10 Fascinating Facts About Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘The Scarlet Letter’

These days, we tend to think about The Scarlet Letter in relation to high school students struggling with their English papers, but we didn’t always see the book that way. When Nathaniel Hawthorne published the novel on March 16, 1850, it was a juicy bestseller about an adulterous woman forced to wear a scarlet A on her chest by a community steeped in religious hypocrisy. Here are 10 things you might not have known about the classic tome.

Nathaniel Hawthorne was so ashamed of his Puritan ancestors, he changed his name.

Hawthorne, who was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on July 4, 1804, was aware of his messy Puritan heritage. His great-great-grandfather William Hathorne came to Salem in 1636. As the Massachusetts Bay delegate, he tried to rid the town of Quakers by having them whipped and dragged through the street half naked. His son, John Hathorne, was even worse. As a magistrate during the Salem witch trials of 1692, he examined more than 100 accused witches and found them all guilty. Hawthorne detested this legacy and distanced himself from his ancestors by adding the w to the spelling of his name.

His job at a customs house influenced The Scarlet Letter in more ways than one.

Unable to support his family by publishing short stories, Hawthorne took a politically appointed post at the Salem Custom House in 1846 (he was friends with Franklin Pierce). A few years later, however, Hawthorne was fired because of a political shakeup. The loss of his job, as well as the death of his mother, depressed Hawthorne, but he was also furious at Salem. “I detest this town so much that I hate to go out into the streets, or to have people see me,” he said.

According to Hawthorne: A Life, “Biographical legend insists that The Scarlet Letter was composed in a white heat after Hawthorne lost his job at the Custom House,” but evidence suggests that he actually started writing “The Scarlet Letter and possibly The House of the Seven Gables before the Custom House debacle.” Still, the “sorrow, bitterness, loss, and shame” undoubtedly “helped complete The Scarlet Letter.“ And his job at the Custom House contributed to the book in other ways, too: As the National Park Service explains, “In the introduction to the novel, he describes the Salem Custom House and pretends to find the story among the papers of a previous surveyor.”

Hester and Dimmesdale‘s affair may be modeled after a public scandal.

In 1846, Hawthorne’s sister-in-law Elizabeth Peabody published the work of Hungarian linguist Charles Kraitsir. Two years later, it was discovered that Kraitsir’s wife had seduced several of his students at the University of Virginia. He left his wife and daughter in Philadelphia and fled to Peabody for help. Peabody responded by going to Philadelphia in an attempt to gain guardianship of the daughter. This didn’t go over so well with the wife. She followed Peabody back to Boston and confronted her husband. In response, Peabody and Kraitsir tried to get her committed to an asylum. The press got wind of the story and Kraitsir was skewered for looking weak and hiding behind Peabody’s skirts. Hawthorne watched as the scandal surrounding a woman’s affairs played out on the public stage, right as he was starting The Scarlet Letter.

The Puritans really did make people wear letters for adultery.

Hawthorne must have known there was historical precedence for The Scarlet Letter. According to a 1658 law in Plymouth, people caught in adultery were whipped and forced “to weare two Capitall letters namely A D cut out in cloth and sowed on theire vpermost Garments on theire arme or backe.” If they ever took the letters off, they would be publicly whipped again. A similar law was enacted in Salem.

In the town of York (now in Maine) in 1651, near where Hawthorne’s family owned property, a woman named Mary Batchellor was whipped 40 lashes for adultery and forced to wear an A on her clothes. She was married to Stephen Batchellor, a minister over 80 years old. Sound familiar?

Hawthorne’s editor took credit for talking him into writing the novel.

In an 1871 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, editor James T. Fields wrote about being Hawthorne’s champion. Not only did he try to get Hawthorne reinstated in his Custom House post, Fields said he convinced Hawthorne to write The Scarlet Letter as a novel. One day, while trying to encourage the despondent writer (“ ‘Who would risk publishing a book for me, the most unpopular writer in America?’ ‘I would,’ said I”), Fields noticed Hawthorne’s bureau. He said he bet Hawthorne had already written something new and that it was in one of the drawers. Hawthorne, flabbergasted, pulled out a manuscript. “How in Heaven’s name did you know this thing was there?” he said. He gave Fields the “germ” of The Scarlet Letter. Fields then persuaded Hawthorne to alter “the plan of that story,” write a full-sized book, and publish it as a standalone novel. The rest is history.

Or is it? Hawthorne’s wife Sophia said of Fields’s claims: “He has made the absurd boast that he was the sole cause of the Scarlet Letter being published!” Fields may have convinced Hawthorne to publish The Scarlet Letter as a solo novel but hadn’t influenced the length of the story at all. According to Sophia, “It was Mr. [Edwin Percy] Whipple, the clever critic, and really literary man of careful culture, who came to Salem with Mr. Fields and told him what a splendid work it was and then Mr. Fields begged to be the publisher of it.”

The novel is one of the first to feature a strong female character.

Hester Prynne is a tall, dignified character who endures her outcast status with grace and strength. Although she has fallen to a low place as an adulteress with an illegitimate child, she becomes a successful seamstress and raises her daughter even though the authorities want to take the child away. As such, she’s a complex character who embodies what happens when a woman breaks societal rules. Hawthorne not only knew accomplished women such as Peabody and Margaret Fuller; he was writing The Scarlet Letter directly after the first women's rights convention in New York in 1848. He was one of the first American writers to depict “women’s rights, women’s work, women in relation to men, and social change,” according to biographer Brenda Wineapple.

The Scarlet Letter is full of symbols.

Hawthorne hits you on the head with symbolism throughout The Scarlet Letter, starting with the characters’ names—Pearl for an unwanted child, Roger Chillingworth for a twisted, cold man, Arthur Dimmesdale for a man whose education cannot lead him to truth. From the wild woods to the rosebush by the jail to the embroidered A itself, it’s easy to see why The Scarlet Letter is the book that launched a thousand literary essays.

Hawthrone loved the word ignominy.

In the 87,000-plus words that make up The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne used ignominy 16 times, ignominious seven times, and ignominiously once. He apparently had affection for the word, which means “dishonor, infamy, disgrace, or shame.” Either that, or he needed a thesaurus.

People thought The Scarlet Letter was scandalous.

While the reviews of The Scarlet Letter were generally positive, others condemned the novel as smut. For example, this 1851 review by Reverend Arthur Cleveland Coxe: “Why has our author selected such a theme? … Is it, in short, because a running underside of filth has become as requisite to a romance, as death in the fifth act to a tragedy? Is the French era actually begun in our literature? … we honestly believe that ‘the Scarlet Letter’ has already done not a little to degrade our literature, and to encourage social licentiousness.” This kind of rhetoric didn’t hurt sales. In fact, The Scarlet Letter’s initial print run of 2500 books sold out in 10 days.

Hawthorne didn’t make much money from the novel.

The Scarlet Letter made Hawthorne a well-known writer, allowed him to purchase a home in Concord, and insured an audience for books like The House of Seven Gables. But The Scarlet Letter didn’t make Hawthorne rich. Despite its success in the U.S. and abroad, royalties weren’t that great—overseas editions paid less than a penny per copy. Hawthorne only made $1500 from the book over the remaining 14 years of his life. He was never able to escape the money troubles that plagued him.

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A version of this story ran in 2014; it has been updated for 2024.