Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #253120 in Books
• Published on: 2005-12-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 528 pages

Customer Reviews

Good copy, despite the fact I don't really like the story...
Although I am not the biggest Hawthorne fan, this particular copy is very extensive in that it includes both the text and several critical essays which examine many theoretical aspects of the text (ie: feminist theory, psychoanalytic theory..etc.) Good for those who enjoy Hawthorne and would like a copy which provides additional insight into the text through critical essays. Good text for teaching.

Scarlet Letter
This edition of _The Scarlet Letter_ has excellent textual criticism. It is a great edition for teachers and students alike.

What Good Or Healthy Things Will You Sacrifice To Please Your Community?
I like the cover of this publication of the novel and related writings because it places the focus where the focus should be - on an abandoned mother and an innocent child. It does not focus on the community's over zealous, unwarranted, and destructive symbol of shame (as most other covers do). The Scarlet Letter raises universal questions. The questions Hester Prynne faced every day of her life were:

1) What good parts of yourself do the people close to you and the people in your community want you to silence or kill?

Her community forced her to wear the label of "A" for the rest of her life, to signal that she was second rate, shamed, and fallen. They wanted her to be dominantly defined by her one choice rather than by all the many good character choices she made before or after that choice. But she liked the parts of herself that loved her child and her lover. She did not wish to exclude either of them. Her community was constantly trying to persuade her that her internal reasoning and love for herself, her child, and her lover were flawed and sinful. Hester responded by embroidering her A to make it beautiful. She could not give up or kill those parts of herself.

2) What healthy relationships with others do your community pressure you to cut off or condemn?

Hester Prynne was repeatedly publicly vilified and tortured in attempts to get her to reveal the father of her baby. Her child was labeled as not legitimate, not a full human being deserving of full honor or recognition. The church threatened to take Hester's only child "Pearl" away (Pearl - a jewel created in response to a foreign embedded object) if she did not conform.

But Hester refused to join the community in shaming the child or the father. She continued to love both the father and the child. She stayed in communication with both as much as she could (without bringing shame to the father). She refused to cut off either of those relationships. And because she did not consider the father's acts to be sins deserving of the punishment the community would give, she hid the father's identity and chose to live a life where she was ridiculed and disdained by her whole community.

There are not many people, men or women, of Hester Prynne's individual strength of character in the real world. But there are good reasons why her adulterous story has resonated for so many years. Her response to adultery reminds me of another great teacher who was presented with an woman caught in the act of adultery. Having great knowledge and understanding of the complexities of love and human connections, his response at that moment was to neither condemn adultery or the adulteress, but rather to say, "Let him that is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone at her."