The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne | DPLA

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SearchPrimary Source SetsThe Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel HawthorneThe Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

In a society governed by Puritans, Hester Prynne is an outcast. Why? Because she had a baby...out of wedlock. (Gasp!) Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850, sets its events in the Puritan society of two centuries before, and narrates a tale as scandalous for that time as the stuff in grocery-store paperbacks now. So why is this novel considered one of the greatest American novels, and why do we study it in schools? Hawthorne wrote in the tradition of romanticism, a term used to describe literature that emphasizes individualism and emotion, uses both imagery and symbolism, and looks into humanity’s darker impulses and desires. In The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne’s romanticism helps him to critique the hypocrisy of the Puritan religion while also exploring more universal themes of self-consciousness, desire, revenge, shame, and guilt. The result made for one of the first mass-produced books in America, and a volume still on many high schools’ required reading lists today. This primary source set includes photographs, paintings, documents, maps, and items that relate both to the setting of The Scarlet Letter, the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the mid-seventeenth century, and thematic elements within the book.

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Created By

  • Susan Ketcham, East Central High School, St. Leon, Indiana

Time Period

  • Colonization and Settlement (1585-1763)
  • Expansion and Reform (1801-1861)

Subjects

  • American Literature

Cite this set

Chicago citation styleSusan Ketcham. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. 2016. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of America (Accessed March 14, 2026.)APA citation styleSusan Ketcham, (2016) The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of AmericaMLA citation styleSusan Ketcham. Retrieved from the Digital Public Library of AmericaNote: These citations are programmatically generated and may be incomplete.
  • A photograph from the set of the silent movie The Scarlet Letter, 1926.
  • A portrait of Jean Lander as Hester Prynne and “Little Mabel” Struthers as Pearl on the set of the play The Scarlet Letter in 1877.
  • A 1965 oil painting by John Paul Jones inspired by a quotation from The Scarlet Letter.
  • A photograph of Nathaniel Hawthorne.
  • A copy of The Scarlet Letter with a hand-painted celluloid cover.
  • Excerpts (the opening scene and final scene) from a dramatic poem written for an opera of The Scarlet Letter, 1894.
  • A model of the ship Arabella, on which over 700 Puritans sailed with livestock and provisions from England to New England in summer 1630.
  • An 1850 image of Governor Winthrop’s landing at Salem in 1630.
  • An 1858 image of John Elliot, the first missionary among Indians.
  • An 1856 image of a Puritan man with Native Americans.
  • A 1957 photograph of a reconstruction of a seventeenth-century Massachusetts Bay Colony home.
  • A 1928 historical map that shows Shawmut or Boston from 1630-1930.
  • A framed and embroidered medallion quilt owned by the White family of Westminster/Boston, 1785-1800.
  • An excerpt from Jonathan Edwards’s sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” which he preached on July 7, 1741 in Enfield, Connecticut.
  • An excerpt from Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony by George Francis Dow, 1935.

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