About Author:
Author Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) wrote novels The Scarlet Letter, The House of Seven Gables, and the short story "Young Goodman Brown," among others. Born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1804, Nathaniel Hawthorne's short stories include "My Kinsman, Major Molineux" (1832), "Roger Malvin's Burial" (1832), "Young Goodman Brown" (1835), and the collection Twice-Told Tales. He is best known for his novels The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851). His use of allegory and symbolism make Hawthorne one of the most studied writers.
Theme of the Novel:
1)Identity and society
2)sin
3)Nature of evil
4)Experience
5)Human Condition
About Novel:
The story begins in seventeenth-century Boston, then a
Puritan settlement. A young woman, Hester Prynne, is led from the
town prison with her infant daughter, Pearl, in her arms and the
scarlet letter “A” on her breast. A man in the crowd tells an elderly onlooker
that Hester is being punished for adultery. Hester’s husband, a
scholar much older than she is, sent her ahead to America, but he
never arrived in Boston.
The consensus is that he has been lost
at sea. While waiting for her husband, Hester has apparently had
an affair, as she has given birth to a child. She will not reveal
her lover’s identity, however, and the scarlet letter, along with
her public shaming, is her punishment for her sin and her secrecy.
On this day Hester is led to the town scaffold and harangued by
the town fathers, but she again refuses to identify her child’s
father.
The elderly onlooker is Hester’s missing husband, who
is now practicing medicine and calling himself Roger Chillingworth.
He settles in Boston, intent on revenge. He reveals his true identity
to no one but Hester, whom he has sworn to secrecy. Several years
pass. Hester supports herself by working as a seamstress, and Pearl
grows into a willful, impish child. Shunned by the community, they
live in a small cottage on the outskirts of Boston. Community officials attempt
to take Pearl away from Hester, but, with the help of Arthur Dimmesdale,
a young and eloquent minister, the mother and daughter manage to
stay together.
At the end Frustrated in his revenge, Chillingworth dies a year later.
Hester and Pearl leave Boston, and no one knows what has happened
to them. Many years later, Hester returns alone, still wearing the
scarlet letter, to live in her old cottage and resume her
charitable work. She receives occasional letters from Pearl, who
has married a European aristocrat and established a family of her
own. When Hester dies, she is buried next to Dimmesdale. The two
share a single tombstone, which bears a scarlet “A.”
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