Rebellion or Reconciliation— A Study of Lives of the Saints and The Scarlet Letter

Nino Ricci, a Canadian writer of Italian heritage wrote a trilogy, starting with a book entitled Lives of the Saints (2015), which drew comparisons to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, prompting scholars to analyze the similarities between the two works. Both the two heroines, Christina in Lives of the Saints and Hester in The Scarlet Letter, engage in extramarital affairs, are pregnant with a baby, challenge the strict social norms of their villages, and are isolated from the community. Although Lives of the Saints is regarded as “Canadian The Scarlet Letter” [1], few scholars have compared the two novels with proofs and details. In particular, apart from the massive resemblances, the differences between the two novels have been neglected by most researchers. This paper aims to analyze the two novels from the process and results of the two heroines’ rebellion, comparing their silence and argument, reconciliation and rebellion, return and departure, and attempting to find the reasons behind those differences.