海斯特白兰，你和你的一切都是我的。一位消失了两年的丈夫对他的妻子说出了这句冷酷的话。但是她紧紧抱住的孩子却不是他的，海斯特因而必须把红色的A字穿在胸口，让所有人知道她犯了通奸罪。无畏而骄傲的海斯特从此见证了两个不同的男人逐渐堕落，道德和法律的激烈碰撞制造了无穷的痛苦。
''Thou and thine, Hester Prynne, belong to me.'' With these chilling words a husband claims his wife after a twoyear absence. But the child she clutches is not his, and Hester must wear a scarlet ''A'' upon her breast, the sin of adultery visible to all. Defiant and proud, Hester witnesses the degradation of two very different men, as moral codes and legal imperatives painfully collide.The text of this edition is taken from the Centenary Edition of Hawthorne''s works, the most authoritative critical edition.
Contents
Abbreviations
Introduction
Note on the Text
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Nathaniel Hawthorne
THE SCARLET LETTER
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
THE CUSTOMHOUSEINTRODUCTORY
I THE PRISONDOOR
II THE MARKETPLACE
III THE RECOGNITION
IV THE INTERVIEW
V HESTER AT HER NEEDLE
VI PEARL
VII THE GOVERNOR''S HALL
VIII THE ELFCHILD AND THE MINISTER
IX THE LEECH
X THE LEECH AND HIS PATIENT
XI THE INTERIOR OF A HEART
XII THE MINISTER''S VIGIL
XIII ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER
XIV HESTER AND THE PHYSICIAN
XV HESTER AND PEARL
XVI A FOREST WALK
XVII THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER
XVIII A FLOOD OF SUNSHINE
XIX THE CHILD AT THE BROOKSIDE
XX THE MINISTER IN A MAZE
XXI THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY
XXII THE PROCESSION
XXIII THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER
XXIV CONCLUSION
EXPLANATORY NOTES
內容試閱：
THE CUSTOMHOUSEINTRODUCTORY TO "THE SCARLET LETTER"
It is a little remarkable, thatthough disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friendsan autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public. The first time was three or four years since, when I favored the readerinexcusably, and for no earthly reason that either the indulgent reader or the intrusive author could imaginewith a description of my way of life in the deep quietude of an Old Manse. And nowbecause, beyond my deserts, I was happy enough to find a listener or two on the former occasionI again seize the public by the button, and talk of my three years'' experience in a CustomHouse. The example of the famous "P. P., Clerk of this Parish," was never more faithfully followed. The truth seems to be, however, that when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside his volume, or never take it up, but the few who will understand him better than most of his schoolmates or lifemates. Some authors, indeed, do far more than this, and indulge themselves in such confidential depths of revelation as could fittingly be addressed only and exclusively to the one heart and mind of perfect sympathy; as if the printed book, thrown at large on the wide world, were certain to find out the divided segment of the writer''s own nature, and complete his circle of existence by bringing him into communion with it. It is scarcely decorous, however, to speak all, even where we speak impersonally. But, as thoughts are frozen and utterance benumbed, unless the speaker stand in some true relation with his audience, it may be pardonable to imagine that a friend, a kind and apprehensive, though not the closest friend, is listening to our talk; and then, a native reserve being thawed by this genial consciousness, we may prate of the circumstances that lie around us, and even of ourself, but still keep the inmost Me behind its veil. To this extent, and within these limits, an author, methinks, may be autobiographical, without violating either the reader''s rights or his own.
It will be seen, likewise, that this CustomHouse sketch has a certain propriety, of a kind always recognised in literature, as explaining how a large portion of the following pages came into my possession, and as offering proofs of the authenticity of a narrative therein contained. This, in facta desire to put myself in my true position as editor, or very little more, of the most prolix among the tales that make up my volumethis, and no other, is my true reason for assuming a personal relation with the public. In accomplishing the main purpose, it has appeared allowable, by a few extra touches, to give a faint representation of a mode of life not heretofore described, together with some of the characters that move in it, among whom the author happened to make one.
In my native town of Salem, at the head of what, half a century ago, in the days of old King Derby, was a bustling wharfbut which is now burdened with decayed wooden warehouses, and exhibits few or no symptoms of commercial life; except, perhaps, a bark or brig, halfway down its melancholy length, discharging hides; or, nearer at hand, a Nova Scotia schooner, pitching out her cargo of firewoodat the head, I say, of this dilapidated wharf, which the tide often overflows, and along which, at the base and in the rear of the row of buildings, the track of many languid years is seen in a border of unthrifty grasshere, with a view from its front windows adown this not very enlivening prospect, and thence across the harbour, stands a spacious edifice of brick. From the loftiest point of its roof, during precisely three and a half hours of each forenoon, floats or droops, in breeze or calm, the banner of the republic; but with the thirteen stripes turned vertically, instead of horizontally, and thus indicating that a civil, and not a military, post of Uncle Sam''s government is here established. Its front is ornamented with a portico of halfadozen wooden pillars, supporting a balcony, beneath which a flight of wide granite steps descends towards the street. Over the entrance hovers an enormous specimen of the American eagle, with outspread wings, a shield before her breast, and, if I recollect aright, a bunch of intermingled thunderbolts and barbed arrows in each claw. With the customary infirmity of temper that characterizes this unhappy fowl, she appears by the fierceness of her beak and eye, and the general truculency of her attitude, to threaten mischief to the inoffensive community; and especially to warn all citizens careful of their safety against intruding on the premises which she overshadows with her wings. Nevertheless, vixenly as she looks, many people are seeking at this very moment to shelter themselves under the wing of the federal eagle; imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of an eiderdown pillow. But she has no great tenderness even in her best of moods, and, sooner or lateroftener soon than lateis apt to fling off her nestlings with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound from her barbed arrows.
購物車/收銀台(
0
) | 在線留言板
| 付款方式
| 聯絡我們
| 運費計算
| 幫助中心 |
加入書簽
HOME
新書上架
