Set in 17th-century Puritan Boston, Hester Prynne gives birth to an illegitimate child and is condemned to wear the scarlet letter ‘A’ as a sign of her adultery. Hester refuses to reveal the identity of her lover, and is forced to lead a life of humiliation. Meanwhile, Hester’s husband settles in Boston and after making her swear to keep his identity secret, tries to discover who Hester’s secret lover is.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts, to an established New England family.
His ancestors took part in the Salem witch trials and the Quaker persecution. William Hawthorne (Hawthorne added the “w”), who arrived in the New World in 1630, was the judge who sentenced a Quaker woman to be whipped through the streets of Boston. His son, also a judge, preside over the notorious Salem witch trials in 1692. A woman he condemned to death during the witch trials put a curse on the Hawthorne family. There is no evidence that the curse had any effect on his family. However, Nathaniel Hawthorne was aware of this curse, and it came up in his writing.
His ancestry explains, in part, his interest in the Puritans, and in the concepts of sin, punishment and evil.
Hawthorne decided to become a writer while at Bowdoin College in Maine. One of his classmates was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who later became a famous American poet.
For over a decade after graduation, he studied the Puritans and their history. In 1828, he published his first anonymous novel, Fanshawe, which was not a success. In later life, he never mentioned this work. In 1837, he published an excellent collection of short stories, Twice-Told Tales.
He married Sophia Peabody in 1842, and they had three children. In 1846, he published another successful collection of short stories, Mosses from an Old Manse.
After leaving his employment at the Salem Customhouse in 1849, he began writing The Scarlet Letter, his masterpiece, which was published in 1850.
After The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne published The House of the Seven Gables (1851) and The Blithedale Romance (1852). The House of the Seven Gables tells about a family that lives under a curse of a man condemned to death for witchcraft.
Following the election of Franklin Pierce as President of the United States in 1853, Hawthorne was appointed U.S. Consul in Liverpool and Manchester, England. After leaving this post, he traveled through Europe with his family, and lived in Italy for two years. There he wrote his last novel, The Marble Faun which was published in 1860 when he and his family retuned to the United States.
He died away from home, on May 19th, 1864, while on a brief vacation with his friend, Franklin Pierce. He left several unfinished works.
A Note on Nathaniel Hawthorne
Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter
Chapter One - The Prison Door
Chapter Two - The Market Place
Chapter Three - The Recognition
Chapter Four - The Encounter
Chapter Five - Hester and Pearl
Chapter Six - The Governor’s Hall
Chapter Seven - The Leech and his Patient
Chapter Eight - The Interior of a Heart
Chapter Nine - Hester and the Physician
Chapter Ten - The Pastor and his Parishioner
Chapter Eleven - A Flood of Sunshine
Chapter Twelve - The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter
