The Scarlet Letter
by
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Author
Nathaniel Hawthorne

American novelist and short
story writer, most famous for
his novel The Scarlet Letter

Born Salem, Mass. on July 4th,
1804, son of a sea captain.

He spent a solitary, bookish
childhood with his widowed and
reclusive mother.

After graduating from Bowdoin
College, he returned to Salem and
prepared for a writing career with
12 years of solitary study and
writing interrupted by summer
tours through the Northeast.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Background
 After privately publishing a novel, in
1828, he began publishing stories in the
Token and New England Magazine.
 A brief period of paid employment,
including the compilation of popular
children's works and a stint at the
Salem Custom House(1839-41)thanks to his friend, Senator Franklin
Pierce.
 In 1842 he married Sophia Amelia
Peabody, a transcendentalist, and they
moved to the transcendentalist
community, Brook Farm, the center of
the Transcendental movement, where
he began a friendship with Henry
David Thoreau.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Background

Financial pressures forced his return to Salem
(1845-49) where he secured another political
appointment, this time as surveyor of the port of
Salem (1845-49).

His dismissal from the surveyorship initiated the
brief period of his greatest novels: The Scarlet
Letter (1850), The House of the Seven Gables
(1851), and The Blithdale Romance (1852).
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Background
 Upon finishing The Scarlet Letter in
1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne read the
manuscript to his wife, Sophia.

“It broke her heart,” Hawthorne
wrote, “and “sent her to bed with a
grievous headache, which I look
upon as a triumphant success.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne, Background
 His campaign biography of Franklin Pierce (1852) was
rewarded with the U.S. consulship at Liverpool (1853--58).
 He then went to live in Italy (1858--59) and returned to the
U.S.A. in 1860.
 Back in Concord, he published his last major work, but by then
he was becoming ill and disillusioned.
 Nathaniel Hawthorne died at Plymouth, New Hampshire, on
May 18th, 1864.
On a side note …

He discovered that he had Puritan ancestors.

One relative had served as a judge in the Salem
witch trials of 1692

Hawthorne added the “w” to his name to
distinguish himself from his ancestors.
Characters
The Scarlet Letter is
peopled with
characters who are
meant to be the
embodiments of
moral traits, rather
than realistic, living
figures. This makes
the novel an _______.
allegory
Characters
• Hester Prynne- wearer of the scarlet letter
• Pearl- child of Hester; living symbol of
Hester’s sin
• Rev. John Wilson- senior minister of colony
• Roger Chillingworth- learned scholar;
doctor
• Governor Bellingham- governor and
magistrate of Massachusetts Bay Colony
• Arthur Dimmesdale- admired young
minister
• Mistress Hibbins- Gov. Bellingham’s sister
Main Themes and Conflicts
• The consequences of sin
• Individual identity versus
society’s perspective
• Relationship between strength
of character and morality
• It is about punishment, but not
about crime.
The Custom House
• “The Custom House” is a long preamble about how the book came to
be written. (Inserted at the request of the publisher who felt the book
was entirely too somber.)
• Autobiographical of Hawthorne
– The nameless narrator (based on Hawthorne) was the surveyor of the
Custom House in Salem, Massachusetts.
– The narrator is bored at his job which leads him to search through old
boxes In the Custom House's attic, he discovered a number of documents,
among them a manuscript that was bundled with a scarlet, goldembroidered patch of cloth in the shape of an "A."
– The manuscript, the work of a past surveyor, Jonathan Pue detailed
events that occurred some two hundred years before the narrator's time.
When the narrator lost his customs post, he decided to write a fictional
account of the events recorded in the manuscript.
• The Scarlet Letter is the final product.
The Custom House