The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel of seventeenth-century Puritan Boston, where Hester Prynne, who has borne a child out of wedlock, is made to wear a scarlet letter A and refuses to name the child’s father.

Start reading25 chapters, about 84,000 words

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It contributes greatly towards a man’s moral and intellectual health to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate.
The Custom-HouseIn context
- Character
- Friendship
If a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances.
The Custom-HouseIn context
- Writing
The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognised it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.
Chapter IIn context
- Justice
- Life & Death
Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.
Chapter XIn context
- Enemies
- Friendship
Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart.
Chapter XV: Hester and PearlIn context
- Love
- Marriage
I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!
Chapter XVIIIn context
- Truth & Lies
What we did had a consecration of its own.
Chapter XVIIIn context
- Love
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.
Chapter XVIIIIn context
- Experience
- Women
Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world.
Chapter XVIII: A Flood of SunshineIn context
- Love
No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.
Chapter XX: The Minister in a MazeIn context
- Truth & Lies
Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!
Chapter XXIVIn context
- Truth & Lies
It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.
Chapter XXIVIn context
- Love

The Custom-HouseIntroductory to “The Scarlet Letter”
Chapter IThe Prison Door
Chapter IIThe Market-Place
Chapter IIIThe Recognition
Chapter IVThe Interview
Chapter VHester at Her Needle
Chapter VIPearl
Chapter VIIThe Governor’s Hall
Chapter VIIIThe Elf-Child and the Minister
Chapter IXThe Leech
Chapter XThe Leech and His Patient
Chapter XIThe Interior of a Heart
Chapter XIIThe Minister’s Vigil
Chapter XIIIAnother View of Hester
Chapter XIVHester and the Physician
Chapter XVHester and Pearl
Chapter XVIA Forest Walk
Chapter XVIIThe Pastor and His Parishioner
Chapter XVIIIA Flood of Sunshine
Chapter XIXThe Child at the Brookside
Chapter XXThe Minister in a Maze
Chapter XXIThe New England Holiday
Chapter XXIIThe Procession
Chapter XXIIIThe Revelation of the Scarlet Letter
Chapter XXIVConclusion

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Contents