Book Bearings
The Scarlet Letter
- 272 pages · about 5 hours
- First published 1850
- 2,425 editions
- Free to read
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1 About this book
In Puritan Boston in the 1640s, Hester Prynne is led from prison to the scaffold with her baby in her arms. She has borne a child out of wedlock, and she is sentenced to wear a scarlet letter A, for adultery, on her dress for the rest of her life. She refuses to name the father. In the crowd stands a newcomer who takes a close interest in her case and settles in the town under the name Roger Chillingworth, while the town's admired young minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, grows mysteriously ill. Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel, published in 1850, follows Hester, her daughter Pearl and the two men over the next seven years.
- Women immigrants
- Historical fiction
- Relationships
- Romance
- Puritans
- Adultery
- Illegitimate children
- Triangles (Interpersonal relations)
2 What to expect
A historical novel set in Puritan Boston, about a woman condemned to wear a scarlet A for adultery and the secret she keeps. Sin, guilt, hypocrisy and the gap between public and private selves are its themes, worked out through symbols more than events. The prose is dense and formal and the pace slow, and many people skip the long introductory sketch about the custom house on a first reading.
Good for readers who want: an American classic, Puritan New England, and a symbolic novel about guilt.
3 Read it free, right here
A free scan from the Internet Archive opens right here on the page, with no sign-up.
Read it on the Internet Archive4 About Nathaniel Hawthorne
Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)
5 More by Nathaniel Hawthorne
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