The Scarlet Letterby Nathaniel Hawthorne | |
| List(s): | "Racine Library List" "Carp 500" |
|---|---|
| Category: |
"Fiction - Romance" |
| Pages: | 254 |
| Year of Publication: | 1850 |
| Date Read: | 05/10/1989 |
| Notes: | An ardent young woman, her cowardly lover and her aging, vengeful husband — these are the central characters in this stark drama of the conflict between passion and convention in the harsh, Puritan world of 17th-century Boston. COMMENTS — Hawthorne didn’t invent the story of a woman marked with the emblem of her sin — he drew it out of his own family’s history. In the 17th century, three of his ancestors — a brother and two sisters — committed incest. The brother escaped into the forest, but his sisters were condemned to wear a badge that identified their sin. (Good thing we don’t have to do this today. Imagine having to walk around with a badge reading, “Coasts through Stop Signs.”) |
| My Rating: | 8 |