قصة الكتاب :
The Scarlet Letter is regarded as one of the top ranking works of 19th century American fiction. It was authored by Nathaniel Hawthorne and published in 1850. He insisted on calling it ‘a romance’ and not merely a novel, the distinction being important to him. In his eyes, ‘a romance’ expressed more than the ordinary course of events that marked human lives. It exposed the truth of the human heart. The story is set in the mid-1600s in Puritan Massachusetts and elaborates the life of Hester Prynne, a married woman with an absentee husband, who has a child out of wedlock and goes through the painful process of surviving the stigma and social ostracization that accompanies it. The book is rich in symbolism and revolves around the themes of legalism, sin and guilt. The book was one of the first mass-produced books in America and was popular once published, although it sold out limited copies during Hawthorne’s lifetime and provided him with little financial gain. As with all works of literary genius, the full weight of the ideas that the author explored and expressed through his characters were better appreciated and understood over the years.
\r\nIn the story, Hester Prynne is forced to wear a scarlet letter “A” embroidered on her bosom as a punishment for her adultery. Although never explicitly stated in the story “A” stands for adulteress, the weighty title that Hester has to wear alone the rest of her life. She gives birth to a girl named Pearl, who too must learn to live in a world where their lives have been marked with the stain of the scarlet “A”. The men whose decisions led to her condition do not get punished publicly. When coerced, both publicly and later by her own husband, Hester refuses to reveal the identity of the child’s father, who is the respectable pastor Arthur Dimmesdale. Hester maintains her dignity and slowly redeems herself in the eyes of the Puritan community that condemned her. Over the years, she gathers the strength to confront and challenge the two men in her life – her husband who married her and left her to her fate; and her lover whose secrecy and absence as she raised their child did nothing to help. Dimmesdale is tortured by his own conscience over his well-hidden sin and ultimately dies of shame. Hester emerges as a stronger woman after her period of rehabilitation. After her death, she is buried near Dimmesdale and her tomb is marked with the letter “A”.
\r\nThe use of the scarlet letter in Hawthorne’s story is powerful. Without having to describe what it implies, it describes the bearer’s torment-ridden existence and how it eventually makes her a better person, than the others around her, who are equally guilty of sins they have had the luxury of hiding. The book is described as an “extraordinary work of the imagination that burns from page to page” as it conveys its simple story with exemplary clarity of purpose.\r\n