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"Hester Prynne & Pearl before the stocks", an illustration by Mary Hallock Foote from an 1878 edition of The Scarlet Letter. Hester Prynne is the protagonist of Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter. She is portrayed as a woman condemned by her Puritan neighbors for having a child out of wedlock. The character has been called ...
The Scarlet Letter: A Romance is a work of historical fiction by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1850. [2] Set in the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony during the years 1642 to 1649, the novel tells the story of Hester Prynne, who conceives a daughter with a man to whom she is not married and then struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity.
Years pass and Pearl grows into girlhood. The heads of the colony seek to separate her from Hester and raise her under the church. Hester resists in vain, but Dimmesdale's plea saves the little family. Chillingworth comments on the earnestness of the pastor's plea. A few days later, Dimmesdale sees Pearl in the cemetery near his home.
Next to Hester Prynne herself, Dimmesdale is often considered Hawthorne's "finest character." His dilemma takes up a significant portion of the novel, bringing out Hawthorne's most famous statements on many of the concepts that recur throughout his works: guilt and redemption, truth and falsehood, and others.
Meeting Hester in jail, Chillingworth presses her to divulge the name of her partner in adultery, but she refuses. Searching without her help, he eventually discovers that her lover is the town minister, Arthur Dimmesdale. Using his position as a doctor, and under the guise of treating Dimmesdale's unexplained sickness, Chillingworth ...
The person of Hester's husband, Roger Chillingworth (Kevin Conway) completes this grim triangle as the mysterious situation leads to a shattering climax. The story follows the main characters as they grapple with sin, forgiveness, and redemption. [3]
“Early in the film Gish, as Prynne, loses her bonnet chasing a songbird through a summer glade. When the wind catches her waist-long tresses, Gish appears for an instant as if she had stepped into a painting by Botticelli...Seastrom seizes on Gish's sensuality throughout the film...bringing this largely faithful adaptation down squarely on the side of love and ardent sensuality.”—
Hester Prynne becomes pregnant while her husband is absent. In June 1642, in the Puritan town of Boston, a crowd gathers to witness the punishment of Prynne, who is found guilty of adultery. She is required to wear a scarlet "A" ("A" is the symbol of adultery ) on her dress to shame her.