Short conclusion on Scarlett Letter

A woman commits adultery and bears a child out of wedlock. A minister sins against his god and his convictions. A jealousy maddened husband seeks his revenge.

Sounds like a soap opera, right? But it's not. It's one of literature's greatest classics, The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The female lead is Hester Prynne, sent ahead from Amersterdam by her husband to settle in a new town. As time passes and her husband does not appear, it is assumed that he has died in the harsh environment of late seventeenth century New England.

Hester's name comes to mean something entirely different to the Puritan townspeople when she is found to be with child and consequently gives birth to a daughter, named Pearl. Hester refuses to reveal the name of the baby's father, choosing instead to take her punishment alone. Her punishment is simple: she stands on a scaffold before the condemning eyes of the whole town for three hours, and is sentenced by the town fathers to wear always on her br...