The Scarlet Letter Summary

The Scarlet Letter

                                                                                By:  Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hester is being led to the scaffold, where she is to be publicly shamed for having committed adultery. Hester is forced to wear the letter A on her gown at all times. She has stitched a large scarlet Aonto her dress with gold thread, giving the letter an air of elegance. Hester carries Pearl, her daughter, with her. On the scaffold she is asked to reveal the name of Pearl's father, but she refuses. In the crowd Hester recognizes her husband from Amsterdam, Roger Chillingworth.

Chillingworth visits Hester after she is returned to the prison. He tells her that he will find out who the man was, and he will read the truth on the man's heart. Chillingworth then forces her to promise never to reveal his true identity as her cuckolded husband.

Hester moves into a cottage bordering the woods. She and Pearl live there in relative solitude. Hester earns her money by doing stitchwork for local dignitaries, but she often spends her time helping the poor and sick. Pearl grows up to be wild, even refusing to obey her mother.

Roger Chillingworth earns a reputation as a good physician. He uses his reputation to get transferred into the same home as Arthur Dimmesdale, an ailing minister. Chillingworth eventually discovers that Dimmesdale is the true father of Pearl, at which point he spends every moment trying to torment the minister. One night Dimmesdale is so overcome with shame about hiding his secret that he walks to the scaffold where Hester was publicly humiliated. He stands on the scaffold and imagines the whole town watching him with a letter emblazoned on his chest. While standing there, Hester and Pearl arrive. He asks them to stand with him, which they do. Pearl then asks him to stand with her the next day at noon.

When a meteor illuminates the three people standing on the scaffold, they see Roger Chillingworth watching them. Dimmesdale tells Hester that he is terrified of Chillingworth, who offers to take Dimmesdale home. Hester realizes that Chillingworth is slowly killing Dimmesdale and that she has to help Dimmesdale.

A few weeks later, Hester sees Chillingworth picking herbs in the woods. She tells him that she is going to reveal the fact that he is her husband to Dimmesdale. He tells her that Providence is now in charge of their fates, and she may do as she sees fit. Hester takes Pearl into the woods, where they wait for Dimmesdale to arrive. He is surprised to see them, but he confesses to Hester that he is desperate for a friend who knows his secret. She comforts him and tells him Chillingworth's true identity. He is furious but finally agrees that they should run away together. He returns to town with more energy than he has ever shown before.

Hester finds a ship that will carry all three of them, and it works out that the ship is due to sail the day after Dimmesdale gives his Election Sermon. But on the day of the sermon, Chillingworth persuades the ship's captain to take him on board as well. Hester does not know how to get out of this dilemma.

Dimmesdale gives his Election Sermon, and it receives the highest accolades of any preaching he has ever performed. He then unexpectedly walks to the scaffold and stands on it, in full view of the gathered masses. Dimmesdale calls Hester and Pearl to come to him. Chillingworth tries to stop him, but Dimmesdale laughs and tells him that he cannot win.

Hester and Pearl join Dimmesdale on the scaffold. Dimmesdale then tells the people that he is also a sinner like Hester, and that he should have assumed his rightful place by her side over seven years earlier. He then rips open his shirt to reveal a scarlet letter on his flesh. Dimmesdale falls to his knees and dies on the scaffold.

Hester and Pearl leave the town for a while, and several years later Hester returns. No one hears from Pearl again, but it is assumed that she has gotten married and has had children in Europe. Hester never removes her scarlet letter, and when she passes away she is buried in the site of King's Chapel. 

The Birthday party brief summary

The Birthday party

                By: Harold Pinter

Harold Pinter's The Birthday Party, was the playwright's first commercially-produced, full-length play. He began writing the work after acting in a theatrical tour, during which, in Eastbourne, England, he had lived in "filthy insane digs." There he became acquainted with "a great bulging scrag of a woman" and a man who stayed in the seedy place. The flophouse became the model for the rundown boarding house of the play and the woman and her tenant the models, respectively, for the characters of Meg Boles and Stanley Weber.

In an earlier work, The Room, a one-act play, Pinter had worked on themes and motifs that he would carry over into The Birthday Party and some of his succeeding plays. Among these themes are the failure of language to serve as an adequate tool of communication, the use of place as a sanctum that is violated by menacing intruders, and the surrealistic confusions that obscure or distort fact.

Directed by Pinter himself, the finished full-length play premiered in Cambridge, England, at the Arts Theater, on April 28, 1958. There and on tour in Oxford it was quite successful, but when, under the direction of Peter Wood, it moved to London and later opened, on May 19, at the Lyric Opera House in Hammersmith, it met with harsh reviews and closed down within a week. Among the reviewers, only Harold Hobson of the Sunday Times saw much promise in the play. He thought that Pinter had considerable originality and was "the most disturbing and arresting talent in theatrical London." However, his review appeared too late to do the production any good. The show was already off the boards, done in by abysmal attendance, including one matinee audience of six, and persistently hostile reviews. Most critics opined that Pinter floundered in obscurity and suffered from the negative influence of Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot), Eugene Ionesco (The Bald Prima Donna), and other avant-garde writers.

Pinter would later marvel at the fact that in London the play was "completely massacred by the critics" but noted that it was the only maltreatment he had received from reviewers and that it never dimmed his interest in writing. The work, in fact, became the dramatist's first full-length "comedy of menace," a group of plays that secured Pinter's reputation as a premier, avant-garde playwright. Subsequent productions were much better received, including the play's 1964 revival at London's Aldwych Theater and its 1968 Broadway premier at the Booth Theater in New York. By the mid-1960s, the burgeoning appreciation of absurdist drama and the success of other plays by Pinter, including The Dumbwaiter (1959) and The Caretaker (1960), had secured for The Birthday Party a reputation as a classic in the dramatic genre that literary critic Martin Esslin dubbed the Theater of the Absurd.

Waiting for Godot brief summary

Waiting for Godot

         

       By: Samuel Becket

Summary of the Play:
                

           Waiting for Godot is a play in two acts. Act I begins on a country road by a tree. It is evening. Estragon, an old man, is sitting on a low mound trying to remove his boot. Vladimir, another old man, joins him. They begin to chat.

They have apparently known each other for years. Once perhaps respectable, they are now homeless, debilitated, and often suicidal. They wonder out loud why they did not kill themselves years ago; they consider the possibility of doing it today. They are waiting for someone they call “Godot”. While they wait, they share conversation, food, and memories.

Two other elderly men, Pozzo and Lucky, arrive on the scene. It is clear that Pozzo is the master, and Lucky is the slave. Upon command, the slave dances and thinks out loud for the entertainment of the others, until he is forcibly silenced.

After Lucky and Pozzo depart, a boy arrives. He tells Estragon and Vladimir that Godot will not be there today, but will be there tomorrow. He leaves, and they continue to wait.

The second act is almost the same as the first. The tree has sprouted leaves, Estragon and Vladimir chat while they wait for Godot, and Pozzo and Lucky arrive again. This time, Pozzo is blind and helpless, and Lucky is mute.

After some interaction, Pozzo and Lucky leave, and the boy arrive. He has the same message as before. Godot will be there tomorrow. Estragon and Vladimir are left to wait as before.

To the lighthouse brief summary

To the lighthouse

By: Virginian Woolf

·        Plot summary

Part I: The Window

The novel is set in the Ramsays' summer home in the Hebrides, on the Isle of Skye. The section begins with Mrs Ramsay assuring her son James that they should be able to visit the lighthouse on the next day. This prediction is denied by Mr Ramsay, who voices his certainty that the weather will not be clear, an opinion that forces a certain tension between Mr and Mrs Ramsay, and also between Mr Ramsay and James. This particular incident is referred to on various occasions throughout the section, especially in the context of Mr and Mrs Ramsay's relationship.

The Ramsays and their eight children have been joined at the house by a number of friends and colleagues. One of them, Lily Briscoe, begins the novel as a young, uncertain painter attempting a portrait of Mrs. Ramsay and James. Briscoe finds herself plagued by doubts throughout the novel, doubts largely fed by the claims of Charles Tensely, another guest, who asserts that women can neither paint nor write. Tensely himself is an admirer of Mr Ramsay, a philosophy professor, and his academic treatises.

The section closes with a large dinner party. When Augustus Carmichael, a visiting poet, asks for a second serving of soup, Mr Ramsay nearly snaps at him. Mrs Ramsay is herself out of sorts when Paul Rayley and Minta Doyle, two acquaintances whom she has brought together in engagement, arrive late to dinner, as Minta has lost her grandmother's brooch on the beach.

Part II: Time Passes

The second section gives a sense of time passing, absence, and death. Ten years pass, during which the First World War begins and ends. Mrs Ramsay dies, as do two of her children - Prue dies from complications of childbirth, and Andrew is killed in the war. Mr Ramsay is left adrift without his wife to praise and comfort him during his bouts of fear and anguish regarding the longevity of his philosophical work. This section is told from an omniscient point of view and occasionally from Mrs. McCabe’s point of view. Mrs. McCabe worked in the Ramsay's house since the beginning, and thus provides a clear view of how things have changed in the time the summer house has been unoccupied.

Part III: The Lighthouse

In the final section, “The Lighthouse,” some of the remaining Ramsays and other guests

return to their summer home ten years after the events of Part I. Mr Ramsay finally plans on taking the long-delayed trip to the lighthouse with daughter Cam(illa) and son James (the remaining Ramsay children are virtually unmentioned in the final section). The trip almost does not happen, as the children are not ready, but they eventually set off. As they travel, the children are silent in protest at their father for forcing them to come along. However, James keeps the sailing boat steady and rather than receiving the harsh words he has come to expect from his father, he hears praise, providing a rare moment of empathy between father and son; Cam's attitude towards her father changes also, from resentment to eventual admiration.

They are accompanied by the sailor Macalister and his son, who catches fish during the trip. The son cuts a piece of flesh from a fish he has caught to use for bait, throwing the injured fish back into the sea.

While they set sail for the lighthouse, Lily attempts to finally complete the painting she has held in her mind since the start of the novel. She reconsiders her memory of Mrs and Mr Ramsay, balancing the multitude of impressions from ten years ago in an effort to reach towards an objective truth about Mrs Ramsay and life itself. Upon finishing the painting (just as the sailing party reaches the lighthouse) and seeing that it satisfies her, she realises that the execution of her vision is more important to her than the idea of leaving some sort of legacy in her work.

The Wasteland brief summary

The Wasteland

By: T.S.Eliot

The Wasteland poem divided into five parts:

1. The burial of the dead

2. Game of the chess

3. The fire sermon

4. Death by water

5. What the thunder said

Brief summary of the Wasteland:

The Waste Land is a long poem by T. S. Eliot. It is widely regarded as one of the most important poems of the 20th century and a central text in Modernist poetry. Published in 1922, the 434-line poem first appeared in the United Kingdom in the October issue of The Criterion and in the United States in the November issue of The Dial. It was published in book form in December 1922. Among its famous phrases are "April is the cruellest month", "I will show you fear in a handful of dust", and the mantra in the Sanskrit language "Shantih shantih shantih".

Eliot's poem loosely follows the legend of the Holy Grail and the Fisher King combined with vignettes of contemporary British society. Eliot employs many literary and cultural allusions from the Western canon, Buddhism and the Hindu Upanishads. Because of this, critics and scholars regard the poem as obscure. The poem shifts between voices of satire and prophecy featuring abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location, and time and conjuring of a vast and dissonant range of cultures and literatures.

The poem's structure is divided into five sections. The first section, The Burial of the Dead, introduces the diverse themes of disillusionment and despair. The second, A Game of Chess, employs vignettes of several characters—alternating narrations—that address those themes experientially. The Fire Sermon, the third section, offers a philosophical meditation in relation to the imagery of death and views of self-denial in juxtaposition influenced by Augustine of Hippo and eastern religions. After a fourth section that includes a brief lyrical petition, the culminating fifth section, What the Thunder Said, concludes with an image of judgment.

Silas Marner: novel

Introduction and brief Summary of Silas Marner:

‘Silas Marner’ is a fine novel by George Eliot. It is a story about how a great wrong was set right. Silas Marner was a weaver by occupation. He was a young man of fervid and exemplary life. He was a hardworking and honest man but he was subjected to sudden attacks that left him in a kind of sleep in which he did not know what was happing around him. He did not what he did during the sleep. He was a member of a religious community. However, a false charge of theft was brought against him by a friend. The friend acted like an enemy that almost ruined his life. Silas was utterly disappointed and left the town forever. He went to a village called raveloe. It was an agricultural village with peaceful surrounding.

At raveloe he lived in seclusion away from people. Some of his neighbours looked at him suspiciously. He lived by himself meeting almost n one. He had earned a good about of gold (money) which he counted again and again. This gave him joy and company he badly needed. He denied himself all comforts and hoarded as much gold as he could. Thus, accumulation of money and gold became the purpose of his life.

But one day, this only joy of his life was also taken away from him. Squire Cass reprobate son stole gold from his cottage. His name was Dunstan Cass. His elder brother was Godfrey. He was also a man of loose morals. He had married a low type of woman who was addicted to intoxicant called laudanum. Godfrey loved this charming woman named molly. He kept his marriage secret and bribed his brother to help him in keeping it a secret.

The loss of money made silas’ life very miserable. Efforts were made to trace the theft but it was in vain. Dunstan had disappeared from the village for long none suspected him as he often disappeared from the village for long periods. In the meantime, Godfrey began to love Nancy. Molly on New Year’s Eve died near silas marner’s cottage in the snow. Her child Eppie found its silas marner’s house.

Silas adopted the child and brought her up. She became an apple of his eye. He began to love her more than anything else. Godgrey was relieved at the death of his wife molly as his way to marriage with Nancy was now clear. He kept this fact secret from Nancy fearing that she would not marry him if she came to know that Eppie was Molly’s daughter through Godfrey.

Godfrey and Nancy were married and lived peacefully but they were not blessed with a child. Godfrey suggested to Nancy that they should adopt Eppie(his own daughter by his former wife) Nancy was against adoption and did not agree to adoption of Eppie.

Eppie turned into a charming young girl of eighteen. She knew no one as father except silas. She knew that he loved her selflessly and devotedly. She too loved him very dearly. Silas was brought into contact with neighbours through her.

In the end, Godfrey told the secret of Eppie to his wife Nancy. Dunstan’s dead body was found drowned in a pond near Silas Marner’s cottage with the stolen money.  Godfrey was under the evil influence of his evil-minded brother. Now he was free from that evil. Godfrey and Nancy went to silas’s cottage and claimed Eppie as their rightful child. Eppie refused to acknowledge anyone as her father except silas. She refused to go with Godfrey. She married an honest, good natured young man and lived happily with silas Marner. The novel ends with a note of happiness.

‘Silas Marner’ describes peaceful rural life of Raveloe village very vividly. It is a charming and widely read book that shows George Eliot’s love for simple rustic life. The moral element dominates the novel. There is a fine mingling of humour and pathos. It is considered a fairy story because of its dreamy quality. It is also an allegorical tale depicting the victory of the good and the virtuous in the end. George Eliot believed in the law of nemesis and poetic justice. She believed that virtues are rewarded and vices are inevitably punished. 

Wuthering Heights novel

Wuthering Heights

In the late winter months of 1801, a man named Lockwood rents a manor house called Thrushcross Grange in the isolated moor country of England. Here, he meets his dour landlord, Heathcliff, a wealthy man who lives in the ancient manor of Wuthering Heights, four miles away from the Grange. In this wild, stormy countryside, Lockwood asks his housekeeper, Nelly Dean, to tell him the story of Heathcliff and the strange denizens of Wuthering Heights. Nelly consents, and Lockwood writes down his recollections of her tale in his diary; these written recollections form the main part of Wuthering Heights.

           

                      

Nelly remembers her childhood. As a young girl, she works as a servant at Wuthering Heights for the owner of the manor, Mr. Earnshaw, and his family. One day, Mr. Earnshaw goes to Liverpool and returns home with an orphan boy whom he will raise with his own children. At first, the Earnshaw children—a boy named Hindley and his younger sister Catherine—detest the dark-skinned Heathcliff. But Catherine quickly comes to love him, and the two soon grow inseparable, spending their days playing on the moors. After his wife’s death, Mr. Earnshaw grows to prefer Heathcliff to his own son, and when Hindley continues his cruelty to Heathcliff, Mr. Earnshaw sends Hindley away to college, keeping Heathcliff nearby.

Three years later, Mr. Earnshaw dies, and Hindley inherits Wuthering Heights. He returns with a wife, Frances, and immediately seeks revenge on Heathcliff. Once an orphan, later a pampered and favored son, Heathcliff now finds himself treated as a common laborer, forced to work in the fields. Heathcliff continues his close relationship with Catherine, however. One night they wander to Thrushcross Grange, hoping to tease Edgar and Isabella Linton, the cowardly, snobbish children who live there. Catherine is bitten by a dog and is forced to stay at the Grange to recuperate for five weeks, during which time Mrs. Linton works to make her a proper young lady. By the time Catherine returns, she has become infatuated with Edgar, and her relationship with Heathcliff grows more complicated.

When Frances dies after giving birth to a baby boy named Hareton, Hindley descends into the depths of alcoholism, and behaves even more cruelly and abusively toward Heathcliff. Eventually, Catherine’s desire for social advancement prompts her to become engaged to Edgar Linton, despite her overpowering love for Heathcliff. Heathcliff runs away from Wuthering Heights, staying away for three years, and returning shortly after Catherine and Edgar’s marriage.

When Heathcliff returns, he immediately sets about seeking revenge on all who have wronged him. Having come into a vast and mysterious wealth, he deviously lends money to the drunken Hindley, knowing that Hindley will increase his debts and fall into deeper despondency. When Hindley dies, Heathcliff inherits the manor. He also places himself in line to inherit Thrushcross Grange by marrying Isabella Linton, whom he treats very cruelly. Catherine becomes ill, gives birth to a daughter, and dies. Heathcliff begs her spirit to remain on Earth—she may take whatever form she will, she may haunt him, drive him mad—just as long as she does not leave him alone. Shortly thereafter, Isabella flees to London and gives birth to Heathcliff’s son, named Linton after her family. She keeps the boy with her there.

Thirteen years pass, during which Nelly Dean serves as Catherine’s daughter’s nursemaid at Thrushcross Grange. Young Catherine is beautiful and headstrong like her mother, but her temperament is modified by her father’s gentler influence. Young Catherine grows up at the Grange with no knowledge of Wuthering Heights; one day, however, wandering through the moors, she discovers the manor, meets Hareton, and plays together with him. Soon afterwards, Isabella dies, and Linton comes to live with Heathcliff. Heathcliff treats his sickly, whining son even more cruelly than he treated the boy’s mother.

Three years later, Catherine meets Heathcliff on the moors, and makes a visit to Wuthering Heights to meet Linton. She and Linton begin a secret romance conducted entirely through letters. When Nelly destroys Catherine’s collection of letters, the girl begins sneaking out at night to spend time with her frail young lover, who asks her to come back and nurse him back to health. However, it quickly becomes apparent that Linton is pursuing Catherine only because Heathcliff is forcing him to; Heathcliff hopes that if Catherine marries Linton, his legal claim upon Thrushcross Grange—and his revenge upon Edgar Linton—will be complete. One day, as Edgar Linton grows ill and nears death, Heathcliff lures Nelly and Catherine back to Wuthering Heights, and holds them prisoner until Catherine marries Linton. Soon after the marriage, Edgar dies, and his death is quickly followed by the death of the sickly Linton. Heathcliff now controls both Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. He forces Catherine to live at Wuthering Heights and act as a common servant, while he rents Thrushcross Grange to Lockwood.

Nelly’s story ends as she reaches the present. Lockwood, appalled, ends his tenancy at Thrushcross Grange and returns to London. However, six months later, he pays a visit to Nelly, and learns of further developments in the story. Although Catherine originally mocked Hareton’s ignorance and illiteracy (in an act of retribution, Heathcliff ended Hareton’s education after Hindley died), Catherine grows to love Hareton as they live together at Wuthering Heights. Heathcliff becomes more and more obsessed with the memory of the elder Catherine, to the extent that he begins speaking to her ghost. Everything he sees reminds him of her. Shortly after a night spent walking on the moors, Heathcliff dies. Hareton and young Catherine inherit Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange, and they plan to be married on the next New Year’s Day. After hearing the end of the story, Lockwood goes to visit the graves of Catherine and Heathcliff.

Wuthering Heights

In Wuthering Heights, Catherine falls in love with a boy named Heathcliff, her father adopts. Their love is doomed, and both are forced to marry other people for money. Catherine dies in childbirth, and Heathcliff joins her in death after enacting his revenge upon the next generation.

Heights summary key points:

In Wuthering Heights, Mr. Lockwood narrates his visit to Wuthering Heights and recalls dreaming of a ghostly child trying to come in through the windowpane.

Nelly, Lockwood’s housekeeper, recalls working at Wuthering Heights and witnessing Mr. Earnshaw adopting a boy. His daughter Catherine develops a close friendship with Heathcliff, but his son Hindley envies Heathcliff’s relationship to their father.

After Mr. Earnshaw dies, Hindley returns for the funeral and relegates Heathcliff to servant status.

Edgar and Catherine marry, and Heathcliff marries Edgar’s sister to inherit her money.

Catherine dies in childbirth. Edgar’s sister also dies after running away from Heathcliff’s maltreatment and giving birth to Linton.

Heathcliff gains ownership of the Earnshaw estate, Edgar and Linton die, and Heathcliff dies after realizing that he wishes to rejoin his beloved Catherine.