The Scarlet Letter

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A level 4 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Written for Learners of English by John Escott.

Scarlet is the colour of sin, and the letter ‘A’ stands for ‘Adultery’. In the 1600s, in Boston, Massachusetts, love was allowed only between a husband and a wife. A child born outside marriage was a child of sin.

Hester Prynne must wear the scarlet letter on her dress for the rest of her life. How can she ever escape from this public shame? What will happen to her child, growing up in the shadow of the scarlet letter? The future holds no joy for Hester Prynne.

And what will happen to her sinful lover – the father of her child?

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THE SCARLET LETTER

The woman who wears the scarlet letter on her bosom is a woman without friends, a woman who has sinned. Fingers point at her, respectable people turn their faces away from her, the priests speak hard words about her. Shame follows in her footsteps, night and day.

Because this is New England in the 1600s. The Puritans have crossed the sea to the shores of America, building their new towns, bringing their religion and their customs with them from the old country. And in the early years of Boston, in the state of Massachusetts, the church is strong – and unforgiving. Anyone who breaks the laws of the church, and of God, must be punished.

But Hester Prynne, whose husband is not her baby’s father, did not sin alone. Who is the father of her child? Why does he not speak out? Why should Hester wear the scarlet letter of shame, and not her lover? Is he not guilty too?

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First published in Oxford Bookworms 2002

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ISBN 978 0 19 479183 0

A complete recording of this Bookworms edition of The Scarlet Letter is available on audio CD ISBN 978 0 19 479153 3

Word count (main text): 15,965 words

For more information on the Oxford Bookworms Library, visit www.oup.com/bookwormswww.oup.com/bookwormse-Book ISBN 978 0 19 478649 2

e-Book first published 2012

SALEM, MY HOME TOWN, is a quiet place, and not many ships call at the port here, though in the last century, before the war with Britain, the port was often busy. Now the ships go down the coast to the great sea-ports of Boston or New York, and grass grows in the streets around the old port buildings in Salem.

For a few years, when I was a young man, I worked in the port offices of Salem. Most of the time, there was very little work to do, and one day in 1849 I was looking through an old wooden box in one of the dusty, unused rooms of the building. It was full of papers about long-forgotten ships, but then something red caught my eye. I took it out and saw that it was a piece of red material, in the shape of a letter about ten centimetres long. It was the capital letter A. It was a wonderful piece of needlework, with patterns of gold thread around the letter, but the material was now worn thin with age.

It was a strange thing to find. What could it mean? Was it once part of some fashionable lady’s dress long years ago? Perhaps a mark to show that the wearer was a famous person, or someone of good family or great importance?

I held it in my hands, wondering, and it seemed to me that the scarlet letter had some deep meaning, which I could not understand. Then I held the letter to my chest and – you must not doubt my words – experienced a strange feeling of burning heat. Suddenly the letter seemed to be not red material, but red-hot metal. I trembled, and let the letter fall upon the floor.

Then I saw that there was an old packet of papers next to its place in the box. I opened the packet carefully and began to read. There were several papers, explaining the history of the scarlet letter, and containing many details of the life and experiences of a woman called Hester Prynne. She had died long ago, sometime in the 1690s, but many people in the state of Massachusetts at that time had known her name and story.

And it is Hester Prynne’s story that I tell you now. It is a story of the early years of Boston, soon after the City Fathers had built with their own hands the first wooden buildings – the houses, the churches … and the prison.

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