original.

[jessica_reads · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Most people of todays time don't seem to be able to really get this book. It is written for the time of old when women were homemakers and men ruled all. If things were a sin it was likely a womans fault and everything that happened that wasn't typical was considered either a sign from God or the devils work. So, here we have a story of a very naughty girl who got pregnant out of wedlock. So, by custom she was inprisoned and judged because of her sin. This is where the story begins. She keeps her mouth shut about who helped create this heathen child with her, which shows her own character. Then the story goes through the details of what becomes of her life. The town gossips have their hayday and later in the book people from out of town come to town just to see the girl with the scarlet letter. You see how many people treat her because she chose to not move away but to stay and face her persecutors head on. The whole time she also has to keep seeing her thought to be dead husband who is imitating someone else. All the while she faces many more trials and triumphs them all. She almost gets to run away with her love who fathered her child but circumstances keep that from happening. However slightly sad the ending is, it also ties up many loose ends. Overall, even with some rather drawn out details it is written amazingly well and a great read for anyone.

[danconsiglio · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Here's another book that I really wish I had read when I was in high school. Some of the American cannon is actually pretty kick ass stuff! 'The Scarlet Letter' is an exploration of some of the moral foundations of this country that gets into the gender and sexual politics that make up much of our cultural interactions. It has some freakin' awesome transformative moments and one of the best climaxes that I've read in a while. If it wasn't known for being one of those dusty books that everyone has read and no one actually likes, I would have totally read this earlier in life. I'm glad I hunkered down and gave it a shot anyway. Good stuff!