Inspiration and Influence
According to popular tradition, the gravestone of Elizabeth Pain in Boston's King's Chapel Burying Ground was the inspiration for Hester Prynne's grave. Scholar Laurie Rozakis has argued that an alternate or additional source for the story may be Hester Craford, a woman flogged for fornication with John Wedg.
In various film adaptations of the novel, Prynne has been portrayed by actresses such as Lillian Gish, Sommer Parker, Meg Foster, Mary Martin, Sybil Thorndike, Senta Berger and Demi Moore. In the cult television Series Twin Peaks the name was also adopted as a pseudonym by the character Audrey Horne. Another literary figure using the surname Prynne is a woman who had an adulterous relations with a pastor in the novel A Month of Sundays by John Updike, part of his trilogy of novels based on characters in The Scarlet Letter. In the musical The Music Man, Harold Hill refers to Hester Prynne in the song "Sadder but Wiser Girl." He sings that he wants a girl with a "touch of sin." remarking "I hope, I pray, for Hester to win just one more A."
Read more about this topic: Hester Prynne
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