The Scarlet letter -

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Oxford world's classics

1962

264 páginas

8h 48m

ISBN-10: 0192833715

An elderly English scholar send his young wife, Hester Prynne, to set up their home in the Puritan Boston of the mid- seventeenth century. Arriving two years later, he discovers Hester in the pillory, cradling her illegitimate child in her arms. Refusing to name her lover, she is sentenced to wear a Scarlet A, signifying Adulteress, as a token of her sin. Desperate for revenge, her husband assumes a new name, and in the guise of a doctor begins a cruel and ultimately destructive search for the father of her child.

The Scarlet letter is a disturbing tale of conflict between a passionate woman and her stern Puritan judges. The laws of scripture and the statute-book are broken by someone who believes in the higher law of her own heart. To read the story is to become drawn into judging Hester: does Hawthorne himself reject or endorse her challenge to the system of moral authority?