The Scarlet Letter/In Popular Culture

The following is a list of references to The Scarlet Letter in popular culture:

  • 1896: An opera by Walter Damrosch
  • 1917: A black-and-white silent film directed by Carl Harbaugh with Mary G. Martin as Hester Prynne
  • 1926: A silent movie directed by Victor Sjostrom and starring Lillian Gish and Lars Hanson
  • 1934: A film directed by Robert G. Vignola and starring Colleen Moore
  • 1957: In the song "The Sadder-But-Wiser Girl for Me" from the Broadway MusicAL "The Music Man," Harold Hill sings "I smile, I grin when the gal with a touch of sin walks in. I hope and I pray for Hester to win just one more 'A.'"
  • 1958–59: An opera by Robin Milford
  • 1973: Der Scharlachrote Buchstabe, a film in German directed by Wim Wenders
  • 1979: PBS version starring Meg Foster and John Heard
  • 1987: A Scarlet Letter, album by Curtiss A released by Twin/Tone Records
  • 1990: Referenced in Hole/Nirvana early song "Old Age" - "no one knows she's Hester Prynne, chokers are back in again..."
  • 1993: Referred to in the Roseanne (TV Series) in the Episode "Wait Till Your Father Gets Home" (Season 5, Episode 16) by the character "Beverly" played by Estelle Parsons when she confronts her ex-husband's mistress, "Joan" (played by Kay Arnold) at his funeral. "I think you should be shot. I long for the days when we could brand someone like you with a scarlet letter, and if you should ever contract a fatal and very painful disease I will not be able to stop myself from dancing a jig of glee!"
  • 1994: A rock musical, "The Scarlet Letter", written by Mark Governor, is produced in Los Angeles.
  • 1995: The Scarlet Letter, a film directed by Roland Joffé and starring Demi Moore as Hester and Gary Oldman as Arthur Dimmesdale. This version is "freely adapted" from Hawthorne according to the opening credits and takes liberties with the original story.
  • 1996: The Metallica Song "The Thorn Within" from the album 'Load' is based on the novel.
  • 1997: In the final segment of the Simpsons episode Treehouse of Horror VII, wherein the setting is presumably seventeenth-century Massachusetts, Ms. Crabapple is shown with a red "A" on her chest.
  • 1999 The protagonist of the Laurie Halse Anderson novel Speak (and the 2004 film adaptation), a victim of [...], studies The Scarlet Letter in her high school English class, and reflects on the similarities between herself and Hester Prynne.
  • The Red Letter Plays (In The Blood produced in 1999, and [...] A, produced in 2000) by playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, adapts elements and themes from the novel as the basis for the two contemporary plays.
  • 2001: A musical stage adaptation which premiered at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland, by Stacey Mancine, Daniel Koloski, and Simon Gray
  • 2001: The band Tool alludes to the novel in the song "The Grudge" on their album Lateralus with the line "unable to forgive your scarlet letterman."
  • 2003: Referenced in The Distillers song "Die on a Rope" on Coral Fang CD - "carve a scarlet letter in my chest..."
  • 2004: The Scarlet Letter, a Korean noir-thriller featuring an adulteress's monologue that mentions a plan to raise her unborn child as Pearl in America in a desperate plea to exit her obsessive affair
  • 2004: Quoted in One Tree Hill Season 2 episode "Don't Take Me For Granted" "Nathaniel Hawthorne once wrote: 'no man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without getting bewildered as to which one may be the true' "
  • 2005: The Christian band Casting Crowns released a song titled "Does Anybody Hear Her", which mentions the Scarlet Letter and matches up with the story of Hester Prynne almost perfectly.
  • 2005: The Brooklyn Follies novel by Paul Auster involves a plot to forge an original manuscript of The Scarlet Letter. One of the characters claims that the original manuscript was lost—possibly "burned, either by Hawthorne himself, or in a warehouse fire. Others say the printers simply threw the sheets in the garbage—or else used them to light their pipes".
  • 2006: The Virginia-based Hip-Hop group The Clipse refers to Hawthorne in an unreleased track from their 2006 album Hell Hath No Fury. Pusha T delivers the line "Like a Scarlett letter, for the world to see" on a song called "[...]" which was later released on their mixtape album We Got It 4 Cheap: Vol. 1.
  • 2006: The band As Blood Runs Black wrote a song called "Hester Prynne" with lyrics based on the novel on their debut album Allegiance.
  • In 2008, Mudvayne released a single, Scarlet Letters off of their album, The New Game.
  • 2007: Referenced in Feist song "Past and Present" on The Reminder CD -"The Scarlet Letter isn't black...so much present inside my present, inside my present...so, so much past inside my present..."
  • 2007: The Terpsicorps Ballet Company of Asheville, NC interprets The Scarlet Letter.
  • 2007: It is featured in the movie Dan in Real Life being read by Dan's daughter, Jane.
  • 2007: The song "Don't Go", by the Mad Caddies, features the couplet "A scarlet letter was sewn onto you long ago / But the way you felt no one will ever know"
  • 2008: shAme, a rock opera by Mark Governor based on "The Scarlet Letter" premieres in Los Angeles. It is a major reworking of his 1994 stage musical that was also produced in Boston in 2000 and as a radio production in Berlin in 2005. The 2000 version was endorsed and presented by the Nathaniel Hawthorne Society.
  • 2008: University of Central Arkansas in Conway, Arkansas presents the first regular opera adaptation of The Scarlet Letter.
  • 2008: Mystery Dope wrote a song called "The Ballad Of Hester Prynne".
  • 2008: Taylor Swift wrote the song "Love Story", mentioning "a scarlet letter."
  • 2010: Easy A a film adapted from the book, directed by Will Gluck and starring Emma Stone. A high school girl sees her life reflecting Hester Prynne. The book is also referenced during an English Class.
  • 2010: Paula Reed published the book "Hester, The Missing Years of 'The Scarlet Letter'", a novel/fantasy, filling in the missing years between Hester and Catherine's disappearance from Boston and Hester's return late in life.
  • 2010: The University of Indianapolis Theatre Department is reworking/reproducing the rock musical "shAme"
  • 2010: The recording artist, Abdominal, along with The Obliques, created a song which summarizes the plot of The Scarlet Letter. It is called "The Scarlet Letter SparkTune", and was released by BookTune Records, in collaboration with SparkNotes.
  • 2010: On 29 October Intiman Theatre of Seattle premiered The Scarlet Letter, a new adaptation of Hawthorne's book by Naomi Iizuka and directed by Lear deBessonet.The story is largely told from the point of view of a grown-up Pearl looking back at what happened in her childhood.
  • 2010: APPEARANCES - LESSON IN SCARLETT is a poem that references The Scarlet Letter. It is permanently archived in The Hypertexts 1 and was written by Vermont poet, Sieglinde Wood.