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• The Scarlet Letter

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The Prison-Door

• Hawthorne opens The Scarlet Letter just
  outside the prison of what, in the early 1640s,
  was the village of Boston.

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The Prison-Door

• Ask yourself what you know about a novel that
  begins in a prison?

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The Prison-Door

• You probably suspect you are reading the story of
  a crime already committed, of characters whose
  lives are already darkened by guilt and
  disgrace.

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The Prison-Door

• And, in the case of The Scarlet Letter
• ... you are quite right.

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The Prison-Door

• Look carefully at the details of the opening
  scene The sad-colored garments of the
  spectators the prison-door itself, Heavily
  timbered with and studded with iron spikes.

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The Prison-Door

• These details create a somber mood they paint a
  cheerless picture. And they hint, as well, at a
  society that places punishment far above
  forgiveness on its scale of values.

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The Prison-Door

• One note of color relieves the gloom. A wild
  rose bush blossoms by the prison door.
• The rose bush suggests a world beyond the
  narrow confines of the puritan community.

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The Prison-Door

• A world where beauty and vibrant color flourish
  and crime finds tolerance and pity.

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The Scarlet Letter

• Upon finishing The Scarlet Letter in 1850,
  Nathaniel Hawthorne read the manuscript to his
  wife, Sophia.

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The Scarlet Letter

• It broke her heart, Hawthorne wrote, and
  sent her to bed with a grievous headache, which
  I look upon as a triumphant success.

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The Scarlet Letter

• Hawthorne originally intended The Scarlet
  Letter to be a short story but expanded it at the
  suggestion of his publisher.

Original Cover
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The Scarlet Letter

• The Scarlet Letter is peopled with characters
  who are meant to be the embodiments of moral
  traits, rather than realistic, living figures.

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The Scarlet Letter

• The Scarlet Letter displays Hawthornes
  lifelong preoccupation with the themes of secrecy
  and guilt, the conflict between intellectual and
  moral pride, and the lingering effects of
  Puritanism.

Original title page
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The Scarlet Letter

• The year is 1642.
• The place is Boston, a small Puritan
  settlement. Before the town jail, a group of
  somber people wait with stern expressions.

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The Plot

• They are expecting Hester Prynne, a woman
  convicted of adultery.

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The Scarlet Letter

• You will not know it yet. But even this
  early, Hawthorne has marked the thematic
  boundaries of his novel
• law and nature
• repression and freedom

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The Scarlet Letter

• The Market Place is some curtain-raiser. In
  one vivid image, you have the whole story. The
  lines of conflict are drawn, the issues defined,
  the characters placed in relation to one another.

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The Scarlet Letter

• The image Hawthorne gives us is that of a
  young woman taken in adultery, and standing on a
  scaffold in the midst of a hostile crowd.

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The Scarlet Letter

• This is Puritan Boston, where private
  wrongdoing
• is
• public knowledge.

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Credits

• Music from Does Anybody Hear Her by Casting
  Crowns
• Much of the text was taken from Barrons Notes
  on the Scarlet Letter.
• The graphics were scanned from an Illustrated
  Comic of the Scarlet Letter, screen shots from
  School Discovery.com, and the Hawthorne pages.
• http//www.monmouth.com/literature/scarletletter
  .ppt