The Scarlet Letter

   
The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne
read: circa 1995
Guardian 1000 Novels

I think this was the first novel I had to read in sophomore high school English. I remember it was a couple years before the Demi Moore movie came out. That movie looked terrible.

Hawthorne was living in Salem, Massachusetts, where the Salem Witch Trial took place (and where I live now), while writing The Scarlet Letter. His great-grandfather was a judge in many of the trials. It's hard not to see a parallel between the injustices heaped on Hester Prynne and on the women accused of witchcraft.