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Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne




Scarlet Letter



The Scarlet Letter Summary


The Scarlet Letter follows the public shaming and punishment of a young woman named Hester Prynne in mid-17th century Boston (a.k.a. the Massachusetts Bay Colony). When Hester becomes pregnant, everyone believes her to be guilty of adultery: she has been separated from her husband for two full years, and the baby cannot be his. The magistrates (local law enforcers) and ministers order her to wear a scarlet letter "A" on the bodice of her dress, so that everyone can know about her adultery.

The Scarlet Letter begins when Hester is briefly released from prison so that she can be paraded through town, displaying her scarlet "A" while standing on top of the town scaffold (a public stage). She carries her baby daughter, Pearl, in her arms. Pearl was born in prison. Hester steadfastly refuses to reveal the name of Pearl’s father, so that he might be saved from punishment.

Hester Prynne’s long lost husband arrives in the midst of this parade through town. He visits her in prison before her release and asks her not to tell anyone that he’s in town. His plan is to disguise himself so that he can ferret out and seek revenge on her lover.

Hester’s husband tells the townspeople that he’s a physician, and he adopts a fake name: Roger Chillingworth. Hester keeps his secret. Chillingworth soon realizes that the minister, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, is the likely father of Hester’s baby, and he haunts the minister’s mind and soul, day and night, for the next seven years.

The minister is too afraid to confess his sin publicly, but his guilt eats away at him; Chillingworth’s constant examination really makes him antsy. Seven years pass and, finally, Hester realizes the evil her husband has done to the man she loves, the father of her child. She reveals Chillingworth’s true identity to Dimmesdale, and the two concoct a plan to leave Boston and go to England, where they might hide from Hester’s husband and create a new life together.

The minister is ultimately unable to go through with the plan. Dimmesdale confesses his sin to the townspeople on the scaffold that had, seven years earlier, been the scene of Hester’s public shaming. His dying act is to throw open his shirt so that the scarlet A that he has carved onto his chest is revealed to his parishioners. Dimmesdale finds peace through confession.

When Chillingworth dies approximately a year after his rival, Dimmesdale, he leaves all his money and property to Pearl. Hester and Pearl finally escape the community where they have been outcasts for so many years and return to the Old World (a.k.a. England). However, many years later, Hester returns to the New England community that had been the site of her shame, resuming the scarlet letter of her own will.

When she dies, she is buried near the minister, and they share a gravestone. The gravestone contains an image, described as follows: "On a field, sable, the letter A, gules." In other words, marked on the headstone is a scarlet letter A drawn over a black background.