The Scarlet Letter

A stranger had arrived on the day of her disgrace, a deformed scholar who swears the father will be known, then hides his own name and settles among them as a trusted physician. And in the same town lives the eloquent young minister Arthur Dimmesdale, beloved by his congregation, wasting from within. The Scarlet Letter follows the years that unfold from Hester's silence. She settles in a lonely cottage, supports herself and her daughter Pearl through skilled needlework, and bears the town's scorn with a quiet dignity that slowly bends the letter's meaning.

Hawthorne writes in a solemn, brooding register, morally searching, alert to the difference between an open shame and a secret one. Pearl is its strange center, an untamable elf-child, both her mother's living punishment and her only source of love. What a hidden sin does to the soul that carries it — set against the woman who wears hers where all can see.

It leaves a plea behind: "Be true! Be true! Be true!"