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A Book Report of The Scarlet Letter By Lan Jianlong, 2010 The Scarlet Letter is written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, an American novelist, and was published by Shanghai Translation Press in 1989. The story is set in Boston in the 17th century .At that time, the City Fathers moved to New England, and built the houses, the churches as well as the prisons with their own hands. They brought the customs and religion of old England with them, and strong bias towards women. The gist of the story is as follows: Hester Prynne is the female protagonist in this novel. She is a young, beautiful and gentle woman –a perfect woman in people’s eye. However, she married Roger Chilingworth, an old misshapen man, who is also a doctor. She feels no happiness at all. Several years later, her husband was lost on the sea, so with nobody accompanying her, she had to live a lonely life. Just like the flaming fire in the night, a young, energetic priest named Arthur Dimmesdale, came into her life. They fell in love with each other, and they spent a period time of life full of passion and true love. Soon Hester found that she became pregnant. Owing to this, she was arrested and gave birth to a little girl in the prison. At that time, only would she tell the public the name of the adulterer, could she got rid of the imputation. As we know, a priest would be blamed and punished badly if he does something that is forbidden by God. In order to protect his high position and good reputation, she accepted the shame, wore the scarlet letter, which referred to shame, and stood alone under the scaffold in the public. The person who questioned Hester happened to be Mr. Dimmesdale. Dimmesdale himself had a pure heart--he may couldn’t help crying out that he was the adulterer, but at last he didn’t bring himself to admit his guilt. To him, the letter was a combination of guilty, misery and evilness. From that day on, he had printed the letter A in his mind .Hester’s former husband Chil