A CHAPTER-BY-CHAPTER READING GUIDE FOR THE SCARLET LETTER A 1636 Plymouth Colony law required anyone convicted of adultery to “wear two Capital letters viz AD cut out in cloth and sowed on theire uppermost Garments on their arme or backe; and if att any time they shallbee taken without the said letters whiles they are in the Govrment soewarn to bee forthwith taken and publickly […]

The scaffold played an important part in identifying the characters of the Scarlet Letter throughout the novel. At each scene, the reader comes to understand something of the main characters and glimpses how that sin represented by the scarlet “A” has affected them. Hester Prynne, clutching both the living and the imposed () of her sin to her breast, is seen atop the scaffold, sternly […]

It was once said that “the only living societies are those which are animated by inequality and injustice. ” A man named Paul Claudel wrote this in his work, Conversations dans le Loir-et-Cher, and he criticizes the ability to have a functional society. Societies are meant to organize the values of people into a system with uniform laws and expectations; however, societies can never fully […]

Mira Susa, Jennifer Welsh Mr. Jordan AP Language and Composition 19 November 2009 “Chapter 17” Chapter 17, “The Pastor and His Parishioner,” of The Scarlet Letter, starts off with Dimmesdale returning from his journey through the dark forest, upon which Hester waits faithfully for him out of the public eye, and more importantly, Chillingworth. The scene is gloomy; it is noon, however, the sun is […]

The Scarlet Letter Set in Boston, in the Puritan times of the 1940’s, the book, The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is about a young girl named Hester Prynne who commits adultery with the town’s minister, Arthur Dimmensdale. Hester is married to a man named Roger Chillingworth, a scholarly man, who sent her to Boston years earlier while he settled his affairs in Europe. Years […]

Various Hester Prynne Diary Entries June 14th, 1641 This morning I awake in the prison, waiting for guards to take me to the market place. Pearl and my fate will be decided very soon and I am shaking with anxiety. What will become of us? Will it be that the people see the need of the death punishment? Perhaps they will take dear Pearl away […]

Unfortunately sin can often lead to isolation. In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester Prynne, a beautiful young woman who is chastised for adultery, and Arthur Dimmesdale, Boston’s beloved minister who is the father of Hester’s baby, both begin doleful lives of isolation after Hester’s sin is revealed. After Hester is sent to Boston by her husband, who says he will shortly join her, […]