Set in 17th-century Puritan New England, this 1850 American fiction classic follows Hester Prynne, who bears a child out of wedlock and must wear a scarlet "A" as punishment. Hawthorne explores themes of sin, guilt, and redemption through Hester's struggle against social condemnation and her search for personal dignity.
A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments, and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes. The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison. In accordance with this rule, it may safely be assumed that the forefathers of Boston had built the first prison-house somewhere in the vicinity of Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked out the first burial-ground, on Isaac Johnson’s lot, and round about his grave, which subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres in the…Continue reading →
An American author who lived from 1804 to 1864, this master of dark romanticism explored the psychological depths of Puritan New England through haunting tales of guilt, sin, and moral complexity. His masterpiece The Scarlet Letter and stories like "Young Goodman Brown" established him as a foundational voice in American literature. All works by Nathaniel Hawthorne →
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