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Scarlet Letter

 

            The Scarlet Letter is a masterfully written novel that is structured around three crucial scaffold scenes and many characters that are all related and tied together. The story is essentially about Hester Prynne who is sentenced to wear a scarlet letter as a symbol of her adultery. Hester's life is torn between two men, her husband, Roger Chillingworth, and Arthur Dimmesdale, the minister and father of her child. Chillingworth had sent Hester ahead of him to New England and did not follow or correspond with her for two years. Assuming he is dead, Hester falls in love with the minister, Dimmesdale and the two committed the sin of adultery, which led to the birth of their daughter and sin, Pearl. The story is unraveled slowly around the three scaffold scenes, which are very significant throughout the novel. .
             The first of three scaffold scenes features Hester Prynne and three-month-old daughter, Pearl. Hester is publicly punished for her sin by having to stand alone clutching her infant for three hours. Ironically, on this same day of humiliation for Hester, Chillingworth arrives from his long journey. When he sees her on the scaffold, he is enraged over her sinfulness and swears to find out the identity of her partner so that he can have his revenge. In his rage and confusion, Chillingworth asks a townsman, "And who, by your favor, Sir, may be the father of yonder babe- it is some three or four months old, I should judge-, which Mistress Prynne is holding in her arms?" (Hawthorne, 44) While Chillingworth is in the crowd growing angrier at the thought of his betrayal, the reverend Dimmesdale is crying out to Hester to reveal his name. The clergyman, Mr. Wilson tells Dimmesdale to speak out to Hester and urges him to, "Exhort her to confess the truth!" (Hawthorne, 48) Reverend Dimmesdale, looking deep into her eyes tells her, "Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through life.


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