The Scarlet Letter

Hester Prynne is publicly humiliated, imprisoned, and ostracized. It is the 17th century, and she lives in the strictly Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony in Boston. After giving birth to a child out of wedlock, with an unknown father, she is now forced to wear a red A for the rest of her life.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic novel The Scarlet Letter [1850], Hester Prynne emerges as the first true heroine in American literature.

Nathaniel Hawthorne [1804-1864] is counted among the great American writers. In addition to his psychological novels, with The Scarlet Letter being the most famous, he wrote a large number of short stories. Many of Hawthorne's tales are set in colonial New England, and he often drew inspiration from his own Puritan heritage.