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    The Scarlet Letter
    The Scarlet Letter
    The Scarlet Letter
    Audiobook2 hours

    The Scarlet Letter

    Written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and John Escott

    Narrated by Multiple Narrators

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Scarlet is the color of sin, and the letter 'A' stands for 'Adultery'. In the 1600s, in Boston, Massachusetts, love was allowed only between a husband and a wife. A child born outside marriage was a child of sin. Hester Prynne must wear the scarlet letter on her dress for the rest of her life. How can she ever escape from this public shame? What will happen to her child, growing up in the shadow of the scarlet letter? The future holds no joy for Hester Prynne. And what will happen to her sinful lover - the father of her child?
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOxford University Press
    Release dateDec 27, 2007
    ISBN9780194215725
    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

    7,493 ratings131 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.
    • 4/5
      A dark, gothic tale that seeps into the conscious, perhaps wordy for modern readers, but satisfying.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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
      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.
    • 3/5
      Required reading for high school American lit. I hated it at the time, but I want to give it another go.
    • 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
      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.
    • 3/5
      I had put off reading this book for a long time because the reviews for it were not always glowing. I finally decided that this is an American classic and I needed to read it. Besides, I teach about the time period, and spent a full day at the Old Manse where Hawthorne wrote it down in Concord two summers ago.

      I am glad I read this book but was not overly impressed. I got the feeling that Hawthorne was pretty darned impressed with himself and his writing ability. The story is famous so I won't spend time reviewing the plot or anything, but I have to say that a majority of the book was spent flushing out the thoughts and psyches of the main characters. I understand that the book was full of symbolism and was a criticism of society in many ways, but as a novel, it did not really keep me turning the pages.

      I would recommend this for serious readers or for students of early American history. It is not a light read, and I would suggest reading it in one or two sittings because it is tough to gear up and come back to day after day.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 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.
    • 3/5
      I'm not a big Classics fan but I do try to read a few each year. This time my Book Club chose A Scarlet Letter because of the Puritan connection and Thanksgiving time-frame. I had never read this book even in high school though I thought I knew the basics. There were aspects of the story to which I was unaware and it added a bit to the story IMO. However, the treatment of anyone - man, woman, or child - in manner, saddened me so I think that it did give me a greater reason to be thankful for the blessings I have.
    • 3/5
      I first read this over thirty years ago in high school. I read it again this year because my daughter is now reading it in high school, and I enjoy discussing her assigned reading with her. I really love the plot and characters, but the pacing is slow and the prose is painful at times. For me, trudging through the book again was made worthwhile by the penultimate chapter, "The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter." The interaction between the four main characters reaches its peak in a most satisfying manner.

      Overall, I prefer the manga adaptation I read last year: [book:Manga Classics: The Scarlet Letter|23332877].
    • 3/5
      I know it's a "classic", but I thought it was only average.
    • 3/5
      First time reading this verified American classic tale. While short, I found it very ponderous and uneven. The Introductory sketch of the Customs House was very long winded and fell far short of being interesting. My appetite picked up as we started into the well known story of Hester and the Scarlett Letter "A". Most of the book was overwritten and flowery for my taste, but I do acknowledge passages of brilliant prose and a mystically gothic ambiance. There were a lot of diversions and descriptions of forests, brooks, and the town along the way. Not the most enjoyable read for me.