The Scarlet Letter is about a woman named Hester Prynne who lives in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1640s near the very beginning of the colonial period she has an adulterous affair and has a baby and the colony makes her wear a scarlet letter A on her chest for adulteress and treat her as an outcast she keeps the baby's father a secret but his identity comes out at the end of the book the first chapter is called the custom-house and it tells the story of how the author was working as the administrator of a custom
house in Salem when he found an embroidered letter a and some papers that tell Hester Prynne's story when he got fired from his job he found time to write The Scarlet Letter the first scene of the actual novel has Hester coming out of the jail with a baby in her arms and The Scarlet Letter a embroidered on her chest the baby is three months old Hester was in jail for adultery and since no one knows who the baby's father was we can assume she was discovered and sentenced to jail time when her pregnancy started to
show the first thing Hester has to do is stand on a scaffold where they keep a pillory which is a device for locking people up in public they don't lock her into the pillory but she has to stand on the platform for a long time with everyone staring at her eventually she sees someone at the edge of the crowd this man is her husband he had sent her ahead of him to Massachusetts while he stayed behind in Europe and when he tried to join her he encountered various mishaps and wound up imprisoned by Native Americans
while she was having her affair and being in jail he wanders out of the forest on exactly the day that she's up in front of the pillory he doesn't tell anyone who he is and he puts his finger to his lips so Hester won't reveal his identity the governor and the eldest clergyman asked the young minister Reverend Dimmesdale to speak to Hester about her sin Dimmesdale asks Hester's reveal the father of her baby so he can confess and atone for his crimes with her we learned soon that Dimmesdale himself as the father but has -
refuses to reveal this secret to anyone later Hester is back in herself for the end of her stay in jail and her husband comes to see her posing as a doctor he says he forgives her for cheating on him but he makes her promise not to reveal who he is and he swears he'll find out who the father is from that point on he starts calling himself Roger Chillingworth Hester lives in an isolated little cottage with her baby she has to wear the Scarlet Letter all the time and she's treated as an outcast she's skilled
at sewing though and she makes her living doing needlework she can make fancy lace garments for officials to wear in ceremonies though she spends a lot of her time making clothes for the poor the only thing she does extravagantly for herself is make clothes for her daughter pearl she made the embroidered Scarlet Letter that she wears and she makes pearl look kind of like The Scarlet Letter - when pearls about three and a half Hester hears that some people in the colony are saying pearl should be taken away and given to foster parents who will
raise her better than Hester so Hester takes pearl to the governor's mansion to tell the governor not to do this the Reverend Wilson the Reverend Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth are all with the governor when she gets there Reverend Wilson asks pearl some religious questions to see if Hester's been raising her right and pearl who's very wild acts like she doesn't know what they're talking about which makes the governor think Hester is a bad mom but Hester appeals to Dimmesdale to speak for her and Dimmesdale says that God gave pearl to hester to save her soul
he points out that pearl looks like The Scarlet Letter so Hester is clearly using pearl to remember her sin and repent the governor is convinced and Hester keeps pearl Chillingworth builds a new identity for himself as a doctor he's very well educated in European medicine in the Native Americans taught in many cures as well the colony is happy to have a good doctor since their stark clergymen the young Reverend Dimmesdale is clearly sick and doesn't seem like you'll live a long time he always puts his hand over his heart like he's in pain so the
townspeople kind of push them together as doctor and patient and eventually people persuade them to live together in the same house but over time some people start to see Chillingworth as a demonic influence on Dimmesdale which is right since Chillingworth suspects that Dimmesdale is the father he thinks dimmsdale's guilt is what's killing him and he only wants to find out the secret and tortured Dimmesdale more Chillingworth constantly questions and prized into dimmsdale's life to try to get Dimmesdale to reveal his secret once pearl and Hester see them together and pearl warns her mother not to
get caught by black man like the minister has the black man is what the colonists called the devil one day Chillingworth goes a little too far and says that dimmsdale's disease must actually be a spiritual problem or secret Dimmesdale tells him it's none of his business he'll confess to God when Dimmesdale goes to sleep Chillingworth opens Dimmesdale shirt and sees something on his chest that tells him everything he needs to know now Chillingworth can torture Dimmesdale at will even though Dimmesdale has no idea that Chillingworth knows the secret Chillingworth can make sure he's always reminded
of it Dimmesdale is consumed by guilt at the fact that he slept with Hester and that no one knows it he gives the best sermons in the colony because he understands sin so well and can empathize but the fact that everyone thinks he's so holy makes his guilt worse he wants to confess to his congregation and he tells them he's a sinner but they only like him more when he's alone he whips himself and starves himself and he sees visions of his parents and pearl and Hester late one night he goes out and stands on
the pillory platform he shrieks and he thinks people will come out and find him there and know his secret but no one does after a while various people who were at the former governors deathbed do come by Hester is one of them and she walks by with pearl Dimmesdale invites them to come and hold hands with him on the pillory a meteor passes across the sky and its light creates the outline of the letter a in the clouds in the light Dimmesdale can see Chillingworth he asks pearl who it is saying he's terrified of that
man Chillingworth comes and takes Dimmesdale home saying he's been sleepwalking by the time pearl is 7 Hester has earned a lot of respect in the town because she spends most of her time helping people and she's always there offering comfort when people are sick or dying the townspeople even start talking about taking off the letter but Hester is also used to being an outcast by now and she doesn't really care about society's ideas of right and wrong anymore which is the opposite of what the colonists wanted the letter to do when she sees how tormented
Dimmesdale is and realizes that Chillingworth is the reason she goes to confront Chillingworth she finds Chillingworth at the beach and tells him he's turned into a fiend he admits that he's made Dimmesdale suffer but he can't stop himself Hester says that she's going to tell Dimmesdale the truth and she points out that Chillingworth could forgive and forget everything Chillingworth says he can't do that Hester is disgusted that she was ever married to Chillingworth and she starts thinking about Dimmesdale all over again she hasn't really repented for loving Dimmesdale she goes into the forest to meet
Dimmesdale as he's returning from a trip and they speak for the first time in seven years he admits he's completely miserable she tells him that she's there for him and she tells him the truth about Chillingworth he's horrified and angry when he hears about this but she insists that he has to forgive her and ultimately he does she urges him to leave the colony and start a fresh life somewhere else he says he doesn't have the strength to do it alone but she says she'll come with him and be his wife Dimmesdale decides that he
will leave town with her and she takes off her Scarlet Letter and throws it away then lets her hair down they talk about pearl and Dimmesdale wonders a pearl will accept him they call to pearl but she won't come across the brook until Hester puts back on the letter the minister kisses her on the forehead but she runs and washes it off in the stream she's mad because he won't acknowledge and public that he's friends with them Dimmesdale comes back into town having agreed to run away with Hester and pearl on a ship in a
few days he's feeling confused and kind of crazy every time he sees someone he can barely restrain himself from saying or doing something evil eventually he makes it home and throws himself into writing his last big sermon the Election Day sermon on the day the new governor is sworn in when Dimmesdale has to give his big sermon everyone in the colony has gathered together for a holiday Hester has made arrangements with the ship's captain for them to leave but the ship's captain finds her and let her know that Roger Chillingworth is coming with them Dimmesdale
and all the officials of the colony process into the church and Hester has to stand outside listening to the sermon as she worries about what the ship captain said and as all the people they're standing gawk at her letter worse than ever the sermon is a huge hit the biggest sermon ever given in New England Dimmesdale comes out and takes Hester and pearl by the hand and leads them up onto the pillory platform with him Chillingworth tries to stop him but can dimmsdale says he should have stood with them seven years before then he opens
his shirt and reveals a Scarlet Letter on his chest no one knows how it got there it could be a sign from God or he might have scarred himself it's a mystery Dimmesdale asks pearl if she'll kiss him now and she does hester asks if they'll be together in heaven and he says no they need to repent for their sin then he dies afterward Chillingworth dies and leaves a huge inheritance to pearl Hester and pearl leave the colony for a while and pearl apparently marries someone rich in Europe but Hester eventually comes back to live
in her cottage and wear her scarlet letter again Hester is buried beside Dimmesdale but not too close beside him and they share a headstone with an A on it for more information about the scarlet letter check out the scarlet letter spark note at spark notes calm for a translation of the scarlet letter into modern English go to no fear literature at spark notes calm slash no fear slash lid
