kwieta:

i’d probably be a cool girlfriend 

plastic-river:

that feeling of laying in bed with clean sheets and freshly shaved legs <3

Chiavelli van Lobbrecht 4 Havo

Factual information

Title :  The Scarlet Letter
Author :  Nathaniel Hawthorne
First year of publication : 1850
Number of pages : 261

Title explaining:
The book is called the scarlet letter because Hester Prynne is punished for adultery and has the wear the Letter A that stands for Adultery on her chest. The letter is the colour scarlet.

Theme :  Sin and Love.

Main Characters :
Hester Prynne : A beautiful young woman who’s being punished for committing adultery. She’s a very independent and strong woman.
Reverent Mr. Dimmesdale: He’s a  nice reverend and the biological father of Pearl, who he made with Hester.
Roger Chillingsworth : Hester ‘s husband. Roger isn’t his real name. His real name is never said in the book. He’s very upset when he finds out Hester has a child with someone else. He becomes a very mean when he finds out Mr Dimmesdale is the father.
Pearl : She’s the child from Hester and Mr. Dimmesdale. She’s a very smart and curious girl. She doesn’t have any friends, but is still a happy little girl.

Minor Characters :
There are no minor characters. The story is about the Main characters, and there’s nobody who comes up in the book a few times next to the minor characters.

Summary :
The book begins when Hester Prynne is taken out of prison and out to the market place where has to stand for three hours with her infant Pearl. Hester Prynne is a young woman who committed Adultery. As a punishment she has to wear a scarlet letter in the shape of an A on het chest. The A stands for adultery. Everyone will know what she did by wearing the letter. An old man in the crowd, who’s not from this town sees Hester and the little child and asks someone else what is going on. The other man tells him Hester is punished for Adultery. Hester had an older husband sent Hester to America, Boston, while her husband was in Europe. When her husband is away for a long time Hester has an affair, gets pregnant and gives birth to a little girl. The father of the child is unknown, since Hester doesn’t want to reveal his name. Even on the day when Hester and her child are at the market place and they ask her to reveal the name of the father, she refuses.
You’ve come to known that the old man in the crowd was Hester’s husband, while he visits Hester and Pearl in jail a couple hours later.  He’s now practicing medicine. Because he doesn’t want anyone to know his identity he’s now calling himself Roger Chillingsworth. He also asks her to reveal the name of the father of the child. She refuses again. He tells her he will find the father and will read the truth on the hart of the father.  Under his fake identity Roger now also lives in Boston. As the years go by we see how Pearl grows up and Hester deals with the scarlet letter. Hester realises everyone looks different at her and her child and they decide to move to a small cottage. Their life over there is a bit more peaceful. Hester starts working as a seamstress, but also helps the poor and sick people. The community wants to take Pearl away from Hester, but when Hester goes to the minster, reverent Arthur Dimmesdale helps Hester and she may keep Pearl. Roger becomes a good physician and gets himself in the home of Mr. Dimmesdale. He’s getting sick and needs medicine. Roger suspects there may be more between Hester and Mr Dimmesdale and tries to find out as much as he can. When one day Mr Dimmesdale is asleep, Roger finds something on him what isn’t described in the book, but he now knows Mr Dimmesdale is the one Hester had been seeing. He gives Mr Dimmesdale wrong drugs that only makes him sicker. One night a few years later, Mr Dimmesdale went to the scaffold at the market place, While he’s standing there he imagines the whole town looking at him why he reveals the letter A. He feels terrible for living with the sin. As he stands there Hester and Pearl walk by.  He asks them to stand with him on the scaffold and hold each other’s hand. They see a big letter A in the night sky. The town thinks it’s Angel, but Mr Dimmesdale thinks the A stand for Adultery.  They also see Roger. Mr Dimmesdale tells Hester that Roger scares him. Roger takes Mr Dimmesdale home. Hester now realises that Roger is trying to slowly kill Mr Dimmesdale and she wants to help him. She goes to Roger and asks him to stop making Mr Dimmesdale suffer. Roger doesn’t want to do it. So Hester tells him that se might reveal his identity to Mr Dimmesdale.
Hester and Pearl go to the forest where they meet Mr Dimmesdale, who is also in the woods. Hester tells Mr Dimmesdale that Roger was her husband and what he’s trying to do to him. Because Hester and Mr Dimmesdale could never live a free live in Boston they decide to go to Europe with a boat.

The day before the ship sails, Hester found out  that Chillingworth knows of their plan and is also going with them on the boat. Mr Dimmesdale sees Hester and Pearl standing before the scaffold. Mr Dimmesdale who is very sick and doesn’t have much longer to live takes Hester and Pearl up on the scaffold and reveals his true identity.  He dies up on the scaffold. Roger, who is very frustrated because things didn’t go his way, dies within a year. Hester and Pearl leave Boston. Nobody knows what has happend to them. Many years later, Hester returns back  to Boston alone, still wearing the scarlet letter. Pearl is now happily married with a European man.  Hester is finally forgiven for her sin. When Hester dies, she is buried in a new grave near an old and sunken one.  The tombstone was decorated with a letter “A”, for Hester and Dimmesdale

Own Opinion :
I didn’t really like the book. It was written very difficult and at some times very boring. Also, because it is an older book there were a lot of words I did not understand. The story on the other hand I did like. I think it is great how Hester managed everything and raised Pearl. If it was written more easily I  think I would like the book a lot more.