Published 1850 / Length 228 pages
Boston, seventeenth century. A beautiful young woman, Hester Prynne, is released from prison and forced to stand on a scaffold under the stern Puritan gaze of her fellow townspeople. In her arms is her illegitimate baby, and on her breast is pinned a scarlet piece of cloth in the shape of the letter A (for adulteress), which she is condemned to wear for the rest of her life. She refuses to name the child’s father, and is cast out by her society. Meanwhile, a stranger in the crowd appears to recognize her …
This dramatic scene opens The Scarlet Letter, and sets the stage for what is to follow. The story of Hester, and her dignified struggle against the social mores of the day, has become one of the great classics of American literature. Part psychological drama, part melodrama, it explores the gulf between public shame and private guilt, and how one can never escape the consequences of one’s actions.
‘It’s an odd novel, in which the key event – Hester’s love affair – has occurred before the story begins. It’s set in a society whose values are utterly alien to ours and, indeed, were alien in the author’s time. And it’s wildly melodramatic in places. But for all that, it’s an absorbing read, though I found the Preface rather dull.’ – SUZIE, 35
• Are the moral dilemmas faced by the characters in this book at all relevant to a modern society?
• Hawthorne made the distinction between the atmospheric ‘romance’, which this is, and the realistic ‘novel’. Yet the Preface proposes it is a true story. Do you think he intends the book to be realistic?
• What do you think is the author’s attitude to the Puritans, and to the father of Hester’s child?
• Is this a feminist book?
• The book starts with a Preface, ‘The Custom-House’, which purports to describe how the author found the actual scarlet letter and papers documenting Hester’s story, while working at the custom house in Salem, Massachusetts. Hawthorne did work there, between 1846 and 1849, but there is no evidence that this story is true.
• The Scarlet Letter was one of the first mass-produced books in America. It was immediately hailed as a classic, though it sold fewer than 8,000 copies in the author’s lifetime.
• There have been numerous film adaptations of the story, most recently a 1995 version starring Demi Moore and Gary Oldman.
• The Crucible, a play by ARTHUR MILLER – a shocking tragedy set in intolerant Puritan society (incidentally, Hawthorne’s ancestors were directly involved in the Salem witchcraft trials).
• Tess of the D’Urbervilles by THOMAS HARDY – another woman living with the consequences of her supposed sin, written some forty years after The Scarlet Letter.
• Crime and Punishment by FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY – a masterly exploration of the destructive internal effects of guilt.