answers to the first questions about The Scarlet Letter...

 

A brief summary of what we studied on Friday 9th

 

A)    Hawthorne 

XIX century American writer

Romantic and…. Sometimes called  “dark romantic”…

He wrote a few  novels ( he called  one of them a romance) / short stories  / mythological tales…

 

He was influenced by his Puritan background. One of his ancestors was a judge during the Salem witch trials…

Many people, especially women were accused of witchcraft whenever something unusual which couldn’t be accounted for happened in a puritan village…

That’s why the writer changed his name (HATHORNE) ; moreover Hawthorne means  “aubépine”

 

 

B)     The excerpt from the novel…

a)     Main facts

Hester is a young woman who gave birth to a baby in jail… as she became pregnant out of wedlock.

(she thought her husband had died)

The scene is set in Puritan  Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1642 .

The Puritan society is known to be very harsh and strict.

Hester and her baby embody “iniquity dragged out…”

Hester, her baby and her letter are special… and contradict the law of the Puritans…

 

The letter looks like a “decoration” and yet the letter A is supposed to stand for Adultery, it’s supposed to be a shame!

So Hester turned the punishment into a work of art…

 

This is why the gossips sneer at her (make fun of her).

b)     Focus on the passages that are underlined and explain them…

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