It is 1642 in Boston. Hester Prynne, dignified and silent, is led through prison doors to her public shaming by members of the Puritan town. Holding her illegitimate child to her breast, and bearing a bright scarlet letter “A” embroidered on her bodice, Hester must now struggle to create a new life for herself and her child within this censorious community.
Though her husband is assumed dead, Hester’s relationship with the father of her child is considered illicit . She is truly penitent, but her real crime seems to be her unwillingness to disclose the identity of her lover. When her missing spouse reappears, reveals himself to her, and takes up residence in town under an assumed identity, Hester, her daughter, her disguised husband, and her clandestine lover are forced to abide in close quarters—leading quiet, anguished lives. But the secrets eat away at their keepers, and only the most resolute of this forsaken foursome will thrive.
The Scarlet Letter met with widespread acclaim when it was published in 1850.
The novel explores the emerging transcendental movement and its core belief in a personal relationship with God, transplanted in the context of seventeenth-century Puritan society.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804 and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825. He briefly engaged with the transcendental community at Brook Farm, which inspired his satirical novel The Blithedale Romance. A longtime resident of Concord, Massachusetts, he died while on a tour of the White Mountains in New Hampshire in 1864.
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