Concept
The Scarlet Letter
Overview
The Scarlet Letter: A Romance is a historical novel by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1850. Set in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony during the years 1642 to 1649, the novel tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter with a man to whom she is not married and then struggles to lead a new life of repentance and dignity. As punishment, she must wear a scarlet letter 'A' (for "adultery"). Containing a number of religious and historic allusions, the book explores themes of legalism, sin, and guilt.
The Scarlet Letter was one of the first mass-produced books in the United States. It was popular when first published and is considered a classic work of American literature. Commonly listed among the Great American Novels, it has inspired numerous film, television, and stage adaptations. Critics have described The Scarlet Letter as a masterwork, and novelist D. H. Lawrence called it a "perfect work of the American imagination".
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Now, I confess, I look upon religion as a kind of diet, which can only be so when I make a constant practice of it, when throughout the whole twelve months I never lose it out of sight." She searched among the books: she found some edifying works, as they are called. "It was of my mother," said Theresa, "that poor Lydia learned to have recourse to books like these.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's apprenticeship and travels, vol. 1
States what The Scarlet Letter is.
She knew by the superscription from whom it came, and her curiosity made her open it. The reading the particulars of a story she was so much concerned in renewed all her passion, and she hence took an occasion to write to him, complaining of his long silence. _Abelard_ could not forbear answering her. This occasioned the several Letters between them which follow this History; and in these we may observe how high a…
Peter Abelard, Letters of Abelard and Heloise
Close in meaning to The Scarlet Letter; the term itself is not named.
The captain having blown up his own ship in an engagement, returns to England abandoned and undone, accompanied by his page and his friend, without knowing the friendship of the one or the tender passion of the other. Immediately he goes to the jewel among women, who he expected had preserved her fidelity to him and the treasure he had left in her hands. He meets with her indeed, but married to the honest knave in…
Voltaire, Letters on England
Close in meaning to The Scarlet Letter; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed The Scarlet Letter
Related ideas
- Adam and Eve
- George Eliot
- Repentance
- Massachusetts
- The Guardian
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Puritans
- Boston
- Romanticism
- Silent film
- Sin
- Washington Irving
- Reformation
- Reformed Christianity
- Martin Luther
- Henry James
- Edgar Allan Poe
- University of Massachusetts Press
- John Winthrop
Place in the tradition
Part of Romanticism.