"You cannot fix the scarlet letter on my breast!": women reading, writing, and reshaping the sexual culture of Victorian America. From: Journal of Social History | Date: March 22, 2004| Author: Battan, Jesse F. | COPYRIGHT 2004 Journal of Social History. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

At the end of the nineteenth-century cautionary tale, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne described the ultimate fate of the central characters of his novel. After a deathbed confession and reconciliation with little Pearl, the fruit of his illicit affair with Hester Prynne, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale dies and meets his maker. Deprived of the object of his anger, Roger Chillingworth, the cuckolded husband, loses his desire for revenge, and thus his reason to live, and quickly f...