Title: The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne Date the Book was Published: 1850 Plot: Hawthorne’s story is about a woman, Hester Prynne , who is forced to stand on the gallows to display herself, her child and a red letter “A” on her clothing as a sign of scorn and shame. Hester bore a child as a result of her affair and refuses to name the father. The woman’s husband, previously assumed dead, reappears in town-incognito- during her shameful display with only Hester herself knowing who he really is. When the husband, deciding to name himself Roger Chillingworth, goes to Hester under the guise of a physician, he vows to find out who the husband is. Seven years go by, and Hester raises her daughter in a cottage at the edge of town supporting …show more content…
It is not by accident that Hawthorne chose to this time and place for his novel: sin was a central concept for New England’s Puritans, and how to atone for them is what The Scarlet Letter is about. Even though the specific sin in the story is adultery, or the violation of the ninth commandment, sin can be regarded as any deviation from the established norm that causes harm to others. Adultery can be regarded a crime of passion, or one of the seven cardinal sins - lust- or, as the etymology of the word suggests, as something that is “missing’. Sin was very dangerous in these early organized forms of human assembly and government, because it threatened the delicate balance and order of things. Even the expression “child out of wedlock”, which Pearl literally embodies, belies the fear of the outsider almost jerry-rigging the solid foundations of societal legal unions. Hester was not promiscuous, she was not a prostitute, she was a lonely wife waiting for her husband, perhaps already a widow, and she committed the unforgivable misdeed of finding solace in another human being’s company. All this was irrelevant to Puritans. What was relevant was the type of punishment: shunning. They rejected her “...every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished” (Hawthorne 78). Eventually though the letter on her chest instead began to stand for “Able” or even “Angel” as the townspeople realized how beneficial she