Hailed by Henry James as "the finest piece of imaginative writing yet put forth in the country," Nathaniel Hawthorne's THE SCARLET LETTER reaches to our nation's historical and moral roots for the material of great tragedy. Set in an early New England colony, the novel shows the terrible impact a single, passionate act has on the lives of three members of the community: the defiant Hester Prynne; the fiery, tortured Reverend Dimmesdale; and the obsessed, vengeful Chillingworth.

With THE SCARLET LETTER, Hawthorne became the first American novelist to forge from our Puritan heritage a universal classic, a masterful exploration of humanity's unending struggle with sin, guilt and pride.

It was a brash, bustling, energetic country in which Hawthorne grew up and carved out his writing career. The covered wagons were rolling West, with signs that bravely declared “California or bust!” The first passenger railroad opened, and the trains went huffing and puffing along at the (then) incredible speed of 20 miles an hour. Jackson was elected president, throwing the conservative statesmen out of office and ushering in the age of democracy and the common man.
It was an age between wars, when America, having beaten England for the second time- in the War of 1812- was flexing its adolescent muscles. Hope was in the air, and also a feeling of impatience with the imported, second-hand, European way of doing things. “Down with the past” might have been the slogan of the time. Americans sensed a fresh, creative task at hand in the building of a new country. It was a task that called for strong backs, clear eyes, and open minds.
There were experiments in living going on to match the experiments in politics and technology. Starry-eyed intellectuals gathered outside Boston to thrive on a vegetarian diet at Alcott’s Fruitlands. Thoreau conducted his own private experiments in a life close to nature at Walden Pond. Horace Mann planned to change the world by changing education.
Where was Hawthorne while all this excitement was going on? In his bedroom in Salem, reading a book. You get the distinct feeling about this man that, so far as the great adventures of his time were concerned, he simply wasn’t pay-
ing attention. Hawthorne was gazing intelligently off in another direction. Most of his generation looked expectantly toward the future. Hawthorne kept his eyes on the past.
He was an introvert, almost a recluse, this native son of Salem, Massachusetts. After graduating from Bowdoin College, he spent close to twelve years at home in his room, reading and learning his writer’s craft. For subject matter, he turned not to life but to books and to his own family history. When he was a boy, his Puritan ancestors had haunted his imagination. And now, he read voraciously about early New England history, fleshing out his childhood dreams.
Perhaps Hawthorne read so much about the Puritans that their concerns became his. More likely, his reading struck a chord in him that was already familiar.
Hawthorne thought about sin. He thought about guilt. He thought about the dark side of the soul. He pondered questions that few other men of his time thought or cared about- questions like: What happens to people who nurse a secret sin throughout their lives? Or, is it true that the evil taint of a crime lingers forever on the soul? Hawthorne had a wide, unconventional streak in his soul, and he didn’t like it.
Some part of him was always at war with the recluse and pessimist in himself.
Hawthorne even briefly flirted with Utopianism. He joined Brook Farm, a community near Boston, in the hopes that a life in the open air, in communion with other writers, would be congenial to him. But milking cows and raking ma-
nure proved too much for Hawthorne. He left after a year to resume a private writing career.
Hawthorne made other attempts to put himself in touch with the currents of his time. At the age of 35, he sought- of all things- a political appointment. Hawthorne went to work in the Salem Custom House, where his nose was really rubbed in the grimy details of trade.
There was a good reason for that particular choice. Hawthorne had met his future wife, Sophia Peabody, and he needed money to marry on. He was never a best-selling author, and a lack of funds was a problem he would wrestle with all his life.
The question of money would rear its ugly head again in 1846 when Hawthorne, now a husband and a father, returned to the Salem Custom House as Surveyor. He spent three mildly discontented years there, to be thrown out in 1849 when a Whig victory ended the Democrats’ reign. (Hawthorne was a member of the Democratic party.) Hawthorne was bitter at such high-handed treatment. But his dismissal from the Custom House proved a blessing in disguise. He was free to write again. Indeed, he had to write in order to keep a roof over his head. He set immediately to work and produced The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850.
Perhaps the novel served as a kind of creative trigger, for the famous works now followed quickly, one on the heels of another: The House of the Seven Gables in 1851, and The Blithedale Romance in 1852.
We can talk about the later events of Hawthorne’s life: the birth of more children, a consulship to England, the publication of The Marble Faun in 1860. And yet, if we do, we will get no closer to the man. Hawthorne lived a decent, middleclass, intellectual sort of life. He wrote, he served his country in minor capacities, he had children, he worked to support them. And yet, there was something he held back, a part of himself he showed only to the four walls of his room.
Nathaniel Hawthorne was a man, for instance, who married a genteel, delicate woman, a woman to whom love meant the sweet sound of violins. But the creator of Hester Prynne knew a different side of things; knew just as surely as he lived that there were dark, erotic temptresses out there with eyes a man could drown in.