The Scarlet Letter (Identities and Issues in Literature)
At a glance:
- Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne
- First Published: 1850
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction
- Subjects: North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., Colonies or colonization, Mistaken or secret identity, Guilt, New England, Ministry or ministers, Seventeenth century, Adultery, Punishment, Good and evil, Revenge, Illegitimacy, Boston, Sermons, Gossip, Massachusetts Bay Colony, Needlepoint or needlework
- Locales: Boston, MA
The Work
The Scarlet Letter, long considered Nathaniel Hawthorne’s greatest novel, is a complex investigation of the effects of secrecy and guilt. Set in seventeenth century Boston, the novel follows the life of Hester Prynne, a Puritan woman convicted of adultery and forced to wear a red patch, the letter A, as part of her punishment. Hawthorne’s sympathetic depiction of Hester’s struggle with this restrictive self-image is largely responsible for the book’s status as an American classic.
After her emergence from Boston prison at the book’s...
[The entire page is 763 words long]
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