The Scarlet Letter (Signet Classics)

by Nathaniel Hawthorne (Author)

• New

  Paperback
  2009

  $9.17

  A passionate young woman, her cowardly lover, and her aging, vengeful husband are the central characters in this stark drama of the conflict between passion and convention in the harsh world of seventeenth-century Boston. Tremendously moving and rich in psychological insight, this tragic novel of sin and redemption addresses our Puritan past. Depicting the struggle between mind and heart, Hawthorne fashioned a masterpiece of American fiction.

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $3.25

  Set in the harsh Puritan community of seventeenth-century Boston, this tale of an adulterous entanglement that results in an illegitimate birth reveals Nathaniel Hawthorne's concerns with the tension between the public and the private selves. Publicly disgraced and ostracized, Hester Prynne draws on her inner strength and certainty of spirit to emerge as the first true heroine of American fiction. Arthur Dimmesdale stands as a classic study of a seld divided; trapped by the rules of society, he suppresses his passion and disavows his lover, Hester, and their daughter, Pearl. As Nina Baym writes in her Introduction, The Scarlet Letter was not written as realistic, historical fiction, but as a romance , a creation of the imagination that discloses the truth of the human heart.

• New

  Paperback
  

  $30.49

  Nathaniel Hawthorne's greatest romance, The Scarlet Letter , is often simplistically seen as a timeless tale of desire, sin, and redemption. This work argues that The Scarlet Letter is a serious historical novel.

• New

  Hardcover
  1992

  $22.91