7 Unusual Literary Style Icons

Hester Prynne, The Scarlet Letter

When Puritanical Hester Prynne is convicted of adultery and sentenced to a lifetime of wearing a scarlet letter A, no one in 17th Century Boston knew that she'd be setting the stage for LL Bean and the monogram craze. Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Hester struggles to keep the identity of her daughter Pearl's father a secret, she works as a seamstress sewing clothes for the local ladies, and she just basically mopes around Boston thinking about how everyone knows about her sin because she has to wear a a bright red A on her chest. If only Hester had had the insight to know that committing adultery and being punished with a permanent monogram would later inspire a world-wide fad of having your initials embroidered on everything, maybe she would've been a bit more easy on herself throughout the book. [Photo via]