{"product_id":"the-scarlet-letter-isbn-9780679417316","title":"The Scarlet Letter","description":"\u003cp\u003eHester Prynne is a beautiful young woman. She is also an outcast. In the eyes of her neighbours she has committed an unforgivable sin. Everyone knows that her little daughter Pearl is the product of an illicit affair but no one knows the identity of Pearl’s father. Hester’s refusal to name him brings more condemnation upon her. But she stands strong in the face of public scorn, even when she is forced to wear the sign of her shame sewn onto her clothes: the scarlet letter “A” for “Adulteress.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe story of Hester Prynne–found out in adultery, pilloried by her Puritan community, and abandoned, in different ways, by both her partner in sin and her vengeance-seeking husband–possesses a reality heightened by Hawthorne’s pure human sympathy and his unmixed devotion to his supposedly fallen but fundamentally innocent heroine. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn its moral force and the beauty of its conciliations, \u003ci\u003eThe Scarlet Letter\u003c\/i\u003e rightly deserves its stature as the first great novel written by an American, the novel that announced an American literature equal to any in the world.\u003c\/p\u003e“[\u003ci\u003eThe Scarlet Letter’\u003c\/i\u003es] Hester was the creation of someone who loved Woman, saw her, as Verdi did, as necessarily tragic and alone, but emotionally sacred in a diminished world . . . Hester is the only character in the book big enough to sustain a conflict–with the harsh Puritan world–equal to Hawthorne’s own. In a book without heroes, Hester is a unique literary heroine.” –from the Introduction by Alfred KazinNathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and made his ambition to be a writer while still a teenager. He graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine, where the poet Longfellow was also a student, and spent several years travelling in New England and writing short stories before his best-known novel \u003cb\u003eThe Scarlet Letter\u003c\/b\u003e was published in 1850. His writing was not at first financially rewarding and he worked as measurer and surveyor in the Boston and Salem Custom Houses. In 1853 he was sent to Liverpool as American consul and then lived in Italy before returning to the US in 1860, where he died in his sleep four years later.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHis interest in Greek mythology led him to suggest to Longfellow in 1838 that they collaborate on a story for children based on the legend of Pandora's Box, but this never materialized. He wrote \u003cb\u003eA Wonder-Book\u003c\/b\u003e between April and July 1851, adapting six legends most freely from Charles Anton's A Classical Dictionary\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e(1842).\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eHe set out deliberately to 'modernize' the stories, freeing them from what he called 'cold moonshine' and using a romantic, readable style that was criticized by adults but proved universally popular with children.\u003cb\u003eChapter 1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Prison-Door\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eA throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments, and  gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods and others  bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily  timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The founders of a new colony, whatever  Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably  recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the  virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison. In accordance  with this rule, it may safely be assumed that the forefathers of Boston had built  the first prison-house somewhere in the vicinity of Cornhill, almost as seasonably  as they marked out the first burial-ground, on Isaac Johnson's lot, and round about  his grave, which subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres  in the old churchyard of King's Chapel. Certain it is, that, some fifteen or twenty  years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains  and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed  and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more  antique than anything else in the New World. Like all that pertains to crime, it  seemed never to have known a youthful era. Before this ugly edifice, and between  it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock,  pigweed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something  congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society,  a prison. But, on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was  a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might  be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went  in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the  deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This rose-bush, by a strange  chance, has been kept alive in history; but whether it had merely survived out of  the stern old wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks that  originally over-shadowed it,-or whether, as there is fair authority for believing,  it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Anne Hutchinson, as she entered  the prison-door,-we shall not take upon us to determine. Finding it so directly on  the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from that inauspicious  portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers, and present it  to the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom,  that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human  frailty and sorrow.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eChapter 2\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Market-Place\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The grass-plot before the jail,  in Prison Lane, on a certain summer morning, not less than two centuries ago, was  occupied by a pretty large number of the inhabitants of Boston, all with their eyes  intently fastened on the iron-clamped oaken door. Amongst any other population, or  at a later period in the history of New England, the grim rigidity that petrified  the bearded physiognomies of these good people would have augured some awful business  in hand. It could have betokened nothing short of the anticipated execution of some  noted culprit, on whom the sentence of a legal tribunal had but confirmed the verdict  of public sentiment. But, in that early severity of the Puritan character, an inference  of this kind could not so indubitably be drawn. It might be that a sluggish bond-servant,  or an undutiful child, whom his parents had given over to the civil authority, was  to be corrected at the whipping-post. It might be, that an Antinomian, a Quaker,  or other heterodox religionist was to be scourged out of the town, or an idle and  vagrant Indian, whom the white man's fire-water had made riotous about the streets,  was to be driven with stripes into the shadow of the forest. It might be, too, that  a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the bitter-tempered widow of the magistrate,  was to die upon the gallows. In either case, there was very much the same solemnity  of demeanor on the part of the spectators; as befitted a people amongst whom religion  and law were almost identical, and in whose character both were so thoroughly interfused,  that the mildest and the severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerable  and awful. Meagre, indeed, and cold was the sympathy that a transgressor might look  for from such by-standers, at the scaffold. On the other hand, a penalty, which,  in our days, would infer a degree of mocking infamy and ridicule, might then be invested  with almost as stern a dignity as the punishment of death itself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It was a circumstance  to be noted, on the summer morning when our story begins its course, that the women,  of whom there were several in the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in  whatever penal infliction might be expected to ensue. The age had not so much refinement,  that any sense of impropriety restrained the wearers of petticoat and farthingale  from stepping forth into the public ways, and wedging their not unsubstantial persons,  if occasion were, into the throng nearest to the scaffold at an execution. Morally,  as well as materially, there was a coarser fibre in those wives and maidens of old  English birth and breeding, than in their fair descendants, separated from them by  a series of six or seven generations; for, throughout that chain of ancestry, every  successive mother has transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate and  briefer beauty, and a slighter physical frame, if not a character of less force and  solidity, than her own. The women who were now standing about the prison-door stood  within less than half a century of the period when the man-like Elizabeth1 had been  the not altogether unsuitable representative of the sex. They were her countrywomen;  and the beef and ale of their native land, with a moral diet not a whit more refined,  entered largely into their composition. The bright morning sun, therefore, shone  on broad shoulders and well-developed busts, and on round and ruddy cheeks, that  had ripened in the far-off island, and had hardly yet grown paler or thinner in the  atmosphere of New England. There was, moreover, a boldness and rotundity of speech  among these matrons, as most of them seemed to be, that would startle us at the present  day, whether in respect to its purport or its volume of tone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Goodwives,\" said  a hard-featured dame of fifty, \"I'll tell ye a \u003cbr\u003e piece of my mind. It would be greatly  for the public behoof, if we women, being of mature age and church-members in good  repute, should have the handling of such malefactresses as this Hester Prynne. What  think ye, gossips? If the hussy stood up for judgment before us five, that are now  here in a knot together, would she come off with such a sentence as the worshipful  magistrates have awarded? Marry, I trow not!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"People say,\" said another, \"that  the Reverend Master Dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart  that such a scandal should have come upon his congregation.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"The magistrates are  God-fearing gentlemen, but merciful overmuch,--that is a truth,\" added a third autumnal  matron. \"At the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester  Prynne's forehead. Madam Hester would have winced at that, I warrant me. But she,-the  naughty baggage,-little will she care what they put upon the bodice of her gown!  Why, look you, she may cover it with a brooch, or such like heathenish adornment,  and so walk the streets as brave as ever!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Ah, but,\" interposed, more softly, a  young wife, holding a child by the hand, \"let her cover the mark as she will, the  pang of it will be always in her heart.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"What do we talk of marks and brands, whether  on the bodice of her gown, or the flesh of her forehead?\" cried another female, the  ugliest as well as the most pitiless of these self-constituted judges. \"This woman  has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die. Is there not law for it? Truly,  there is, both in the Scripture and the statute-book. Then let the magistrates, who  have made it of no effect, thank themselves if their own wives and daughters go astray!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Mercy on us, goodwife,\" exclaimed a man in the crowd, \"is there no virtue in woman,  save what springs from a wholesome fear of the gallows? That is the hardest word  yet! Hush, now, gossips! for the lock is turning in the prison-door, and here comes  Mistress Prynne herself.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The door of the jail being flung open from within, there  appeared, in the first place, like a black shadow emerging into sunshine, the grim  and grisly presence of the town-beadle, with a sword by his side, and his staff of  office in his hand. This personage prefigured and represented in his aspect the whole  dismal severity of the Puritanic code of law, which it was his business to administer  in its final and closest application to the offender. Stretching forth the official  staff in his left hand, he laid his right upon the shoulder of a young woman, whom  he thus drew forward; until, on the threshold of the prison-door, she repelled him,  by an action marked with natural dignity and force of character, and stepped into  the open air, as if by her own free will. She bore in her arms a child, a baby of  some three months old, who winked and turned aside its little face from the too vivid  light of day; because its existence, heretofore, had brought it acquainted only with  the gray twilight of a dungeon, or other darksome apartment of the prison.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When  the young woman-the mother of this child-stood fully revealed before the crowd, it  seemed to be her first impulse to clasp the infant closely to her bosom; not so much  by an impulse of motherly affection, as that she might thereby conceal a certain  token, which was wrought or fastened into her dress. In a moment, however, wisely  judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another, she took  the baby on her arm, and, with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance  that would not be abashed, looked around at her townspeople and neighbors. On the  breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and  fantastic flourishes of gold-thread, appeared the letter A. It was so artistically  done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all  the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore; and which  was of a splendor in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what  was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The young woman was tall,  with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair,  so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam, and a face which, besides  being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had the impressiveness  belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes. She was lady-like, too, after the  manner of the feminine gentility of those days; characterized by a certain state  and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace, which  is now recognized as its indication. And never had Hester Prynne appeared more lady-like,  in the antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the prison. Those  who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a  disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty  shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped.  It may be true, that, to a sensitive observer, there was something exquisitely painful  in it. Her attire, which, indeed, she had wrought for the occasion, in prison, and  had modelled much after her own fancy, seemed to express the attitude of her spirit,  the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild and picturesque peculiarity.  But the point which drew all eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearer,-so that  both men and women, who had been familiarly acquainted with Hester Prynne, were now  impressed as if they beheld her for the first time,-was that Scarlet Letter, so fantastically  embroidered and illuminated5 upon her bosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking  her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by  herself.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"She hath good skill at her needle, that's certain,\" remarked one of her  female spectators; \"but did ever a woman, before this brazen hussy, contrive such  a way of showing it! Why, gossips, what is it but to laugh in the faces of our godly  magistrates, and make a pride out of what they, worthy gentlemen, meant for a punishment?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"It were well,\" muttered the most iron-visaged of the old dames, \"if we stripped  Madam Hester's rich gown off her dainty shoulders; and as for the red letter, which  she hath stitched so curiously, I'll bestow a rag of mine own rheumatic flannel,  to make a fitter one!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Oh, peace, neighbors, peace!\" whispered their youngest companion;  \"do not let her hear you! Not a stitch in that embroidered letter, but she has felt  it in her heart.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The grim beadle now made a gesture with his staff.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Make way,  good people, make way, in the King's name!\" cried he. \"Open a passage; and, I promise  ye, Mistress Prynne shall be set where man, woman, and child may have a fair sight  of her brave apparel, from this time till an hour past meridian. A blessing on the  righteous Colony of the Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine!  Come along, Madam Hester, and show your scarlet letter in the market-place!\"","brand":"Everyman's Library","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302260986085,"sku":"NP9780679417316","price":26.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780679417316.jpg?v=1767741344","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-scarlet-letter-isbn-9780679417316","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}