The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850)
“A man who confessed nothing rotted alive. A woman who confessed everything was reborn. Hawthorne wrote this about his own ancestors — and never forgave himself.”
At a Glance
In seventeenth-century Puritan Boston, Hester Prynne is condemned to wear a scarlet 'A' for adultery after giving birth to a daughter, Pearl, out of wedlock. Her secret lover is the revered minister Arthur Dimmesdale, who cannot confess. Her estranged husband Roger Chillingworth arrives, disguises himself as a physician, and devotes his life to psychological torment of the guilty clergyman. Hester survives through labor and love; Dimmesdale collapses under concealed guilt; Chillingworth, robbed of his prey, withers and dies. The novel ends with Hester returning voluntarily to Boston to wear the letter — transformed, by her own agency, from mark of shame into badge of meaning.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
The Scarlet Letter is the first major American psychological novel — the first to locate its drama primarily in the interior lives of its characters rather than in external events. Published in 1850 as a 'romance' (Hawthorne's term, distinguishing his mode from the realist novel), it established the American tradition of the allegorical prose narrative. It sold out its first edition of 2,500 copies within days — a commercial success that surprised Hawthorne, who feared its darkness would repel readers. It has never gone out of print.
Diction Profile
Deliberately archaic, Latinate construction, Puritan theological vocabulary — a prose that sounds as if it emerged from the seventeenth century even though it was written in 1850
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