Scarlet Letter, The

American  

noun

1. a novel (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

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The Scarlet Letter Cultural  

1. (1850) A novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne about Hester Prynne, a woman in seventeenth-century New England who is convicted of adultery. Forced to wear a scarlet letter A on her dress as a sign of her guilt, Hester refuses to reveal the identity of her lover. Eventually, a young minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, publicly admits his part in the adultery and dies in Hester's arms.

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Example Sentences

When Leiby mentioned the Scarlet A, I thought of Suzan-Lori Parks’s take on “The Scarlet Letter” — the one of her Red Letter Plays whose title we can’t print here — with its heroine, Hester Smith, who is described in the list of characters as “the Abortionist.”

From New York Times

"But in a small town, in a small jurisdiction -- and I don't know that this is the case -- then that could be the scarlet letter, the stigma. I will never go to that lawyer," he concluded.

From Fox News

The questions asked on early IQ tests—about the author of The Scarlet Letter, the diet of squirrels, and the city where the Declaration of Independence was signed—required background knowledge.

From Slate

Not that it was about him; it was about those far less fortunate than him, who would carry this scarlet letter the rest of their lives.

From New York Times

Kenneth Starr and his legal team were as rough in their investigation as the Puritan powers depicted in "The Scarlet Letter," the 1850 novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

From US News