Subtle, Remorseful—Self-Loathing?—Hypocrites (The Scarlet Letter, Part 2)

In Part 2 of our discussion on Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, editor Justine Murison returns to discuss the cover design of the Norton Library edition, her first encounter with The Scarlet Letter in high school (and the process of coming to understand the text as an adult), and the challenging irony of Hawthorne's narrative voice. 

Justine S. Murison is Associate Professor of English at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research and teaching examine nineteenth-century American literature with special attention to its relation to the intertwined histories of health and religion. She is the author of The Politics of Anxiety in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (2011) and Faith in Exposure: Privacy and Secularism in the Nineteenth-Century United States (2023).

To learn more or purchase a copy of the Norton Library edition of The Scarlet Letter, go to https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393871616.

Learn more about the Norton Library series at https://wwnorton.com/norton-library.

Have questions or suggestions for the podcast? Email us at nortonlibrary@wwnorton.com or find us on Twitter at @TNL_WWN and Bluesky at @nortonlibrary.bsky.social.