A Scarlet Letter

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The scarlet letter was her passport into regions
where other women dared not tread. Shame,
Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers -
stern and wild ones - and they had made her
strong, but taught her much amiss
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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 novel was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne in
1850. The story starts off with the Custom House
narrated by a clerk who introduces the legend of
The Scarlet Letter by finding an embroidered
piece of cloth with the letter A on it.
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• 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 Hawthorne 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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• 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

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

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Themes Discussion questions

• Hester is turned into a living sermon by the
  Puritan society.
• Who is introduced to portray evil?
• Why does Chillingworth want his identity kept a
  secret?

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Themes Discussion questions
Sin, Knowledge, and the Human Condition The
Nature of Evil Identity and Society Civilization
versus the Wilderness Night versus Day Names
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Credits

• 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.

Garnet Mayo Katie Hillesheim