The Scarlet Letter

This is the founding drama of American conscience: what a community does to sinners, and what sinners do to themselves. Hawthorne turns a single embroidered letter into a mirror for hypocrisy, revenge, and the cost of hiding. Read it if you care about public shame versus private guilt—still the sharpest question in American life—and if you want prose that burns.

1. 1

   Act 1

   The Prison-Door and the Scaffold

   A crowd of bearded men and somber women in sad-colored garments stands outside a heavy oak prison door studded with iron spikes; beside it grows a wild rosebush, which the narrator offers as a 'sweet moral blossom' to sweeten the dark tale. Out of that door comes Hester Prynne, an infant in her arms, a scarlet 'A' embroidered in gold thread blazing on her breast. She climbs the scaffold in the marketplace to stand three hours of public shame for adultery. The women of the crowd are the cruelest: one young matron argues for branding or death, and all are angered by Hester's beauty and quiet dignity. Asked to name the child's father, Hester refuses—before Governor Bellingham, Reverend John Wilson, and her own minister, Arthur Dimmesdale, she vows she will never reveal him. Then she sees him: a small, misshapen, elderly man with one shoulder higher than the other, her husband, the English scholar who sent her ahead from Amsterdam and was presumed lost at sea. He signals her to keep his identity secret, asks a townsman her story, and chooses the alias Roger Chillingworth. His vow crackles through the square: 'He will be known!—he will be known!—he will be known!' That night in her cell, posing as a physician, he gives Hester and the baby a calming draught of herbs, admits their marriage was a wrong on both sides—he wed her young and hopeful while he was old and deformed—and demands the father's name. She refuses. He swears he will find the man anyway, and binds her to silence: 'Breath not, to any human soul, that thou didst ever call me husband!' She agrees, suspecting she will regret it.

2. 2

   Act 2

   The Needle, the Elf-Child, the Leech

   Released, Hester settles in a small thatched cottage on the outskirts of town and lives by her exquisite needlework—gloves for the governor, bands for ministers, even funeral shrouds, though no bridal veil will ever pass through her hands. Ostracism is constant: ministers preach at her in the street, children follow, and the letter gives her 'a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts.' Her daughter Pearl, named as being of great price—purchased with all she had—grows wild, capricious, impish, obsessed with the letter, pelting it with flowers. When word comes that the child may be taken from her, Hester delivers a pair of embroidered gloves to Governor Bellingham's hall and pleads her case, Pearl dressed in a crimson velvet tunic that mirrors the letter, the mansion's shining armor distorting her reflection so the 'A' looks huge. Asked who made her, Pearl answers that her mother plucked her off the wild rose bush by the prison door. Wilson wants the child removed, but Dimmesdale argues God gave her for Hester's punishment and salvation—and the governor yields. Meanwhile Dimmesdale's health fails, and Chillingworth takes lodgings with him as his physician; the town calls it Providence's mercy. The physician probes the minister's heart like a sexton delving into a grave, a miner hunting treasure, Satan stalking a soul. When Dimmesdale insists some men keep their hidden sins until the final judgment, Chillingworth presses—confession heals the wound—and Dimmesdale storms from the room. That night, pulling aside the sleeping minister's vestment, Chillingworth sees something on his chest that fills him with wild horror, and leaps up with a ghastly expression of joy: he has his man.

3. 3

   Act 3

   The Midnight Vigil and the Forest

   Chillingworth now holds Dimmesdale in his power and torments him with hints the minister cannot trace, though dread and suspicion gnaw at him without explanation. The guilt, paradoxically, makes his sermons more powerful—he feels a sympathy with all sinners—yet privately he scourges himself, fasts, and keeps vigils, unable to confess. One dead-of-night he climbs the scaffold where Hester stood and shrieks aloud, certain the whole town will wake; instead Hester and Pearl, returning from Governor Winthrop's deathbed, join him there. Pearl asks him to stand with them at noon tomorrow; he answers no—only at the day of judgment. A great red letter 'A' blazes in the sky; Dimmesdale reads it as his own sin, the town as 'Angel' for Winthrop's death, and the sexton, finding the minister's glove on the scaffold, returns it with just that remark. Seven years pass. The letter now reads 'Able' to many townspeople; Hester helps the poor and sick who still scorn her, and her thinking has gone past Puritan limits—she speculates the whole system of society must be torn down and rebuilt, and that her sin, paid for by penance, cannot bar her from heaven. Watching Chillingworth's face grow uglier and more devilish, she resolves to break her vow—'Let the black flower blossom as it may!' he says. In the forest she tells Dimmesdale the truth: this man is her husband. He cries out that he cannot endure the misery of so cunning an enemy, confesses his hypocrisy—his sin worse than hers because hidden—and she convinces him their penance is paid and they must flee by ship to Europe. She tears off the letter, hurls it toward the brook, lets down her long hair, and feels the forest sunshine flood over her: 'She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom!' Pearl refuses to cross the brook until the letter is back on and the hair down; then she kisses the letter.

4. 4

   Act 4

   Election Day and the Tombstone

   Dimmesdale walks back into town beset by strange temptations, nearly speaking blasphemous words to old acquaintances, yet he writes his Election Sermon with new power. On Election Day, Hester stands in the holiday crowd full of hope—until the shipmaster finds her: Chillingworth has booked passage on the same vessel to Europe, claiming to travel with Dimmesdale as his physician. The escape is known. Dimmesdale appears in the procession changed and full of energy, but Hester feels a strange distance; Pearl asks whether he will greet them. He does not—until the sermon ends. Then he calls Hester and Pearl to the scaffold, confesses his sin before the whole town, tears open his ministerial garment, and dies in Hester's arms. 'God knows; and He is merciful!' he tells the crowd, proving that mercy through the burning torture on his breast; he asks Pearl for a kiss, she gives it, and a 'great spell' seems broken. Witnesses quarrel forever after about what was on his chest: some swear a scarlet 'A', some say nothing, some a natural mark. Chillingworth kneels and cries that the man has escaped him. Within a year the physician is dead, his vengeance gone, leaving Pearl a large inheritance in New England and in Europe. Hester and Pearl depart; years later Hester returns alone to her cottage and resumes the letter, becoming a counselor to women who bring their sorrows to her. When she dies she is buried near Dimmesdale, and they share one slate tombstone: 'On a field, sable, the letter A, gules'—a black field bearing a red letter A. The narrator's moral: 'Be true! Be true! Be true!'

• HHester PrynneThe adulteress: proud, independent, a needleworker of genius who wears her punishment in gold thread. She refuses to name her lover, raises Pearl alone, absorbs seven years of scorn into quiet charity, and years later returns to become a counselor to women.
• AArthur DimmesdaleBoston's beloved young minister and Pearl's secret father, whose hidden guilt manifests as deteriorating health while sharpening his sermons. He cannot confess by day, only by night, until Election Day when he confesses and dies.
• RRoger ChillingworthHester's elderly, misshapen scholar-husband, presumed lost at sea, who arrives under an alias and becomes a physician, dedicating himself to psychologically torturing Dimmesdale. Seven years of revenge make his face uglier and more devilish.
• PPearlHester's wild, elfish daughter, named Pearl 'as being of great price—purchased with all she had—her only treasure.' She pelts the 'A' with flowers, asks questions about the letter and the minister, and will not cross a brook until the letter is back on and Hester's hair is down.

The Scarlet Letter 'A'

Embroidered in gold thread, it begins as the town's sentence—Adultery—and becomes 'Able' to many townspeople, 'Angel' to those who read the meteor, and finally the red letter on a black field carved on the shared tombstone. Its changing meaning tracks Hester's own arc from outcast to counselor to women.

The Scaffold

The marketplace scaffold hosts the novel's three key public scenes: Hester's initial punishment, the midnight vigil with Hester, Pearl, and Dimmesdale, and Dimmesdale's final confession and death. It represents public judgment and the need for confession.

The Forest

Outside the town's law, the forest is where truth can be spoken: Hester reveals her husband there, Dimmesdale admits his hypocrisy, and the letter comes off in a flood of sunshine. But freedom there is provisional—Pearl refuses to cross the brook until the letter is back on, and the plan hatched in the woods dies in the marketplace.

The Wild Rosebush

Growing beside the iron-spiked prison door, it is the narrator's 'sweet moral blossom' to sweeten the dark tale. Pearl answers that she was plucked by her mother off the wild rose bush by the prison door.

The ending refuses a single verdict. Dimmesdale confesses, and witnesses disagree: some swear they saw a scarlet 'A' on his chest, some say nothing, some say it was a natural mark. What is certain is the cost and the release: Pearl's kiss breaks a 'great spell,' Chillingworth's vengeance collapses, and the truth-teller dies. Hester returns alone to her cottage and resumes the scarlet letter, becoming a counselor to women who bring their sorrows to her. The tombstone seals it: one slate, black field, red letter, Hester buried near Dimmesdale's grave.

1. 1.Compare the three sinners—Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth: why does open shame heal while hidden guilt and hidden revenge destroy, and is the town's treatment of Hester any better than Chillingworth's torture of Dimmesdale?

Readers drawn to moral ambiguity, public shaming, and the birth of American fiction will find the source code here. Also anyone who has watched a community punish one person while ignoring the sins of everyone else.

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