The Scarlet Letter (Oneworld Classics)

by NathanielHawthorne (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $3.49

  Having been found guilty of adultery, Hester Prynne is forced to wear an embroidered scarlet letter A as a punishment for her sin. While her vengeful husband embarks on a quest to discover the identity of her lover, she is left to face the consequences of her infidelity and find a place for herself and her illegitimate child in the hostile environment of seventeenth-century Puritan Boston. Nathaniel Hawthorne's tense narrative astonished readers with its unparalleled psychological depth when it first appeared, and the novel now stands as one of America's literary landmarks.

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $3.34

  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
  

  $31.28

  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

  $23.51