The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne

It’s 1642 in Puritan Boston, Massachusetts, and Hester Prynn has had a daughter out of wedlock. The novel tracks the following seven years during which Hester never reveals the father of her baby, despite pressures from the church and her community. Adding tension to the story is the presence of Hester’s long-lost husband, hiding his identity in order to discover the name of her lover and exact his own revenge.

Major thematic elements: sin and guilt, revenge and retribution, suffering, the nature of evil, female independence and personal (vs. public) truth, the human condition.

IB Literature and IB Language and Literature Connections

Place of publication: United States
Language: English
Era: 19th century
Genre: Fiction
Author: Male

Readers, writers and texts | Time and space | Intertextuality: Connecting texts

Identity | Culture | Creativity | Communication
Perspective | Transformation | Representation

Full text, basic summaries, and overviews

The Scarlet Letter | Full text & audio
Lit2Go is one of our favorite resources. They’ve organized The Scarlet Letter by chapter; each chapter includes high-quality audio and the full chapter, available on the webpage and in a downloadable PDF. Each chapter also has a short student activity.
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The Scarlet Letter | Full text & audio
The full text of the novel is also available on Project Gutenberg and LibriVox has several recordings of the novel.

The Scarlet Letter Study Guide | Spark Notes
This guide includes summaries (full text and by chapter), characters, literary devices, quiz quizzes and essay prompts and more.
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The Scarlet Letter Study Guide | Course Hero
Course Hero’s guide includes the same resources as Spark Notes with the addition of a nice infographic and discussion questions. The entire guide is also available on YouTube.
Read more | Watch here

Hester Prynne: Sinner, Victim, Object, Winner | NPR | All Things Considered | March 2, 2008
This article summarizes Hester Prynne’s role in the novel and the various interpretations of and reactions to her. This page also contains links to listen to actress Jennifer Mendenhall read six character-defining passages from The Scarlet Letter.
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The Scarlet Letter | Wikipedia
Wikipedia’s entry includes plot, major themes, publication history, critical response, allusions, symbols, adaptions and influence, and more.
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About the author

Nathaniel Hawthorne | Poetry Foundation | Biography
This biography is short (3 paragraphs) and covers Hawthorne’s most popular works, thematic elements of his writing, and friendships with his literary contemporaries.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne | Briannica
This biography is much more extensive, covering Hawthorne’s early years, first works, return to Salem, last years, major novels, legacy, quizzes, quotes, and more. The left tool bar also has links to images and videos you may find useful.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne documentary | YouTube | Write Like | 31:10
This 2011 documentary covers Hawthorne’s life with extensive focus on his work as a writer and friendship with his literary contemporaries. The pace of the video is slow, and because it doesn’t focus much on the content or themes of his writing, wouldn’t be our first choice for teaching students Hawthorne’s biography. It would be great for playing during a work day or for viewing for background information for yourself.
Watch here

Articles, essays, and videos about The Scarlet Letter

Hawthorne at Salem | North Shore Community College
This website has several interesting pages related to The Scarlet Letter: Introduction to Hester and Pearl and Criticism Related to Indians in The Scarlet Letter in particular. Use the white tool bar at the top of each article to explore more resources including “images” and “explore activities.”

Onomastics in The Scarlet Letter | City College of the City University of New York | Elizabeth Molnar Rajec | 1993
This essay explores the significance of names in The Scarlet Letter.
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Critical Essay: “The Scarlet Sin: Analyzing Secrets in The Scarlet Letter” | Illinois.edu | Student Essay
This essay written for an English 109 course looks at the different ways characters deal with their “secret sins.” The essay isn’t perfect, but presents interesting ideas and may work well as a sample essay for students to workshop in class.
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‘The Scarlet Letter’ by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Reviewed | The Atlantic | Julian Hawthorne
Thirty-six years after its publication, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s son reviewed his father’s most famous work.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter | JohnPistelli.com | April 2017
This review by Pistelli provides background for the novel and looks at the novel through five A-words: ambiguity, allegory, antinomian, America, and art.
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10 Fascinating Facts About The Scarlet Letter | Mental Floss | Joy Lanzendorfer | March 16, 2018
This article could be a fun way to introduce your students to the novel or to send them on a webquest. Most of the ten facts have hyperlinks to the sources of their information.
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Primary Source Set for The Scarlet Letter | Digital Public Library of America
This source set includes photographs, pictures of excerpts from popular texts and more related to The Scarlet Letter.
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Video Resources
We like these two videos for giving students some historical context related to U.S. history and the history of Puritans:
The Puritans Were Not Tolerant of Other Religions | Smithsonian Channel | 2:59
When is Thanksgiving? Colonizing America: Crash Course US History #2 | CrashCourse | 12:25

Lesson plans and other teaching resources

Hawthorne: Author and Narrator | EDSITEment! | NEH.gov
In this lesson, students seek to understand how “the differences, subtle or pronounced, between an author and the narrator he or she creates is essential to understanding a work of fiction.”
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Teaching Guide: Exploring the Scarlet Letter | PBS Learning Media
”This teaching guide helps instructors use a specific primary source set, The Scarlet Letter…in the classroom. It offers discussion questions, classroom activities, and primary source analysis tools.”
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Style: Translating Stylistic Choices from Hawthorne to Hemingway and Back Again | Read Write Think | NCTE | Traci Gardner
”Exploring the use of style in literature helps students understand how language conveys mood, images, and meaning. After exploring the styles of two authors, students translate passages from one author into the style of another. They then translate fables into the style of one of the authors. The examples for this lesson plan include passages by…Hemingway and…Hawthorne; however, passages by any author can be used for these activities.”
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Text to Text | ‘The Scarlet Letter’ and ‘Sexism and the Single Murderess’ | The New York Times | The Learning Network | Katherine Schulten | 2013
This lesson uses The Scarlet Letter and an op-ed to ask this key question: “To what extent is there still a sexual double standard, and how does that double standard play out in contemporary culture?”
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Character Study of Pearl in The Scarlet Letter Lesson Plan | Discovery School
Objectives for this lesson: “Discover that the ending of a novel does not resolve all the questions that may occur to readers” and “Imagine characters living out their lives beyond the novel’s ending.”
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The Scarlet Letter text pairings | CommonLit
This page identifies and makes available literary and informational texts to support the study of The Scarlet Letter.
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The Scarlet Letter | Student-teacher and Teacher-Created Unit Plans
20-day lesson plan for 45-minute class periods, adaptable to a block schedule | Alyssa K Martinez | Read more
4-week unit plan: Our “Civilized” Society | Misty Lynn Foster, Florida State University | Read more
Comprehensive unit including literary and informational texts | Louisiana Believes | Read more
Unit plan for AP Literature | Duhon | Read more

Shopping List

Texts and other resources you may find helpful.

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The Scarlet Letter
Paperback on Amazon.com
The Scarlet Letter (Dover Thrift)
Paperback on Amazon.com
The Scarlet Letter and Other Writings (Norton Critical Editions)
Paperback on Amazon.com
Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (Bloom's Guides)
Hardcover on Amazon.com
The Scarlet Letter Graphic Novel
Paperback on Amazon.com
The House of the Seven Gables (Norton Critical Editions)
Paperback on Amazon.com
Hawthorne: A Life
Paperback on Amazon.com
Nathaniel Hawthorne: A Life from Beginning to End
Paperback on Amazon.com