The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Element	Value	Value Standard
dc.title	The Scarlet Letter
dc.creator	Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 1804-1864
dc.subject	Puritans-Massachusetts-Fiction.; Women-Massachusetts-Fiction.; Adultery-Fiction.	LCSH
dc.description	First published in 1850, The Scarlet Letter is Nathaniel Hawthorne’s masterpiece and one of the greatest American novels. Its themes of sin, guilt, and redemption, woven through a story of adultery in the early days of the Massachusetts Colony, are revealed with remarkable psychological penetration and understanding of the human heart. Hester Prynne is the adulteress, forced by the Puritan community to wear a scarlet letter A on the breast of her gown. Arthur Dimmesdale, the minister and the secret father of her child, Pearl, struggles with the agony of conscience and his own weakness. Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s husband, revenges himself on Dimmesdale by calculating assaults on the frail mental state of the conscience-stricken cleric. The result is an American tragedy of stark power and emotional depth that has mesmerized critics and readers for nearly a century and a half.
dc.publisher	Dover Publications
dc.contributor	Nathaniel Hawthorne
dc.date	1994-5-02	W3CDTF
dc.type	Text	DCMIType
dc.format	Paperback book, 192 pages, 5.3 x 0.5 x 8.4 in.
dc.identifier	ISBN-13: 978-0486280486	ISBN
dc.source	http://www.amazon.com/Scarlet-Letter-Dover-Thrift-Editions/dp/0486280489/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
dc.language	en-US	RFC4646
dc.relation	The Scarlet Letter: A Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne; originally published by Ticknor, Reed & Fields, Boston: 1850
dc.coverage	1850-1994
dc.rights	All rights reserved

The Scarlet Letter is about Hester Prynne, an adulteress, who is forced to wear a scarlet A on her clothing to identify her sin. Arthur Dimmesdale, the father of her child and the town minister, struggles with the guilt of not admitting to his wrongdoing. Also at play is Roger Chillingworth, Hester’s presumed dead husband, who seeks his revenge on both Hester and Arthur for their actions. The Scarlet Letter has often been challenged due to its “pornographic and obscene” content in addition to its “conflicts with community values” (“Banned Books That Shaped America”).

Banned Books That Shaped America. (n.d.). Retrieved April 26, 2016, from http://www.bannedbooksweek.org/censorship/bannedbooksthatshapedamerica