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    The Scarlet Letter
    The Scarlet Letter
    The Scarlet Letter
    Audiobook7 hours

    The Scarlet Letter

    Written by Nathaniel Hawthorne

    Narrated by Gene Engene

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    The scene is 17th century Boston. Beautiful, darkhaired Hester Prynne, the heroine, gives birth to an illegitimate child. Persecuted by the church and the puritanical townspeople she is placed on trial for adultery. Proud, strong, intensely loyal, she defiantly refuses to name the father of the child. Her infuriated persecutors condemn her to a lifetime of public ridicule by forcing her to sew a scarlet letter "A" on the bosom of all her clothes. The father is eventually found out and the townspeople are surprised as you will be.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBooks in Motion
    Release dateJan 15, 2001
    ISBN9781614532699
    Author

    Nathaniel Hawthorne

    Nathaniel Hawthorne was born is Salem, Massachusetts in 1804. His father died when he was four years old. His first novel, Fanshawe, was published anonymously at his own expense in 1828. He later disowned the novel and burned the remaining copies. For the next twenty years he made his living as a writer of tales and children's stories. He assured his reputation with the publication of The Scarlet Letter in 1850 and The House of the Seven Gables the following year. In 1853 he was appointed consul in Liverpool, England, where he lived for four years. He died in 1864.

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    Reviews for The Scarlet Letter

    3.5/5

    174 ratings163 reviews

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    • 2/5
      I always wondered why I didn't read this school in high school because it is a classic, but I am so thankful that we didn't. I had the hardest time getting interested in The Scarlet Letter. I was bored with it from the start and was rushing through it. The few parts I did end up liking were good while they lasted but there wasn't many of them. The overall plot is pretty good but the writing and the details about things that hold zero significance in the story ruined the plot. I was really confused with the characters in the beginning so I do believe that the drama between the reverend and the doctor seemed random when it wasn't but I didn't realize it until later. I am glad to be done with this book, I sort of liked the plot but I will never reread this.
    • 5/5
      This was a re-read for me as I read this when I was in high school. I think I enjoyed it even more the second time around. Although a little outdated for today's teenagers, the book is a good look at what it was like living in the 1600's and having to adhere to their moral codes. It is a deeply emotional book with lots of symbolism and does show that bad decisions do have consequences. I do highly recommend the book as it is one story that is very hard to forget.
    • 5/5
      A classic tale. Hester Prynne, accused by her community for adultery. Bearing a child, is a pariah of her community.

      I really don't know if there is much I can add to this story that hasn't already been said about it. It is a must read. It should be on everyone's bookshelf. What amazes me most about this book is that even back then Nathaniel Hawthorne showed the injustic of the double standard. Where women are treated as the chattel they were and men literary got away with murder when it comes to women. I also love the fact how the author points out that some men are just scum above and beyond how they treat women.

      This book is and will always be a classic for me. It is one of my favorites. I highly recommend it to be on everyone's bookshelf!
    • 4/5
      A dark, gothic tale that seeps into the conscious, perhaps wordy for modern readers, but satisfying.
    • 4/5
      One-sentence summary: In Puritan Boston, Hester Prynne has conceived a daughter through an affair and been marked with a scarlet A for "adultery," but she will not reveal the identity of her lover and the child's father.My rating: 4 starsWhen read: I read this in college.Why read: It was an assignment.Impressions: I read this long, long ago, but I remember that it was much more readable than I expected it to be, given Hawthorne's dense writing style, and also that the story was very compelling. Of course, secret affairs, illegitimate children and revenge are the topics of both soap operas and great literature because they usually make for compelling stories. I don't know if I'll reread this, as this period of literature is not my favorite, but I would recommend it as an important part of the canon of American literature.Current status: I have a copy of the Penguin Classics edition of this book in my library. I am not eager to reread it, but it is a possibility.
    • 4/5
      I read some of Nathaniel Hawthorne's works at University, and I always wanted to read 'The Scarlet Letter'. Published in 1850, I was eager to discover why this is such an American Classic. I found it to be a very rich and rewarding piece of writing, and an amazing glimpse into the daily lives of the Puritans living in Boston in the seventeenth century.Hawthorne manages to paint the characters in such a light that the reader can see into their very souls, and I can't remember ever having such character insight before.Hawthorne was also quite a visionary in terms of recognising the inequalities women faced in society at the time. The main character Hester Prynne was a sinner and therefore couldn't bring herself to be the Prophetess to bring about the change.I enjoyed the language, with treats along the way such as: "His gourmandism was a highly agreeable trait". Ultimately I enjoyed this American Classic and would recommend it to anyone not afraid of tackling a level of rich and complex writing.
    • 3/5
      Required reading for high school American lit. I hated it at the time, but I want to give it another go.
    • 3/5
      This novel was required reading in high school. I didn't care too much for the book then. I have considered re-reading the book to see if I'd like it more now. Just haven't gotten around to it.
    • 3/5
      Reception to The Scarlet Letter is divided into four camps - those who read it in high school and disliked it, to spite the people who liked it and their teachers besides; those who read it in high school and liked it, to spite the people who disliked it and show their intellectual superiority; those who feel a certain fealty to it by dint of its pedestal as the 'Great American Novel'; and finally the fourth camp, which is composed of people who read it and concluded it genuinely wasn't all that excellent.As you may have guessed, I'm in the fourth camp, and I am neither ashamed nor as proud as both those who like it and those who dislike it. I bear no ill-will towards long sentences or romanticism, nor do I have some ridiculous opposition (or sentimentality towards) 'classic literature'.My issues with The Scarlet Letter are mainly that it's very plot-heavy, which is problematic if only because said heavy plot is dragged down by its maudlin moments and its general heavy-handedness. Unfortunately for the adolescent faux-rebels against literary analysis, The Scarlet Letter is laden with very obvious and not particularly clever symbolism, and complaints about the artificiality and implausibility of the fruits of New Criticism, formalism and general close-reading, although somewhat meritorious with more interesting literature, do not apply here. It is very symbolic, but to the point where the lay-reader in the 1850s would be able to readily comprehend it in a surface reading.Is The Scarlet Letter historically significant? Absolutely. Is it the worst novel ever published? Absolutely not. Is it particularly good compared to its European contemporaries? In my opinion, no.
    • 1/5
      Ugh, this was really tough to get through, even in audiobook form. The only reason that I finished it is because it was one of those "classics" that I thought I should read. I wish that I wasn't regularly disappointed with these classic books/books on the 1001 books to read before you die list.

      I know that Hawthorne was trying to talk about guilt and sin but man, could it be a little more interesting? Please?
    • 3/5
      Flo Gibson did a decent job with the narration but I just didn't really like the book that much...
    • 3/5
      Glad to have read this book after all these years. But not greatly moved by it. I'll be curious to read more about it now, though.
    • 3/5
      Read about 1970 in high school. Very impressive.
    • 2/5
      “Hawthorne is the most consummate literary artist in American literature, and The Scarlet Letter is the greatest book ever written in the Western Hemisphere. It is not relatively, but absolutely great; it holds its place among the fifteen best nevels of the world”- William Lyon Phelps, professor of English Literature at Yale and Methodist preacher, from the 1926 introduction to The Scarlet Letter.I can’t bring myself to offer praise as effusive as William Lyon Phelps does in the above quote. I find the book's overt moral judgement and tendency to “tell rather than show” to be detractions from its reputation for greatness. And, I suspect that even as the learned professor wrote his 1926 introduction, The Scarlet Letter was already firmly established as the bane of Literature classes. Its dense sentences and 17th century Puritan setting can work to make it remote and unwelcoming to readers. Yet it continues to be an established American classic, ranking high on many modern lists of great American novels, just as it is still taught in high schools and colleges even now.The story is a familiar one. In the Puritan settlement of Boston in the 1640s Hester Prynne is publicly shamed for her sin - conceiving and bearing a child outside of marriage. Hester refuses to identify the child’s father. For her sin and her obstinance she is publicly shamed and forced to forevermore wear a prominent mark to signify her shame - the scarlet letter A. In attendance at her shaming as the full story starts are the other three main characters. In her arms is her “sin born” daughter Pearl. Helping to preside over her sentence is the Puritan preacher Dimmesdale - Pearl’s father whose reputation Hester is shielding - who makes his own choice not to reveal himself. Lastly, there is a new arrival to town, recently escaped from bondage to the Indians, who is later revealed to be Hester’s husband Roger Chillingworth.As the book progresses, we see the impact of the repressive Puritan culture on Dimmesdale, Hester and Pearl, and the scheming designs of Chillingworth. Dimmesdale is riven with guilt and anguish at his sin. The Puritans were Calvinists and believed that only the “Select” will get to Heaven. Those who sin here on earth give evidence that they are not among the Select. Dimmesdale's sins, he is sure, have made him unworthy of his role as preacher, and marked him as bound for hell. Chillingworth, who no one knows is Hester’s husband, exacts his revenge by inveigling his way into Dimmesdale’s life, preying on his guilt. Pearl looks fated to grow up unhappily among a colony of people who will think the worst of her no matter what she may do, while Hester will surely die of shame.But instead, Dimmesdale and Chillingsworth wither away and pay the ultimate price for their sins. Pearl escapes the clutches of the colony with her mother and returns to Europe where she will be well wed. Hester, after seeing to Pearl’s future, returns to Boston to voluntarily take back up the wearing of the scarlet letter. Only now she wears it without the shame its sentence was meant to give. Hawthorne is considered a Romantic, and an anti-Puritan. His own family were early settlers in Salem and some of his anti-Puritanism was no doubt personal and familial. It’s no coincidence then, that the object of Puritan shaming should gain the strength to stand up for herself and her daughter. But the other sinners who were not ill-treated by the Puritans do not escape the consequences of their sins - Dimmesdale for his lack of purity and Chillingsworth for his acts of revenge. Hawthorne was also given to writing stories with strong moral metaphors, and that is certainly true with The Scarlet Letter. The metaphors basically hit you over the head in this novel.It has long been popular. On its publication in 1850 The Scarlet Letter became an instant hit. It was one of the first mass produced books in the US, and its initial print run of 2500 copies sold out in ten days. It has scarcely had a day out of print since.
    • 4/5
      The story of a woman who has an affair and chooses not to tell who the father of her child is. Pays the price by having to wear a scarlet A on her chest.nThings have not changed much from those times. A classic imho that in 2022 we deal with many of the same issues as in this book.
    • 4/5
      I read this as a teenager. The story is sad in more ways than one. Being ostracized and not only cast out but stigmatized. I felt this myself growing up in a politically, racial and religiously backward prejudiced part of the country and instantly connected with it. Our species is so terrible to each other. As brilliant as we are and as much as we are capable of we cling to things that continually separate us from each other.
    • 1/5
      Finally ploughed my way through this book. While this might have been a good story, the way the author would drone on about the smallest, least relevant thing was, to say the least, annoying. There were several places where I would read a paragraph and couldn't remember a single thing from it by the time I got to its end.
    • 5/5
      OH MY GOSH!!! I am loving this book. It is almost overtaking Persuasion as my all-time fave. I'm only on chapter 18, so my opinion may change, but oh how I love a love story with tortured souls...
    • 4/5
      The writing is a bit too flowery for my modern taste but, as I've said before, classics are classics for a reason. This is a well-told tale that captures the atmosphere of the early Massachusetts Bay Colony. I picked it up after reading Stacy Schiff's 'The Witches: Salem, 1692'. Having read that book helped me understand some of the allusions in Hawthorne's timeless story.
    • 4/5
      I think I was assigned this book in two other classes before I actually READ it the third time it was assigned in yet another class. Thank goodness I finally had a great teacher who knew how to actually TEACH it, and I was able to find out how captivating this novel truly is.
    • 5/5
      I was always skeptical when teachers used the term "classic" when referring to a book. It always seemed to me to be a term to describe books I had to read that were going to suck. The Scarlet Letter was a happy exception. I really enjoy historical fiction. Hawthorne easily puts a reader into the time period by laying out the facts of puritan life and laws, the dress of the time, as well as with the old-fashioned dialog. Hestor's husband is "away" at sea and she has become pregnant. Normally, adultery would carry a very severe punishment, but the town can't prove her husband is alive. So, she is forced to wear a scarlet "A" (for adultery) on her chest whenever she's in public. This stigma will pass on to her daughter, despite her innocence in the matter. Hestor's stoic perseverence in the face of this humiliation is even more poignant when you learn who the father of her baby really is. This tale of a town forcing its morality on a person is still valid today. Women aren't forced to wear a scarlet A (at least in the US), but we still label people who are different or don't conform to our values. Unfortunately, at the time this was written, authors were paid by the number of pages in their books. Readers can easily guess this caused unnecessary bloating in stories and this book suffers the same. There is a lot of description and fluff that I found myself skimming over, but the heart of the story is still excellent. This tale is powerful and meaningful. Highly recommended!
    • 3/5
      I read this book in school. I wasn't crazy about it then, but it was a little better the second time. I honestly don't remember much about when I read it in school or the discussions about meanings that we probably had. I still got bored some, but Pearl kept me more interested this time. I like the way everyone else's crap doesn't seem to get Pearl down. She's a strong character.
    • 5/5
      I admired this novel increasingly more as it went along. It is structurally fantastic, conservatively written, every chapter moving the story forward like perfectly wound clockwork. It is filled with careful analysis of the characters' inner lives and moral quandaries. A couple of standout chapters are especially admirable. It is only Hawthorne's ponderous style that is not my cup of tea. He is in love with words, as am I, but he presents them in immense blocks of exposition that can fill an entire page. He is very fond of telling rather than showing, so I was forced to view practically everything through his narrative voice. The stiffness might be intentional to fit the Puritanical setting, but I suspect it's just him. This alone has probably killed enthusiasm for the novel in more than one young scholar who has it pressed upon them.The plot outline creates a problem by what it withholds in order to provide a hook. Or I have a problem, in being unwilling to take what an author shows me at face value. Hester has admirable traits, but her entire character rests on the true circumstances of her affair, and those are the novel's primary mystery. I had to assume that her backstory would prove sympathetic. Her daughter Pearl is an even greater enigma, born as innocent as any child but portrayed as if oddly otherwise. I judged this was a realism story and I should not read too much into that; assuming, again. Dimmesdale's implied role looked like a red herring. Chillingworth was the one character I did take as given, probably from a reader's sympathy for his want of answers. The second half of the story clears all of these problems away. I wonder whether I would have enjoyed the first hundred pages more had I known the plot in advance, but I would have enjoyed the second half less. There's some good tension as Hawthorne's 19th century mores head towards playing out in a 17th century setting - or not. With the the entire picture before me, I'm giving this a higher rating than I expected.
    • 1/5
      Ok this book was just so obvious, so much it was painful to read. Yes I understand the point to be made, historically and what not. Even still, it was not enjoyable to me who this point did not need to be made to, I would have preferred it to be made in a different manner, maybe as a side plot or character in a work with actual characters that I can become invested in. No thinking, just yes, yes, are we done yet. Also why would I want to read a book about someone named Hester.
    • 1/5
      I have nightmares about this book. It was nearly impossible to read. I think I finished it? But I also think I may have skipped large sections of it because it's really bad. A for adultery. Something about a meteor?
    • 2/5
      So slow! I know it's a classic and I'm not sure how I got through school without reading it, but I found it very hard to get through. I know the basis of the plot but I expected there to be more going on.
    • 5/5
      I originally read this book in high school. I reread it now, with two more decades of life experience. I've lived among Christians who revere the Puritan era. I've experienced social shunning. I'm a male living in the #MeToo era where one sin of sexual harassment can lead to career demise.

      In all of these situations, however, I side with Hawthorne's sympathies towards those who bear the brunt of social shunning. Or at least, I try to side. If social order must be enforced (and social order in the case of a pregnancy is an extreme but common example), then it must be enforced loosely. That's what prohibition, abortion, and the rest of the culture wars have taught us. It is foolishness to fight human nature.

      At the same time, those who are persecuted are often ennobled by their suffering, as Hester Prynne and Pearl were by theirs. The Scarlet A became not a sign of Adultery but of Ability for Hester. Hawthorne holds her up as a model, and I follow her willingly against those (on whatever side of the left/right/center cultural battles) who hold that purity ought to be externally enforced all the time.

      It is a tenuous foundation that we sit upon as Americans. We are often blind to the purity-seekers who more-or-less agree with us. Although we are considered a free country, we often bind up our fellow citizens in our quest for purity. Indeed, in so doing, we act like our forebears. Hawthorne reminds us of this well. Puritan New England is not that far away from us today.
    • 3/5
      This was required reading for English class. Now that I think about it--it does seem odd that a school would have us reading about a woman being punished for adultery--well, the adultery part in a school book seems odd--though if they were going to have us read about adultery, I don't find it so odd that they would have it be this book. I remember our teacher saying "if you're reading the Cliff Notes, you already know who the baby's father is"--and it was true! The Cliff Notes did reveal the baby's father long before the book did. (But I won't reveal who it was here to avoid any spoilers.)
    • 4/5
      This mid 19th century American classic novel is very much set within the ethos and mores of the Puritan community in New England in the mid 17th century. A young woman Hester Prynne with a baby (Pearl) is humiliated by the community and marked with the eponymous letter A for adultery (though the word is never used in the book). The story is about her relationship with her daughter, with an old doctor who is revealed to be her ex-husband, and with the clergyman who is Pearl's father. The story is told within a framework narrative, with an over-long introduction describing the author's personal experiences working in a custom house, where he purported to have found old documents describing Hester's story. Hawthorne is clearly sceptical of the grim joylessness of extreme Puritanism, when he describes one of their rare festive events thus: "Into this festal season of the year ............the Puritans compressed whatever mirth and public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity; thereby so far dispelling the customary cloud, that, for the space of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely more grave than most other communities at a period of general affliction." The novel is very well written and needs to be read in relatively small doses truly to appreciate the language, though it is short at only 138 pages.
    • 1/5
      No fan of this classic. I get why it's considered a masterpiece, but it also seems to me as if the biggest fans judge from a position where the moral of a story is more important than the story itself.Over the course of this novel, we sadly get to know nothing of the inner workings and conditions of the characters, nothing but what the few, very reduced and stilted lines of dialogue reveal of which each additionally gets commented on by the narrator. This narrator is so far detached from the events and the persons who were involved that the whole thing reads like a historical report, with the additional effect that the characters have no nuances or real personalities. Everyone, men and women alike (though apart from Hester, women don't play any important part anyway) are Puritans and nothing else - only concerned with their soul's salvation, their morals and most of all the morals of others, with nothing distinguishing them from each other or giving them individuality. Hester herself is obviously different, but even with her we get to know nothing about her motivations and development, the reasons why she acts like she acts. The only character who breaks the mould is Pearl, and only because she's consistently described as different and weird.These shortcomings are actually a real pity, because I really liked the story itself, as a thought experiment and insight into a society that is . The theme of shame, stigma and the way how a society is held together by common morals give the frame for a tale that is, with the view of a modern reader, unbelievably full of bigotry, mercilessness, sexism, self-pity and factitiousness. Unfortunately, the way Hawthorne handles it, it's more like a sermon to be preached from a pulpit than a story to be told at a campfire. Cautionary and lecturing instead of entertaining, and no effort was made to combine both.On the topic of style, I guess Hawthorne really loved to hear himself talk. The introductory "Custom House" sketch took 1,5 hours in the audio version and nearly caused a dnf tag. There was no substance, nothing with any tangible insight, just rambling and digressing and going off on tangents that ultimately went nowhere, preferrably in run-on sentences that put half a dozen ideas into a single paragraph.Yes, I know, it's the style of the time and I can't expect modern efficiency in storytelling in a novel from 1850. Actually, I don't even want to. And still, it's so far over the top that it becomes tedious very fast. Pride and Prejudice is from 1813, and stylistically it's so much more varied and interesting, with real dialogue where not every line gets a comment and real characters the reader can understand and relate to.