Author Description

True Classic that Belongs on Every Bookshelf!! The Scarlet Letter A Romance is an 1850 work of fiction in a historical setting, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and is considered to be his best work.The story begins in seventeenth-century Salem, Massachusetts, then a Puritan settlement. A young woman, Hester Prynne, is led from the town prison with her infant daughter, Pearl, in her arms and the scarlet letter "A" on her breast. The scarlet letter "A" represents the act of adultery that she has committed; it is to be a symbol of her sin for all to see. She will not reveal her lover's identity, however, and the scarlet letter, along with her public shaming, is her punishment for her sin and her secrecy. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ "We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep." "In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it... She stood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt." "Some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survives, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or--and the outward semblance is the same--crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more." "No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true..." - Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter