The Scarlet Letter Part 1

Public shaming and found footage

At the start, I’m going to be a bit more open about my sins than Hester was. I didn’t read the preface to The Scarlet Letter. I started to! Then I realized it wasn’t going to get any more interesting, so I started to skim it.

I dipped in every once in a while, when it looked like Hawthorne was going to make some point or connect with the actual novel. I thoroughly read the part where he finds the scarlet letter “A” and reads the scant contemporaneous notes. And I thought it was real. Or at least partially real. Finding the embroidered letter, if not the names.

So, your guide in this read along did not read the entire beginning and thought the fictional framing device was literal…. Here we go!

Chapters 1 and 2

The novel proper starts outside of the prison house, with an iconic focus on the rosebush stubbornly growing nearby. Our protagonist, Hester Prynne, emerges from the prison, carrying a baby in front of her breast, hiding the mark forced upon her by the legal and religious leaders of her community.

Hester realizes there is no hiding the mark: a bold, scarlet letter A, embroidered to the breast of her simple black dress. Deciding to give the judgmental surrounding crowd the show they came for, she walks as proudly as she can manage toward the scaffold, where she will stand under public scrutiny for several hours—the second part of her punishment, after the “A” and her time in prison (not to mention the unexpected baby, but perhaps there’s a debate as to whether or not the child is a “punishment.”)

Upon the scaffold, Hester is confronted by men and women alike. The women—unsurprisingly to any woman in history—are more bloodthirsty than the men. Several wives huddle together, saying Hester should have had her forehead branded with the letter, if the law was too squeamish to kill her outright. They think their men are going soft, to allow this sinner something so movable as embroidery to mark her shame. A younger woman among them shyly begs them to be merciful, but the elders won’t hear of it.

Chapters 3 and 4

Our sinner takes her stand above the crowd, going in and out of memories as her mind tries to shield her from her neighbors’ righteous stares. As she returns to the present moment, she is stunned to see a man in the crowd, matching the description of one from her reverie. At the back of the crowd, this not-so-strange-stranger quizzes a local man about the proceedings, learning that Hester is a married woman whose husband vanished on the crossing from Amsterdam to New England. In his absence, she has borne this baby and won’t reveal the father’s name. Her punishment is to bear this public ridicule and to wear the embroidered letter “A” upon her breast for the rest of her life.

Before Hester can process this man’s presence in the crowd, her attention is called to the religious and public figures sitting above her scaffold. An elder of their church and her local priest—Dimmesdale—move to ask Hester again if she will not reveal her child’s father, so he can stand punishment on the scaffold with her. She refuses, saying neither the community nor her own daughter will ever learn the father’s name. Dimmesdale, whose reputation has been stained by this sinner’s existence in his flock, seems especially keen for her to give the name, saying, perhaps, that the man is too cowardly to reveal himself but would stand at her side if she named him. Hester refuses and stands silently on the scaffold until the guards return her and her infant to their cell.

Back inside, Hester succumbs to something like a panic attack, also agitating her daughter. The stranger she saw in the crowd—a doctor, being ransomed by the Native Americans who held him for the last few years—is also staying in the prison, since there is no hotel or inn for guests.

He visits their cell and offers medication for the shaky pair, but Hester is wary of his aid, wondering if he might not poison her and her daughter in revenge. For it turns out, this stranger is Hester’s long lost husband, returned under a pseudonym. He promises that he means her no harm. In fact, he laments marrying Hester at all, since he was so old and she so young, there was almost no chance of their union being a happy one.

After treating them, he implores Hester again to reveal her lover’s name. He does not want revenge on her—he releases her—but he will have retribution from the man who has stolen from him. Hester still refuses to speak, and her now former husband departs.

Side Note

I’m having trouble remembering any character’s name, other than Hester. If you’re with me, this might help:

• Hester Prynne: Our protagonist.

• Roger Chillingworth: The husband (The “Stranger/Doctor”). He chooses this pseudonym specifically to hide his identity.

• Arthur Dimmesdale: The young, revered minister (the one who was “especially keen” for her to name the father).

• Governor Bellingham: The community’s stiff political leader.

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