9 h 33 minAudiobook17 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · 234 pagesHardcover · 6 × 9 in · 234 pagesAbout this book
What happens when a town makes one woman wear her shame while another person’s guilt stays hidden?
In Puritan Boston, Hester Prynne stands before a judging crowd with her baby, Pearl, and a scarlet A on her dress. Condemned for an affair, she refuses to name her child’s father. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter follows a woman who must raise her daughter alone while living under the eyes of a community that joins religious belief to harsh law.
Arthur Dimmesdale, Boston’s admired young minister, carries a guilt he cannot confess. Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s estranged husband, takes a new name and seeks revenge against the man who wronged him. Between public punishment and private torment, Hawthorne explores what secrets do to the mind and body—and asks whether those who condemn others can see their own cruelty.
What you’ll discover
- Courage under watchful eyes Follow Hester as she bears public scorn without surrendering her dignity or protecting herself through confession.
- A child like flame Meet Pearl, whose bright clothes and sharp questions make her both joy and burden to Hester.
- The weight of secrecy Watch public praise deepen Dimmesdale’s pain as his private conscience gives him no rest.
- Revenge behind a trusted face Discover how Chillingworth’s role as a respected healer sits beside his relentless desire to punish.
- Justice without mercy Enter a society where punishment exposes one person’s sin while leaving other failings safely hidden.
Who will love it
For readers who love stories about conscience, secrets and moral choices, and anyone who wants to understand early American literature.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A found cloth begins the tale
- Hester stands before the town
- A stranger and a secret oath
- Life on the edge of town
- Pearl, the living letter
- The doctor who feeds on a secret
- Midnight on the scaffold
- Hester decides to speak, and the forest
- What the story is really about
- How Hawthorne tells it
Who’s who
- Hester PrynneA young woman who bears the scarlet letter with dignity, raises her daughter alone and refuses to name the father of her child.
- PearlHester's daughter, a bright, wild and sharp-minded child who seems to sense secrets and who is both her mother's joy and her burden.
- Arthur DimmesdaleThe young minister of Boston, loved for his sermons and tormented by a private guilt he cannot bring himself to confess.
- Roger ChillingworthHester's long-lost husband, a learned physician who takes a new name and devotes himself to finding and punishing the man who wronged him.
- Governor BellinghamThe stern leader of the Boston colony, who stands for law and order and who questions whether Hester can raise her child.
- Reverend John WilsonThe elderly minister of Boston, a kindly but rigid man who urges Hester to confess and tests young Pearl on her catechism.
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- Large-print eBook
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- Audiobook
- 9 h 33 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 17 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in, 234 pages: 9,95 USD when you start free, 16,95 USD on its own.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in, 234 pages: 16,95 USD when you start free, 23,95 USD on its own.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1850
Hester Prynne wears a scarlet A in Puritan Boston and refuses to name the father of her child.
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In short
The Scarlet Letter is a novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in Boston in 1850. It is set in the Puritan settlement of Boston in the middle of the 1600s, about two hundred years before Hawthorne wrote it.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A found cloth begins the tale
Hawthorne does not start with Hester. He starts with himself, in an essay called The Custom-House. He describes his years as a surveyor at the Salem Custom-House, a government post he held in the 1840s. The building is dusty and sleepy, and it is filled with elderly officers who have little to do. Hawthorne paints them with humor, and with some sadness at how a life can drift away in such a place.
On an upper floor he says he found a bundle of old papers left by an earlier surveyor named Jonathan Pue. Among them was a piece of faded red cloth, stitched with great skill into the shape of the letter A. When Hawthorne held it to his chest, he says, it seemed to burn. With it came pages that told the story of a woman who had worn that letter long ago. Whether this find is fact or invention is part of Hawthorne's game, and he never settles it.
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What is The Scarlet Letter about?
It follows Hester Prynne, a woman in Puritan Boston who is made to wear a scarlet A as punishment for having a child outside marriage. It also follows the minister and the physician whose lives are tied to her secret.
What does the scarlet letter A stand for?
At first it stands for adulterer, the sin for which Hester is punished. As the story goes on, other people read it differently, and its meaning shifts, which is part of the book's interest.
Is The Scarlet Letter a true story?
No, it is fiction. Hawthorne published it in 1850 and set it in the mid 1600s. He claims to have found old papers about Hester, but this is a literary device, though the Puritan setting is real.
The author
Nathaniel Hawthorne
1804–1864 · American novelist
Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short-story writer born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1804. He lived in Massachusetts and served as a United States consul in Liverpool, England. He wrote The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851). He died in Plymouth, New Hampshire, in 1864.
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