The Scarlet Letter | Historical Concerns and the Emblem

In the following essay, Pearl James explores the historical concerns that shaped The Scarlet Letter and how Hester Prynne's emblem serves as several types of imagery.

Nathaniel Hawthorne envisioned The Scarlet Letter as a short story to be published in a collection, but it outgrew that purpose. Most critics accept Hawthorne's definition of it as a "romance," rather than as a novel. It usually appears with an introductory autobiographical essay, "The Custom House," in which Hawthorne describes working in his ancestral village, Salem, Massachusetts, as a customs officer. Hawthorne describes coming across certain documents in the customs house that provide him with the basis for The Scarlet Letter. But this essay fictionalizes the...

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