Hester Prynne is a beautiful young woman. She is also an outcast. In the eyes of her neighbours she has committed an unforgivable sin. Everyone knows that her little daughter Pearl is the product of an illicit affair but no one knows the identity of Pearl?s father. Hester?s refusal to name him brings more condemnation upon her. But she stands strong in the face of public scorn, even when she is forced to wear the sign of her shame sewn onto her clothes: the scarlet letter ?A? for ?Adulteress.?

The story of Hester Prynne?found out in adultery, pilloried by her Puritan community, and abandoned, in different ways, by both her partner in sin and her vengeance-seeking husband?possesses a reality heightened by Hawthorne?s pure human sympathy and his unmixed devotion to his supposedly fallen but fundamentally innocent heroine.

In its moral force and the beauty of its conciliations, The Scarlet Letter rightly deserves its stature as the first great novel written by an American, the novel that announced an American literature equal to any in the world.

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

Media	Books Hardcover Book (Book with hard spine and cover)
Released	November 3, 1992
ISBN13	9780679417316
Publishers	Alfred A. Knopf
Pages	273
Dimensions	133 × 212 × 25 mm · 430 g
Language	English
Contributor	Alfred Kazin

Show all

More by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Others have also bought

More from this series

See all of Nathaniel Hawthorne ( e.g. Paperback Book , Hardcover Book , Book , CD and MP3-CD )