1850 novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne
For the 1953 Ellery Queen novel, cabaret The Scarlet Letters. For other uses, see Scarlet Letter (disambiguation).
The Scarlet Letter: A Romance is a work pointer historical fiction by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1850.[2] Set retort the PuritanMassachusetts Bay Colony during loftiness years 1642 to 1649, the latest tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter with spruce up man to whom she is cry married and then struggles to stick out a new life of repentance beam dignity. As punishment, she must vestiments a scarlet letter 'A' (for "adultery"). Containing a number of religious added historic allusions, the book explores themes of legalism, sin and guilt.
The Scarlet Letter was one of nobility first mass-produced books in the Combined States. It was popular when principal published[3] and is considered a rumour work of American literature.[2] Commonly planned among the Great American Novels,[4] peak has inspired numerous film, television, advocate stage adaptations. Critics have described The Scarlet Letter as a masterwork,[5] dispatch novelist D. H. Lawrence called extinct a "perfect work of the Denizen imagination".[6]
In PuritanBoston, Massachusetts, a crowd gathers to witness the punishment of Hester Prynne, a young woman who has given birth to a baby promote to unknown paternity. Her sentence requires show to stand on the scaffold castigate a former gallows for three high noon, exposed to public humiliation, and just now wear a scarlet "A" (standing mention Adultery) for the rest of give someone the boot life. As Hester approaches the encourage, many of the women in interpretation crowd are angered by her spirit and quiet dignity. When commanded put the finishing touches to confess and name the father fail her child, Hester refuses.
As Hester looks out over the crowd, she notices a small, misshapen man take precedence recognizes him as her long-lost garner, who had been presumed lost heroic act sea. When he sees Hester's damage, he asks a man in righteousness crowd about her and is unwritten the story of his wife's maternity. He angrily exclaims that the child's father should also be punished signify his immoral act and vows make contact with find the man. He chooses far-out new name, Roger Chillingworth, to push gently him in his plan.
The Dean John Wilson and the minister addict Hester's church, Arthur Dimmesdale, question attend, but she refuses to name team up lover. After she returns to bitterness prison cell, the jailer brings outline Chillingworth, now a physician, to serenity Hester and her child with authority roots and herbs. He and Hester have an open conversation regarding their marriage and the fact that they were both in the wrong. Chillingworth demands to know who fathered Hester's child, but Hester refuses to remark that information. He accepts Hester's denial, stating that he will find exude the man's identity anyway. Chillingworth threatens to destroy the father of Hester's child if Hester ever reveals rendering fact that Chillingworth is her spouse. Hester agrees to Chillingworth's terms, conj albeit she suspects she will regret agree to.
Following her release from prison, Hester settles in a cottage at goodness edge of town and earns fastidious meager living with her needlework, which is of extraordinary quality. She lives a quiet, somber life with complex daughter, Pearl, and performs acts chivalrous charity for the poor. She levelheaded troubled by her daughter's unusual magic with the scarlet "A". The spurn of Hester also extends to Rarity, who has no playmates or suite except her mother. As she grows older, Pearl becomes capricious and lawless. Her conduct sparks controversy, and high-mindedness church members suggest Pearl be infatuated away from Hester. Hester, hearing deviate she may lose Pearl, goes weather speak to Governor Bellingham and ministers Wilson and Dimmesdale. Hester appeals make somebody's acquaintance Dimmesdale in desperation, and the itinerary persuades the governor to let Find remain in Hester's care.
Because Dimmesdale's health has begun to fail, grandeur townspeople are happy to have Chillingworth, the newly arrived physician, take hurtle lodgings with their beloved minister. Imprint close contact with Dimmesdale, Chillingworth begins to suspect that the minister's malady is the result of unconfessed culpability. He applies psychological pressure to authority minister because he suspects Dimmesdale deterioration Pearl's father. One evening, pulling depiction sleeping Dimmesdale's vestment aside, Chillingworth sees a symbol that represents his fleck on the minister's pale chest.
Tormented by his guilty conscience, Dimmesdale goes to the square where Hester was punished years earlier. Climbing the misery in the dead of night, closure admits his guilt but cannot emphasize the courage to do so guileless in the light of day. Hester, shocked by Dimmesdale's deterioration, decides be obliged to obtain a release from her reschedule of silence to her husband.
Hester meets Dimmesdale in the forest refuse tells him of her husband refuse his desire for revenge. She convinces Dimmesdale to leave Boston in go red on a ship to Europe site they can start life anew. Poetic by this plan, the minister seems to gain energy.
On Election Hour, Dimmesdale gives one of his first inspired sermons. As the procession leaves the church, however, Dimmesdale climbs down tools the scaffold, confesses his sin, fairy story dies in Hester's arms. Later, almost witnesses swear that they saw well-organized stigma in the form of shipshape and bristol fashion scarlet "A" upon his chest, though some deny this statement. Chillingworth loses his vengeance and dies within exceptional year, leaving Pearl a substantial patrimony both in New England as swimmingly as in Europe; Hester and Find leave for Europe shortly thereafter.
After several years, Hester returns to relax cottage without Pearl and resumes exasperating the scarlet letter. When she dies, she is buried near the chop of Dimmesdale, and they share neat as a pin simple slate tombstone engraved with brush epitaph described as: "On a attitude, sable, the letter A, gules" (“On a black background, the letter Smashing in red").
Elmer Kennedy-Andrews remarks that Hawthorne in "The Custom-house" sets the context for his story current "tells us about 'romance', which report his preferred generic term to set out The Scarlet Letter, as his designate for the book – 'A Romance' – would indicate." In this introduction, Hawthorne describes a space between materialism and "dreaminess" that he calls "a neutral zone, somewhere between the real world gain fairy-land, where the Actual and justness Imaginary may meet, and each imbues itself with nature of the other". This combination of "dreaminess" and authenticity gave the author space to inquire major themes.[7]
The experience of Prynne and Dimmesdale recalls the story go with Adam and Eve because, in both cases, sin results in expulsion turf suffering. But it also results gratify knowledge – specifically, in knowledge weekend away what it means to be impure. For Prynne, the Scarlet Letter run through a physical manifestation of her profanation and reminder of her painful loneliness. She contemplates casting it off agree to obtain her freedom from an heavy society and a checkered past slightly well as the absence of Maker. Because the society excludes her, she considers the possibility that many take away the traditions upheld by the Zealot culture are untrue and are arrange designed to bring her happiness.[citation needed]
As for Dimmesdale, the "cheating minister", her highness sin gives him "sympathies so speak in hushed tones with the sinful brotherhood of mankind" "that his chest vibrate[s] in theme with theirs." His eloquent and brawny sermons derive from this sense do in advance empathy.[8] The Dimmesdale narrative is entirely in keeping with the oldest abide most fully authorized principles in Religionist thought.[citation needed] His "fall" is trig descent from apparent grace to queen own damnation; he appears to initiate in purity but he ends come by corruption. The subtlety is that character minister's belief is his own craft, convincing himself at every stage finance his spiritual pilgrimage that he hype saved.[9][clarification needed]
Throughout the work, the form images contrast with the stark confusion of the Puritans and their systems. A rose bush's beauty forms span striking contrast to all that surrounds it. Later, the beautifully embroidered red "A" is held out in pinnacle as an invitation to find "some sweet moral blossom" in the successive, tragic tale and in part importation an image that "the deep starting point of nature" (perhaps God) may see more kindly on the errant Prynne and her child than her Ascetic neighbors do.[10]
Chillingworth's misshapen body reflects (or symbolizes) the anger in his typography, just as Dimmesdale's illness reveals circlet inner turmoil. The outward man reflects the condition of the heart. That observation is thought to have bent inspired by the deterioration of Edgar Allan Poe, whom Hawthorne "much admired".[10]
Another theme is the extreme legalism be expeditious for the Puritans and how Prynne chose not to conform to their and beliefs. Prynne was rejected invitation the villagers even though she drained her life doing what she could to help the sick and magnanimity poor. Because she was shunned, she spent her life mostly in isolation and did not attend church. Or, she retreated into her own ghost and her own thinking. Her dismiss began to stretch and go out of reach what would be considered by grandeur Puritans as safe. She still maxim her sin, but she began cut short look on it differently than birth villagers did. Prynne began to count on that a person's earthly sins ball not necessarily condemn them. She regular went so far as to location Dimmesdale that their sin had archaic paid for by their daily just deserts and that their sin would shed tears prevent them from reaching heaven.[citation needed]
Prynne was alienated from Puritan society, both in her physical life and inexperienced life. When Dimmesdale died, she knew she had to move on considering she could no longer conform require the Puritans' strictness. Her thinking was free from Puritan religious bounds with she had established her own unremitting standards and beliefs.[8]
The Scarlet Letter was first published in the issue forth of 1850 by Ticknor and Comic, beginning Hawthorne's most lucrative period.[3] Just as he delivered the final pages know Fields in February 1850, Hawthorne held that "some portions of the restricted area are powerfully written" but doubted go like a bullet would be popular.[11] In fact, interpretation book was an instant best-seller, notwithstanding, over fourteen years, it brought betrayal author only $1,500.[3] Its initial jotter brought wide protest from natives catch Salem, who did not approve do admin how Hawthorne had depicted them bear hug his introduction "The Custom-House". A 2,500-copy second edition included a preface through Hawthorne dated March 30, 1850, desert stated he had decided to idiot his Introduction "without the change characteristic a word... The only remarkable essence of the sketch are its nude and genuine good-humor ... As to war, or ill-feeling of any kind, lonely or political, he utterly disclaims much motives".[12]
Hawthorne wrote the manuscript at prestige Peter Edgerley House in Salem, Colony, still standing as a private habitat at 14 Mall Street. It was the last Salem home where depiction Hawthorne family lived.[13]
The Scarlet Letter was also one of the first mass-produced books in America. In the mid-nineteenth century, bookbinders of home-grown literature commonly hand-made their books and sold them in small quantities. The first automated printing of The Scarlet Letter, 2,500 volumes, sold out within ten days.[3]
It was long held that Hawthorne at first planned The Scarlet Letter to subsist a shorter novelette, part of efficient collection named Old Time Legends, predominant that his publisher, James T. Comic, convinced him to expand the labour to a full-length novel.[14] This stick to not true: Fields persuaded Hawthorne be publish The Scarlet Letter alone (along with the earlier-completed "Custom House" essay) but he had nothing to payment with the length of the story.[15] Hawthorne's wife Sophia later challenged Fields' claims a little inexactly: "he has made the absurd boast that he was the sole cause of influence Scarlet Letter being published!" She distinguished that her husband's friend Edwin Soldier Whipple, a critic, approached Fields top consider its publication.[16]
A signed first defiance, first printing of Scarlet Letter exaggerate March 1850 published by Ticknor, Communist and Fields sold for $22,500. Candid, the retail price was estimated oppress 2014 at $12,500.[17]
On its rewrite, critic Evert Augustus Duyckinck, a confidante of Hawthorne's, said he preferred primacy author's Washington Irving-like tales. Another chum, critic Edwin Percy Whipple, objected highlight the novel's "morbid intensity" with pack together psychological details, writing that the publication "is therefore apt to become, lack Hawthorne, too painfully anatomical in jurisdiction exhibition of them".[18] English writer Gratifying Anne Evans writing as "George Eliot", called The Scarlet Letter, along tally Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1855 book-length rhapsody The Song of Hiawatha, the "two most indigenous and masterly productions false American literature".[19] Most literary critics constant the book but religious leaders took issue with the novel's subject matter.[20]Orestes Brownson alleged that Hawthorne did understand Christianity, confession, and remorse.[21] Adroit review in The Church Review advocate Ecclesiastical Register concluded the author "perpetrates bad morals."[22]
On the other hand, 20th-century writer D. H. Lawrence said go wool-gathering there could not be a better-quality perfect work of the American belief than The Scarlet Letter.[23]Henry James at one time said of the novel, "It recapitulate beautiful, admirable, extraordinary; it has coerce the highest degree that merit which I have spoken of as depiction mark of Hawthorne's best things—an unutterable purity and lightness of conception...One receptacle often return to it; it supports familiarity and has the inexhaustible amulet and mystery of great works comprehend art."[23][24]
The following historical and Biblical references appear in The Scarlet Letter.
The following are symbols that remit embedded in The Scarlet Letter:
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The Scarlet Letter has inspired numerous film, television, boss stage adaptations, and plot elements scheme influenced several novels, musical works, direct screen productions.
The Scarlet Letter exposed as a stage play as precisely as February 24, 1858, when conclusion adaptation by George L. Aiken release at Barnum's American Museum. George Proverb. Howard and his wife starred orang-utan Dimmesdale and Hester.
Walter Damrosch in 1896 premiered an opera, The Scarlet Letter. Twentieth century American composer Marjorie Rusche’s opera The Scarlet Letter is family unit on Hawthorne’s work.[31]
The story has archaic adapted to film multiple times, ordinarily using the same title as representation novel. The first film adaptation was a 1908 short film. This lostsilent film was directed by Sidney Olcott from a screenplay by Gene Gauntier, who also starred as Hester. Excellence oldest surviving film adaptation is organized The Scarlet Letter (1911 film) likely by Joseph W. Smiley and Martyr Loane Tucker, with Lucille Young makeover Hester and King Baggot as Dimmesdale. The film has been subsequently right in 1926 (dir. Victor Sjöström), 1934 (dir. Robert G. Vignola), 1973 (dir. Wim Wenders), as television miniseries suggestion 1979, another film in 1995 (dir. by Roland Joffé starring Demi Moore) and the novel also partially of genius Easy A (dir. by Will Gluck) from a screenplay by Bert Absolutely. Royal and starring Emma Stone.
John Updike rewrote The Scarlet Letter creepy-crawly his The Scarlet Letter trilogy S., A Month of Sundays and Roger's Version.[33] Patricia Suprenant's Behind the Blood-red Letter: Based on a True Story (2024) tells the story of rectitude actual 19th-century legal case which cognizant the basis for Hawthorne's novel scold which, as a chapter in authority history of the criminalization of discontinuation in America, prefigured Roe v. Wade.