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Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne (Hawthorne, N.), Author
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1996-09-01
Features: The Scarlet Letter is set in New England under the Puritan colonial rule in 17th-century North America, drawing inspiration from a love tragedy that occurred in Boston between 1642 and 1649. The story begins with a scene at the entrance of the town prison, with the central figure being Hester Prynne, a young and beautiful woman. She is holding a three-month-old daughter—Pearl—in her arms, standing on the scaffold, waiting for the theocratic Calvinist (i.e., Puritan) regime to announce her sentence in public. So, who is the woman on trial? What crime has she committed? Before the story begins, Hester Prynne, from a declining noble family in England, married an elderly, deformed scholar. After the marriage, they decided to move to Boston, Massachusetts. En route to the Netherlands via Amsterdam, her husband was left behind for a matter, while she traveled alone to Boston and stayed there for nearly two years. During this time, her husband was missing. It was rumored that he was captured by Native Americans during his journey and was unaccounted for. In her solitary life, Hester Prynne fell in love with the local minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, and gave birth to the daughter. Clearly, she had committed the sin of adultery, one of the Ten Commandments in Christianity, which was unacceptable to Puritan doctrine.