The Scarlet Letter - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The Scarlet Letter: A Romance is an 1. American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. The book is considered to be his . Throughout the book, Hawthorne explores themes of legalism, sin, and guilt. Plot. In this painting, The Scarlet Letter by Hugues Merle, Hester Prynne and Pearl are in the foreground and Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth are in the background (painting by Hugues Merle, 1. In June 1. 64. 2, in the Puritan town of Boston, a crowd gathers to witness the punishment of Hester Prynne, a young woman found guilty of adultery. She is required to wear a scarlet . She must stand on the scaffold for three hours, to be exposed to public humiliation. As Hester approaches the scaffold, many of the women in the crowd are angered by her beauty and quiet dignity.
When demanded and cajoled to name the father of her child, Hester refuses. As Hester looks out over the crowd, she notices a small, misshapen man and recognizes him as her long- lost husband, who has been presumed lost at sea. When the husband sees Hester's shame, he asks a man in the crowd about her and is told the story of his wife's adultery. So, you are anxiously seeking for a working free The Scarlet Letter PDF book? Well, in that case you obviously ought to try getting it from this page! Download past episodes or subscribe to future episodes of 'The Scarlet Letter' Audiobook (Audio book). The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Scarlet Letter. The Scarlet Letter Summary. After a brief authorial digression about how his stuffy coworkers at the Custom House kept him from writing. He angrily exclaims that the child's father, the partner in the adulterous act, should also be punished and vows to find the man. He chooses a new name . After she returns to her prison cell, the jailer brings in Roger Chillingworth, a physician, to calm Hester and her child with his roots and herbs. He and Hester have an open conversation regarding their marriage and the fact that they were both in the wrong. Her lover, however, is another matter and he demands to know who it is; Hester refuses to divulge such information. He accepts this, stating that he will find out anyway, and forces her to hide that he is her husband. If she ever reveals him, he warns her, he will destroy the child's father. Hester agrees to Chillingworth's terms although she suspects she will regret it. Following her release from prison, Hester settles in a cottage at the edge of town and earns a meager living with her needlework. She lives a quiet, sombre life with her daughter, Pearl. She is troubled by her daughter's unusual fascination by Hester's scarlet . ![]() As she grows older, Pearl becomes capricious and unruly. Her conduct starts rumours, and, not surprisingly, the church members suggest Pearl be taken away from Hester. ![]() Hester, hearing rumors that she may lose Pearl, goes to speak to Governor Bellingham. With him are ministers Wilson and Dimmesdale. Hester appeals to Dimmesdale in desperation, and the minister persuades the governor to let Pearl remain in Hester's care. Because Dimmesdale's health has begun to fail, the townspeople are happy to have Chillingworth, a newly arrived physician, take up lodgings with their beloved minister. Being in such close contact with Dimmesdale, Chillingworth begins to suspect that the minister's illness is the result of some unconfessed guilt. He applies psychological pressure to the minister because he suspects Dimmesdale to be Pearl's father. One evening, pulling the sleeping Dimmesdale's vestment aside, Chillingworth sees a symbol that represents his shame on the minister's pale chest. ![]() Complete summary of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Format Url Size; Read this book online: Generated HTML (with images) //www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33.html.images: 526 kB: Read this book online: Generated. ![]() ![]() Tormented by his guilty conscience, Dimmesdale goes to the square where Hester was punished years earlier. Climbing the scaffold, he admits his guilt to them but cannot find the courage to do so publicly. Hester, shocked by Dimmesdale's deterioration, decides to obtain a release from her vow of silence to her husband. Several days later, Hester meets Dimmesdale in the forest and tells him of her husband and his desire for revenge. She convinces Dimmesdale to leave Boston in secret on a ship to Europe where they can start life anew. Renewed by this plan, the minister seems to gain new energy. On Election Day, Dimmesdale gives what is declared to be one of his most inspired sermons. But as the procession leaves the church, Dimmesdale climbs upon the scaffold and confesses his sin, dying in Hester's arms. Later, most witnesses swear that they saw a stigma in the form of a scarlet . Chillingworth, losing his will for revenge, dies shortly thereafter and leaves Pearl a substantial inheritance. After several years, Hester returns to her cottage and resumes wearing the scarlet letter. When she dies, she is buried near the grave of Dimmesdale, and they share a simple slate tombstone engraved with an escutcheon described as: . But it also results in knowledge . For Hester, the Scarlet Letter is a physical manifestation of her sin and reminder of her painful solitude. She contemplates casting it off to obtain her freedom from an oppressive society and a checkered past as well as the absence of God. Because the society excludes her, she considers the possibility that many of the traditions held up by the Puritan culture are untrue and are not designed to bring her happiness. As for Dimmesdale, the . The subtlety is that the minister's belief is his own cheating, convincing himself at every stage of his spiritual pilgrimage that he is saved. Throughout the work, the nature images contrast with the stark darkness of the Puritans and their systems. The outward man reflects the condition of the heart; an observation thought to be inspired by the deterioration of Edgar Allan Poe, whom Hawthorne . Hester was rejected by the villagers even though she spent her life doing what she could to help the sick and the poor. Because of the social shunning, she spent her life mostly in solitude, and wouldn't go to church. As a result, she retreats into her own mind and her own thinking. Her thoughts begin to stretch and go beyond what would be considered by the Puritans as safe or even Christian. She still sees her sin, but begins to look on it differently than the villagers ever have. She begins to believe that a person's earthly sins don't necessarily condemn them. She even goes so far as to tell Dimmesdale that their sin has been paid for by their daily penance and that their sin won't keep them from getting to heaven, however, the Puritans believed that such a sin surely condemns. But Hester had been alienated from the Puritan society, both in her physical life and spiritual life. When Dimmesdale dies, she knows she has to move on because she can no longer conform to the Puritans' strictness. Her thinking is free from religious bounds and she has established her own different moral standards and beliefs. It was the last Salem home where the Hawthorne family lived. A 2,5. 00- copy second edition included a preface by Hawthorne dated March 3. Introduction . The only remarkable features of the sketch are its frank and genuine good- humor .. As to enmity, or ill- feeling of any kind, personal or political, he utterly disclaims such motives. In the mid- nineteenth century, bookbinders of home- grown literature typically hand- made their books and sold them in small quantities. The first mechanized printing of The Scarlet Letter, 2,5. Copies of the first edition are often sought by collectors as rare books, and may fetch up to around $1. USD. Critical response. On its publication, critic Evert Augustus Duyckinck, a friend of Hawthorne's, said he preferred the author's Washington Irving- like tales. Another friend, critic Edwin Percy Whipple, objected to the novel's . Lawrence said that there could not be a more perfect work of the American imagination than The Scarlet Letter. In the 1. 63. 0s she was excommunicated by the Puritans and exiled from Boston and moved to Rhode Island. Forman were the subjects of an adultery scandal in 1. England. Forman was charged with trying to poison his adulterous wife and her lover. Overbury was a friend of the lover and was perhaps poisoned. John Winthrop (1. Dimmesdale's room (chapter 9). National Public Radio (NPR). The New England Quarterly. Literary Publishing in America: 1. Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1. ISBN 0- 8. 70. 23- 8. Parker, Hershel. Random House: New York, 2. ISBN 0- 8. 12. 9- 7. Wright, John Hardy. Hawthorne's Haunts in New England. Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2. ISBN 9. 78- 1- 5. Mc. Farland, Philip. New York: Grove Press, 2. ISBN 0- 8. 02. 1- 1. Miller, Edwin Haviland. Salem is my Dwelling Place: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1. ISBN 0- 8. 77. 45- 3. Miller, Edwin Haviland. Salem is my Dwelling Place: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1. ISBN 0- 8. 77. 45- 3. Miller, Edwin Haviland. Salem is my Dwelling Place: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Davidson, Mashall B. The American Heritage History of the Writers' America. New York: American Heritage Publishing Company, Inc., 1. ISBN 0- 0. 7- 0. 15. X^Schreiner, Samuel A., Jr. The Concord Quartet: Alcott, Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, and the Friendship That Freed the American Mind. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2. ISBN 9. 78- 0- 4. Crowley, J. Donald, and Orestes Brownson. Literary Reference Center Plus. Wineapple, Brenda. Random House: New York, 2. ISBN 0- 8. 12. 9- 7. Miller, Edwin Haviland. Salem is my Dwelling Place: A Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1. ISBN 0- 8. 77. 45- 3. James, Henry (1. 90. The mirror and the killer- queen: otherness in literary language. Indiana University Press. Hunter, Dianne, Seduction and theory: readings of gender, representation, and rhetoric. University of Illinois Press. Hawthorne, Melville, and the Novel. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1. Brown, Gillian. Nathaniel Hawthorne Review 3. Spring 2. 00. 6): 4. Nathaniel Hawthorne, the Scarlet Letter. Columbia Critical Guides. Columbia University Press. Novel: a Forum on Fiction 3. Winter 1. 99. 7): 1. Studies in American Fiction 2. Fall 1. 99. 5): 1. Newberry, Frederick. Tradition and Disinheritance in The Scarlet Letter. ESQ: A journal of the American Renaissance 2. Reid, Alfred S. Sir Thomas Overbury's Vision (1. Other English Sources of Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Scarlet Letter.
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