The Scarlet Letter
All page references are to the Penguin paperback edition of the
novel; other editions will vary.
Plot summary: The novel “begins” twice. The first beginning is the short story “The Custom House,” in which Nathaniel Hawthorne describes his distrust of his Puritan ancestors, whom he says were “bitter persecutors” (12). He feels “shame upon myself for their sakes,” because he thinks that they were too severe in their punishments of people whose views differed from their own. One ancestor in particular, who presided over the Salem witch trials, was so harsh in his persecution of women suspected of being witches that Hawthorne says “their blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon him” (12). In other words, Hawthorne does not have a very high opinion of his Puritan ancestors because they were so quick to judge others and so strict in their laws. This description of Hawthorne’s past is important, because Hester Prynne’s story is set during the time of the Puritans, at the end of the seventeenth century, and thus the strictness and harshness that Hawthorne describes in “The Custom House” is part of the society that punishes Hester for what they of as her sins.
The rest of “The Custom House” describes how Hawthorne got his office job at the Custom House because of his political connections, but it also describes how “numbing” he finds the job, because what he really wants to do is be a writer. Being a writer, however, is not something that people in his family approve of, and it does not yet provide enough of an income to support his family. Digging around in the rubbish of the Custom House one day, however, he finds a piece of cloth the scarlet “A” on it, along with the narrative of “Mr. Surveyor Pue” (32). While it is in fact historically accurate that the novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne did have a government job for a few years, the scarlet letter and Mr. Surveyor Pue are imaginary figures—although for his purposes as a writer, Hawthorne wants us to think that this is a true story, because he wants to explain aspects of U.S. history that are perhaps not entirely flattering. (We like to think of the Puritans, for instance, as the Pilgrims and associate them with Thanksgiving and so forth, instead of the harsh, judgmental images that are portrayed in the novel.) As he reads what Mr. Surveyor Pue has written, Hawthorne thinks to himself “there seemed to be here the groundwork of a tale” (33), and so he begins to write the story of Hester Prynne. That story becomes the novel The Scarlet Letter, which begins with the images of the prison and the rosebush. Hawthorne has the time to write the story because he loses his job at the Custom House after the elections—a different political party comes to power and they want their own people to have the cushy jobs—so Hawthorne is unemployed, and says that his memories of working at the Custom House “lies like a dream behind me.”
The Scarlet Letter itself begins with “The Prison Door,” a rather gloomy setting. In the early chapters of the novel, we find out that Hester Prynne, a beautiful and unmarried young woman, has given birth to a child. According to Puritan law, this is punishable by death, but the judges of the town have decided to punish her by making her stand on the scaffold (the pillory) for three hours in front of the entire town, and by making her wear a scarlet “A” on her chest for the rest of her life. Hester has refused to tell anyone who the father of the child is, even though the judges say that her sentence might be alleviated slightly if she names the person who has sinned with her. While Hester is standing on the scaffold, being heckled at by the rest of the townspeople, a stranger comes into the town square and asks someone what is going on. The stranger, who calls himself Roger Chillingsworth, hears Hester’s story and gazes at her over the crowd. Hester sees him and the two of them exchange a long glance.
Chillingsworth comes to the prison where Hester is being kept, saying that he is a doctor. He gives Hester’s daughter, Pearl, something to calm her down, and he and Hester have a long conversation. It turns out that several years earlier, in England, Chillingsworth (which is not his real name) and Hester were married, and that she had come to Massachusetts before Chillingsworth, while he settled things in England, intending to join her shortly. The two of them agree that they have “wronged each other” (69)—Hester because she married Chillingsworth without loving him, and Chillingsworth for marrying such a young woman when he knew she could do better. But he too wants to know the identity of Pearl’s father and Hester refuses to tell him. Chillingsworth scares Hester when he pledges to find out who the man is; she asks if he were the Black Man (70) who lives in the woods—meaning, is he the devil? She promises, however, not to reveal the nature of her relationship with Chillingsworth, so that he doesn’t have to face the dishonor of being married to a “faithless wife.”
The identity of Pearl’s father remains a secret for several chapters, as we watch Hester settle into her life as an outcast. She lives on the outside of town, doing needlework to support herself. Her sewing is in much demand by people of the town, although no one ever asks her to make a bridal gown—they think of her as too sinful a woman to make such a garment. Hester’s daughter, Pearl is rather wild; the town thinks of her as a little imp. Pearl is also thought to be strange because Hester dresses her in beautiful elaborate clothing at a time when children wore very plain dark garments, much like their parents. Pearl wears bright colors with elaborate embroidery—Hester’s artistic needlework finds an outlet in creating clothes for her daughter. Pearl is also very much associated with nature, rather than with society. This conflict, between nature and society, is one of the central conflicts in the novel. Hawthorne is interested in the difference between natural law—our instincts and emotions—and social law—what society says we should and should not do. Hester’s life illustrates what happens when emotions or natural feelings are punished by social laws; her punishment also illustrates that “law” is not always “just.”
Chillingsworth becomes friends with the young minister, Reverend Dimmesdale, who has a promising career in front of him as a clergyman. Remember that Puritan society was governed by both the church and politics, but that the church ultimately had more power than the government. Puritan theology is a very harsh Protestant belief system that disparaged other forms of worship. This is why there are negative references to “Papists,” and to Catholics—the Puritans thought that the Catholics were not true believers; they distrusted the elaborate Catholic masses and the statues, crosses, stained glass, beautiful priests’ robes and other such elements of Catholic ceremonies. A Puritan church inside was absolutely plain, more like a meeting hall than a church, and there were no ornaments whatsoever. A Puritan minister could have tremendous power over his congregation because it was in his power to designate whether or not someone was a sinner—and that person could be exiled or even killed, as a result. Dimmesdale is a handsome man, but weak and sickly; Chillingsworth becomes his friend and his doctor, although we get the feeling that his interest in Dimmesdale is not completely positive—he seems to have some sort of ulterior motive. And certainly Dimmesdale seems distraught about something, upset about something that he will not discuss with his new friend. Chillingsworth seems changed by the time he spends with Dimmesdale, and eventually the town notices that the doctor’s face has “something ugly and evil” in it and they begin to suspect that perhaps the doctor is “Satan himself or Satan’s emissary” (end of Ch 9, 112). Chillingworth is also called “the leech,” which refers to the fact that it used to be considered good medicine to “bleed” patients by attaching bloodsuckers (or leeches) to the afflicted parts of their body.
Eventually we realize that Dimmesdale is Hester’s lover and Pearl’s father, although he has never stepped forward to admit what his society would think of as a crime. His guilt is eating away at him, however, and is the reason why he seems ill all the time. Dimmesdale and Hester have a reconciliation in forest, however, in which they promise to run away together, back to England, where they can live without fear. They plan to leave on Election Day, which is a holiday, after Dimmesdale gives his sermon. Instead, however, Dimmesdale uses this occasion to confess his sins: he stands on the scaffold where Hester had stood at the beginning of the novel, and brings Hester and Pearl up to stand with him. Dimmesdale dies after his confession to the town, although he dies with a clear conscience. In the final chapter, we find out that Hester and Pearl go back to England, and that when Chillingsworth dies, he leaves all his money to Pearl. Hester eventually returns to the same New England town, although without Pearl, who remains in England. The novel ends with an image of Hester’s tombstone, which describes the letter that Hester wore on her chest.