THE SCARLET LETTER
PLOT
The Scarlet Letter, published in 1850, was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and is generally considered his masterpiece. It is set in a Puritan Community of XVII-century Boston, Massachusetts (in New England) and tells the story of Hester Prynne, a beautiful young woman coming from Europe who, separated accidentally from her husband (who makes him call Roger Chillingworth) for a long period, has a love affair with the pious young minister of the Community (Arthur Dimmesdale) and has baby (Pearl) from him. Hester's husband is much older than her and everybody in the Community knows he had sent her ahead to America, but he never arrived in Boston. He is believed he has been lost at sea and nobody actually knows how he looks like. Throughout all the novel Hester refuses to reveal her lover’s name, despite the judging court’s repeated requests, and so she is charged with committing adultery. The punishment she deserves is to be daily exposed to public shame on the market square standing on a scaffold with the baby in her arms. In addition to that she has to wear the letter "A" embroidered in scarlet on her chest. The letter should stand for "adulteress" but it is immediately clear that it may stand for many other symbols. She fiercely faces the punishment even if the initial hostility of people is actually very huge. Among the crowd looking at her Hester notices her husband’s face; he will reveal his true identity to no one but Hester, whom he has sworn to secrecy. R. Chillingworth, who is now practicing medicine, has eventually settled in Boston, and is going to take his revenge. Hester, who goes to live out of Boston in a small cottage on the outskirts of the town, struggles to build a new life based on repentance and dignity, decided to keep silence on her secrets. She grows up Pearl alone and the young girl immediately shows a strong, determined quite devilish character; the Community officials attempts to take the young girl away from her mother, but minister Dimmesdale, thanks to his eloquency, convinces them to give up from their proposal. Dimmesdale starts showing a strange suffering, something like a mysterious heart trouble mixed with psychological distress. Chillingworth offers his help to him and the two men go to live in the same house. Of course Chillingworth is only trying to find the truth that he already suspects and he hopes to hold him to his responsibility. One day, taking advantage of Dimmesdale’s sleep, Chillingworth dicovers an "A" stripped of the man’s breast flash and he is eventually convinced of his culpability. As long as Dimmesdale’s health conditions worsen, Hester’s pious and humble behaviour earns her a reprive from the scorn of the Community. One night, while Hester and Pearl are coming back from a wake on a deathbed, they happen to see Dimmesdale standing on the town scaffold. As the three remain together linking their hands, Pearls asks him to reveal the truth publicly.
Hester, Pearl and Dimmesdale going away from the scaffold
He refuses it and a meteor marks a red "A" in the night sky. All the people who see that unusual sign are convinced that the letter marked stands for "angel", as in the same night an important person of the Community had died. Of course Dimmesdale’s interpretation is completely different because he is convinced that the meaning is "adultery". Hester is very worried about the minister’s conditions and decides to go to her husband to ask him for help.
Hester asking Chillingworth for help
As Chillingworth refuses it, she organizes a meeting with Dimmesdale in the forest, to tell him all the truth about Chillingworth’s identity. They plan to fly to Europe to live as a family and Hester organizes their flight. A bit relieved at the idea of their plan, Hester removes the scarlet letter from her and lets down her hair, while Dimmesdale kisses the young girl on her forehead. Pearl’s reaction is unexpected: not recognizing her mother, she starts crying until Hester puts the letter back on her dress and runs to wash her face off in the nearby brook. The following day Dimmesdale is expected to pronounce an important sermon and while he is doing that he goes on the scaffold, opens his gown, reveals the scar on his chest and dies. Hester and Pearl leave Boston and only Hester will return back, many years after, to resume her charitable work still wearing the scarlet letter. Pearl is believed to have got married in Europe where she may live happy and rich. Chillingworth, frustrated in his revenge, dies one year after Dimmesdale’s death. Hester now is loved by everybody and when she dies she is buried in a new grave near "an old and sunken one" (Dimmesdale’s grave). The two tombs, however, are side by side but "yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle." But one tombstone serves for the two and it was decorated with a letter "A".
We may say that during all the novel, Hawthorne tries to explore the ideas of grace, legalism, sin, and guilt and this is not a conventional love story at all.
The Scarlet Letter is prefaced by a long part titled "The Custom-House" in which the narrator, a bored employee in the Salem Custom House (Massachusetts), claims to have found some papers, (a "manuscript "), that tell the story of a woman who lived there a couple of centuries before, Hester Prynne. Together with the papers the narrator finds a fine material scarlet letter, a capital "A", richly embroidered in gold. He also adds that when he happens to place it on his breast he feels a mysterious and horrible sensation as the letter it gave off a "burning heat...as if the letter were not of red cloth, but red hot iron." With these documents, the custom employee also finds the death certificate of Anne Hutchinson, previously believed to have been destroyed by the Puritan church leaders as they tried to cover up her brutal murder two years earlier. The package containing all that once belonged to Surveyor Jonathan Pue who served the Salem Custom House in about 1750 and who reports everything. When the narrator loses his job at the Custom House, he decides to write a fictional account of the events recorded in the manuscript, that is to say The Scarlet Letter.
Nathaniel Hawthorne actually worked in the Salem Custom House in for several years, and he actually lost his post. However the real existence of the documents described in the novel is a literary device, a preface built to increase curiosity in the reader and to add a fantastic shade to the novel.
Hawthorne faced one of the most "risqué" themes of his age, adultery, but for its psychological depth and the attempt to explore the sense of sin – so vividly felt in the USA - the book soon became a best-seller and the first mechanized printing of The Scarlet Letter, 2,500 volumes, sold out within ten days.
(Isabella Marinaro)
