The new Puritans

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne has been standard high school reading for decades. In the novel, Hester Prynne, the adulterer forced to wear the scarlet "A" as a sign of her community's disapproval, and her daughter Pearl, the product of the adulterous affair, are ostracized by 17th-century Boston society as punishment for Hester's violation of Puritan social mores.

The novel serves as a vehicle for high school students to discuss societal and religious values, whether sin can be forgiven, and whether a community's sometimes formalistic definitions of who is "good" or "bad" accurately reflect reality (Prynne spends her life helping the sick and the poor, but nevertheless spends a lifetime isolated from the church and her community).