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Megan Marshall on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

Episode 1

More My Book

Featuring Megan Marshall

Audio episode · 15 min

Megan Marshall on The Scarlet Letter

John Kaag introduces the series, and Megan Marshall tells the story of how The Scarlet Letter became her book: a skipped grade, a teacher who forced her to read slowly, and a canon full of men with one magnetic woman in it. Then the biographer explains where biographers come from, and why she went looking for the women history kept calling the first.

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What Does the A on Hester's Chest Actually Mean?

The A never holds still: adulteress at the scaffold, able and armor at the cottage, awe by the end — Marshall tracks a symbol its makers couldn't control.

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Two Kinds of Nonconformity

Hester breaks the world's law in her mind; Thoreau breaks it with his feet. Marshall and Kaag on what deciding your own law actually costs.

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Is The Scarlet Letter a Feminist Novel?

Yes, Marshall argues: Hawthorne put Margaret Fuller's feminist theory in Hester's mind, atoning for a family history of silencing women — blind spots and all.

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Did Hester Prynne Sin Alone?

No — and Marshall reads Hawthorne's suspended question as widening the guilt past Dimmesdale and Chillingworth to the whole community standing in judgment.

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Read with the Best

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