He finally penned down this story after losing his job. He decided to write the story when he found a scarlet letter along with some parts of its story from the attic of the Custom House. It is told by an unnamed narrator who worked in the Custom House. The novel is written in third-person narration. Moreover, it is regarded as a “Perfect work of American imagination” by the novelist D.H Lawrence.
It is considered a masterpiece by critics. It was among the first mass-produced books of America. Different films and stage dramas got inspired by it. When it was published it earned great fame. “The Scarlet letter” is a Romance written by an American author, Nathaniel Hawthorne. The names of Dimmesdale and Chillingworth.The Rose Bush on one side of the Prison door.Chapter 23: The Revelation of the Scarlet letter.Chapter 19: The Child at the Brook-Side.Chapter 17: The Pastor and His Parishioner.Chapter 8: The Elf-Child and the Minister.But living in solitude till the fullness of time was come, I still kept the dew of my youth and the freshness of my heart. “If I had sooner made my escape into the world, I should have grown hard and rough, and been covered with earthly dust, and my heart might have become callous by rude encounters with the multitude. He wrote once in a letter to his wife, as quoted in TIME: Hawthorne himself looked back fondly on the poverty and obscurity of his early career, which laid the foundation for the writer, and the person, he later became. He never calls on anyone, is seldom seen outside of his gate.” A coy genius… Nobody gets a chance to speak with him unless by accident. Nor did fame do much to bring the reclusive author out of his shell if anything, it may have pushed him deeper inside it, as TIME explained, quoting a neighbor who caught only glimpses of the author, “dodging about amongst the trees on his hilltop as if he feared his neighbor’s eyes would catch him as he walked. “He was also depressed, and was having trouble completing new projects.” “When Hawthorne died at the age of sixty, he was still having difficulty making ends meet,” a 2003 essay recalls. He had never made more than a meager living as a writer, and supported his family for a time by weighing coal and salt shipments at Boston’s Custom House.īut the financial relief was only temporary, according to The Atlantic, which published a number of Hawthorne’s essays and stories. The book, which became an instant bestseller, has been called one of the great American novels as well as America’s first psychological novel.įor Hawthorne, the book’s overnight success brought relief from both obscurity and penury. It wasn’t until this day, March 16, in 1850, that the publication of The Scarlet Letter launched Hawthorne into the literary limelight - at the advanced age (by 19th-century standards) of 45. “Not many writers,” says Editor Arvin in his introduction, “worked so long amid such a hush or in such a shadow.” He took walks by himself, ate meals by himself, published the few pieces he was able to publish anonymously or under an assumed name. From 1825 to 1836 Hawthorne had little contact with anybody, even members of his family.
0 kommentar(er)
