Fanshawe is an engrossing apprentice work that Hawthorne published anonymously and later sought to suppress. The transgression of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, the innate lawlessness of their bastard child Pearl, and the torturous jealousy of the husband Roger Chillingworth eventually erupt through the stern reserve of Puritan Boston. The Scarlet Letter engages the moral and romantic imagination of readers who ponder the question of sexual freedom and its place in the social world. Considered Hawthorne's greatest work, The Scarlet Letter is a dramatic allegory of the social consequences of adultery and the subversive force of personal desire in a community of laws. The novel moves across 150 years of American history, from an ancestral crime condoned by Puritan theocracy to reconciliation and a new beginning in the bustling Jacksonian era. Written in a richly suggestive style, Hawthorne's five world-famous novels are permeated by his own history as well as America's In The House of the Seven Gables, Nathaniel Hawthorne alludes to his ancestor's involvement in the Salem witch trials, as he follows the fortunes of two rival families, the Maules and the Pyncheons. Nathaniel Hawthorne: Collected Novels (LOA #10)
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