Hester

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 The Scarlet Letter: A Romance is commonly considered one of the classics of American literature. Published during the period that scholar F.O. Matheissen described as the American Renaissance—which gave way to authors like Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman—The Scarlet Letter tells the story of Hester Prynne and her daughter Pearl, who is conceived out of wedlock in Puritanical colonial Massachusetts. The novel addresses questions of sin, guilt, and legality. Hester is jailed for her adultery and sentenced to wear a scarlet letter “A,” for adultery, on her clothes for the rest of her life. One of her detractors is Arthur Dimmesdale, a local reverend who is revealed to be Pearl’s father, calling into question the hypocrisy of church members. Despite Dimmesdale’s sin being private, he internalizes it more than Hester, whose sin is public, which invokes themes of repentance and secrets.

The Scarlet Letter was one of the first mass-produced novels in America: It sold out its first 2,500-copy printing within the first month of its publication, with a second printing selling out soon after. The novel is one of the most popular texts in American literary canon. In the century and a half since its publication, The Scarlet Letter has never gone out of print and is frequently considered a staple of literature in American high schools. Its preface, “The Customs-house,” develops Hawthorne’s understanding of what constitutes “a romance,” which continues in his preface to the 1851 The House of the Seven Gables. He is credited with refining 19th-century romance and supports the notion that novels should represent truth by allowing the mysteriousness of literature to emerge. The Scarlet Letter thus emerges not only as a novel, but a critical text that defines its literary period.