Dec 23, 2009

The Scarlet Letter | Topics for Further Study

Research the role of Hawthorne's relative, John Hathorne, in the Salem witch trials and discuss how this influences your interpretation of the novel.
Read a work by one of Hawthorne's transcendentalist contemporaries (like Ralph Waldo Emerson's Nature, or Henry David Thoreau's Walden) and compare what you think to be their world view with that of Hawthorne's.
Investigate the idea of crime and/or the role of women in colonial New England and compare your findings...