Nathaniel
Hawthorne was born on July 4 of 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts. He lived with his
mother and two young sisters in a house filled with a lot of Puritan ideas. Around
1825 he graduated from Bowdoin College and returned to Salem to become a writer
of short stories. He spent twelve years trying to perfect his craft Twice-Told Tales that was published on
1837. He married a woman named Sophia Peabody in 1842. He wrote The Scarlet Letter and it was published
in 1850 which brought him recognition.
He served four years as the American Consul in England and then traveled
to Italy. Then he returned to his home in Massachusetts in 1860. He was
depressed and died on May 19 of 1864 in Plymouth, New Hampshire.
The Scarlet Letter takes place in the 17-th century in Boston,
Massachusetts where a young woman named Hester Prynne is led from the town
prison for committing adultery. In these times, the people that committed this
sin had to wear a scarlet “A” on a part of their clothes. It was a way of
humiliating them. Hester’s husband sent her to America, so he could deal with some affairs in Europe, but he
did not came back to Boston. There were rumors that he got “lost in the sea”.
While
Hester waited for her husband, she had an affair and had a baby girl that she
named Pearl. She refused to identify her lover’s name or anything that had to
do with him except the baby, of course. The day when Hester was sent to the
town, there was this disguised man. It was Hester’s husband that was calling
himself Roger Chillingworth. He settled in Boston and was now a medicine man.
The only one who knew who he truly was, was Hester because he reveals it too
her.
Years
later, Hester works as a seamstress and Pearl is grown up. Some officials had
tried to take Pearl away from Hester but couldn’t succeed thanks to Arthur.
Arthur is a minister that suffers heart problems. Roger becomes attached to
Arthur and decides to help him by giving him hospitability and also because he
studied medicine. Arthur was his patient, but Roger had his doubts. He thinks
that Arthur and Hester are related somehow and his suspicion turns correct when
he sees the letter “A” buried in Arthur’s chest. He decides to torture him.
Hester notices Arthur’s health getting worse, so she asks Roger to stop, but he
refuses and Hester suggests revealing his identity to Arthur. When she does,
they (Arthur and Hester) decide to go to Europe so they can live as a family.
Meanwhile,
Pearl thought that the letter “A” on her mom’s chest meant the word Angel when it actually meant Adultery. In the forest, where she was
revealing the identity to Arthur, she decides to take her “A” off and let down
her hair, but Pearl doesn’t recognize her without the letter. Pearl didn’t want
to go with her until she put her letter back on.
The
day they were going to leave, Arthur reveals his identity to the whole town and
days later dies. A year later, Roger dies frustrated and Hester and her
daughter leave Boston, but no one ever knew what happened to them.
Pearl
gets married with a European and Hester decides to return home. Several years
later, she dies, but the townspeople learned to forgive her. On her tombstone
was her name and next to it, laid the scarlet letter of her biggest sin.
At
first this book was kind of hard to understand it, because it’s written in the
1800’s. It is written way differently from the books that are written now. It's
totally interesting and it’s a whole crazy adventure in Hester’s life. I
understand now why she had an affair. If her husband hadn’t cheated on her
several times, she wouldn’t have either.
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