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Set in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony during the years 1642 to 1649, the novel tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter with a man to whom she is not married and then struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. As punishment, she must wear a scarlet letter 'A' (for "adultery").
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, 晧四郎 木畑
- 1850
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The Scarlet Letter, novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1850. It is considered a masterpiece of American literature and a classic moral study.
The novel is set in a village in Puritan New England. The main character is Hester Prynne, a young woman who has borne a child out of wedlock. Hester believes herself a widow, but her husband, Roger Chillingworth, arrives in New England very much alive and conceals his identity. He finds his wife forced to wear the scarlet letter A on her dress as punishment for her adultery. After Hester refuses to name her lover, Chillingworth becomes obsessed with finding his identity. When he learns that the man in question is Arthur Dimmesdale, a saintly young minister who is the leader of those exhorting her to name the child’s father, Chillingworth proceeds to torment him. Stricken by guilt, Dimmesdale becomes increasingly ill. Hester herself is revealed to be a self-reliant heroine who is never truly repentant for committing adultery with the minister; she feels that their act was consecrated by their deep love for each other. Although she is initially scorned, over time her compassion and dignity silence many of her critics.
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In the end, Chillingworth is morally degraded by his monomaniacal pursuit of revenge. Dimmesdale is broken by his own sense of guilt, and he publicly confesses his adultery before dying in Hester’s arms. Only Hester can face the future bravely, as she prepares to begin a new life with her daughter, Pearl, in Europe. Years later Hester returns to New England, where she continues to wear the scarlet letter. After her death she is buried next to Dimmesdale, and their joint tombstone is inscribed with “ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES.”
The scarlet letter A that Hester is forced to wear is finely embroidered with gold-coloured thread. As both a badge of shame and a beautifully wrought human artifact, it reflects the many oppositions in the novel, such as those between order and transgression, civilization and wilderness, and adulthood and childhood. The more society strives to keep out wayward passion, the more it reinforces the split between appearance and reality. The members of the community who are ostensibly the most respectable are often the most depraved, while the apparent sinners are often the most virtuous.
The novel also crafts intriguing symmetries between social oppression and psychological repression. Dimmesdale’s sense of torment at his guilty secret and the physical and mental manifestations of his malaise reflect the pathology of a society that needs to scapegoat and alienate its so-called sinners. Eventually, personal integrity is able to break free from social control. Perhaps more than any other novel, The Scarlet Letter effectively encapsulates the emergence of individualism and self-reliance from America’s Puritan and conformist roots.
- Ronan Mcdonald
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850, is a classic novel set in Puritanical 17th-century Massachusetts. The narrative revolves around Hester Prynne, a woman who is condemned by her community for committing adultery and forced to wear a scarlet letter “A” on her chest as a symbol of her sin.
A short summary of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. This free synopsis covers all the crucial plot points of The Scarlet Letter.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, 晧四郎 木畑
- 1850
The Scarlet Letter is a gothic romance, not a historical novel. It takes place at a recognizable place and time, the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the 17th century, but many of its details are fanciful rather than accurate.
The Scarlet Letter paints a very unflattering portrait of the Puritans, a religious group that dominated late seventeenth-century English settlement in Massachusetts. Puritanism began in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603).
The Scarlet Letter is a novel written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1850. The story is set in the 17th century in Boston, Massachusetts, during the Puritan era. The novel is a reflection of the author’s interest in the history of the United States and the Puritan culture that shaped it.
