The Scarlet Letter

A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments, and gray,
steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods and
others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the
door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron
spikes.
The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and
happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it
among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the
virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a
prison. In accordance with this rule, it may safely be assumed that
the forefathers of Boston had built the first prison-house somewhere
in the vicinity of Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked out
the first burial-ground, on Isaac Johnson's lot, and round about his
grave, which subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated
sepulchres in the old churchyard of King's Chapel. Certain it is,
that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town,
the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other
indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its
beetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous iron-work of
its oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the New
World. Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known
a youthful era. Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the
wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with
burdock, pigweed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which
evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early
borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison. But on one side
of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild
rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems,
which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to
the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came
forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity
and be kind to him.
This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in history;
but whether it had merely survived out of the stern old wilderness, so

long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks that originally
overshadowed it,—or whether, as there is fair authority for
believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Ann
Hutchinson, as she entered the prison-door,—we shall not take on us
to determine. Finding it so directly on the threshold of our
narrative, which is now about to issue from that inauspicious portal,
we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers, and
present it to the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some
sweet moral blossom, that may be found along the track, or relieve the
darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.

The grass-plot before the jail, in Prison Lane, on a certain summer
morning, not less than two centuries ago, was occupied by a pretty
large number of the inhabitants of Boston; all with their eyes
intently fastened on the iron-clamped oaken door. Among any other
population, or at a later period in the history of New England, the
grim rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these good
people would have augured some awful business in hand. It could have
betokened nothing short of the anticipated execution of some noted
culprit, on whom the sentence of a legal tribunal had but confirmed
the verdict of public sentiment. But, in that early severity of the
Puritan character, an inference of this kind could not so indubitably
be drawn. It might be that a sluggish bond-servant, or an undutiful
child, whom his parents had given over to the civil authority, was to
be corrected at the whipping-post. It might be, that an Antinomian, a
Quaker, or other heterodox religionist was to be scourged out of the
town, or an idle and vagrant Indian, whom the white man's fire-water
had made riotous about the streets, was to be driven with stripes into
the shadow of the forest. It might be, too, that a witch, like old
Mistress Hibbins, the bitter-tempered widow of the magistrate, was to
die on the gallows. In either case, there was very much the same
solemnity of demeanor on the part of the spectators; as befitted a
people among whom religion and law were almost identical, and in
whose character both were so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest
and the severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerable
and awful. Meagre, indeed, and cold was the sympathy that a
transgressor might look for, from such bystanders, at the scaffold. On
the other hand, a penalty, which, in our days, would infer a degree of
mocking infamy and ridicule, might then be invested with almost as
stern a dignity as the punishment of death itself.
It was a circumstance to be noted, on the summer morning when our
story begins its course, that the women, of whom there were several in
the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in whatever penal

infliction might be expected to ensue. The age had not so much
refinement, that any sense of impropriety restrained the wearers of
petticoat and farthingale from stepping forth into the public ways,
and wedging their not unsubstantial persons, if occasion were, into
the throng nearest to the scaffold at an execution. Morally, as well
as materially, there was a coarser fibre in those wives and maidens of
old English birth and breeding, than in their fair descendants,
separated from them by a series of six or seven generations; for,
throughout that chain of ancestry, every successive mother has
transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate and briefer
beauty, and a slighter physical frame, if not a character of less
force and solidity, than her own. The women who were now standing
about the prison-door stood within less than half a century of the
period when the man-like Elizabeth had been the not altogether
unsuitable representative of the sex. They were her countrywomen; and
the beef and ale of their native land, with a moral diet not a whit
more refined, entered largely into their composition. The bright
morning sun, therefore, shone on broad shoulders and well-developed
busts, and on round and ruddy cheeks, that had ripened in the far-off
island, and had hardly yet grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere of
New England. There was, moreover, a boldness and rotundity of speech
among these matrons, as most of them seemed to be, that would startle
us at the present day, whether in respect to its purport or its volume
of tone.
"Goodwives," said a hard-featured dame of fifty, "I'll tell ye a piece
of my mind. It would be greatly for the public behoof, if we women,
being of mature age and church-members in good repute, should have the
handling of such malefactresses as this Hester Prynne. What think ye,
gossips? If the hussy stood up for judgment before us five, that are
now here in a knot together, would she come off with such a sentence
as the worshipful magistrates have awarded? Marry, I trow not!"
"People say," said another, "that the Reverend Master Dimmesdale, her
godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart that such a scandal

should have come on his congregation."
"The magistrates are God-fearing gentlemen, but merciful
overmuch,—that is a truth," added a third autumnal matron. "At the
very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester
Prynne's forehead. Madam Hester would have winced at that, I warrant
me. But she,—the naughty baggage,—little will she care what they
put on the bodice of her gown! Why, look you, she may cover it with
a brooch, or such like heathenish adornment, and so walk the streets
as brave as ever!"
"Ah, but," interposed, more softly, a young wife, holding a child by
the hand, "let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be
always in her heart."
"What do we talk of marks and brands, whether on the bodice of her
gown, or the flesh of her forehead?" cried another female, the ugliest
as well as the most pitiless of these self-constituted judges. "This
woman has brought shame on us all, and ought to die. Is there not
law for it? Truly, there is, both in the Scripture and the
statute-book. Then let the magistrates, who have made it of no effect,
thank themselves if their own wives and daughters go astray!"
"Mercy on us, goodwife," exclaimed a man in the crowd, "is there no
virtue in woman, save what springs from a wholesome fear of the
gallows? That is the hardest word yet! Hush, now, gossips! for the
lock is turning in the prison-door, and here comes Mistress Prynne
herself."
The door of the jail being flung open from within, there appeared, in
the first place, like a black shadow emerging into sunshine, the grim
and grisly presence of the town-beadle, with a sword by his side, and
his staff of office in his hand. This personage prefigured and
represented in his aspect the whole dismal severity of the Puritanic
code of law, which it was his business to administer in its final and
closest application to the offender. Stretching forth the official
staff in his left hand, he laid his right on the shoulder of a young
woman, whom he thus drew forward; until, on the threshold of the
prison-door, she repelled him, by an action marked with natural
dignity and force of character, and stepped into the open air, as if

by her own free will. She bore in her arms a child, a baby of some
three months old, who winked and turned aside its little face from the
too vivid light of day; because its existence, heretofore, had brought
it acquainted only with the gray twilight of a dungeon, or other
darksome apartment of the prison.
When the young woman—the mother of this child—stood fully revealed
before the crowd, it seemed to be her first impulse to clasp the
infant closely to her bosom; not so much by an impulse of motherly
affection, as that she might thereby conceal a certain token, which
was wrought or fastened into her dress. In a moment, however, wisely
judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide
another, she took the baby on her arm, and, with a burning blush, and
yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be abashed, looked
around at her towns-people and neighbors. On the breast of her gown,
in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and
fantastic flourishes of gold-thread, appeared the letter A. It was so
artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance
of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration
to the apparel which she wore; and which was of a splendor in
accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was
allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony.
The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large
scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the
sunshine with a gleam, and a face which, besides being beautiful from
regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had the
impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes. She was
lady-like, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those
days; characterized by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the
delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace, which is now recognized
as its indication. And never had Hester Prynne appeared more
lady-like, in the antique interpretation of the term, than as she
issued from the prison. Those who had before known her, and had
expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were

astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out,
and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was
enveloped. It may be true, that, to a sensitive observer, there was
something exquisitely painful in it. Her attire, which, indeed, she
had wrought for the occasion, in prison, and had modelled much after
her own fancy, seemed to express the attitude of her spirit, the
desperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild and picturesque
peculiarity. But the point which drew all eyes, and, as it were,
transfigured the wearer,—so that both men and women, who had been
familiarly acquainted with Hester Prynne, were now impressed as if
they beheld her for the first time,—was that SCARLET LETTER, so
fantastically embroidered and illuminated on her bosom. It had the
effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with
humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.
"She hath good skill at her needle, that's certain," remarked one of
her female spectators; "but did ever a woman, before this brazen
hussy, contrive such a way of showing it! Why, gossips, what is it but
to laugh in the faces of our godly magistrates, and make a pride out
of what they, worthy gentlemen, meant for a punishment?"
"It were well," muttered the most iron-visaged of the old dames, "if
we stripped Madam Hester's rich gown off her dainty shoulders; and as
for the red letter, which she hath stitched so curiously, I'll bestow
a rag of mine own rheumatic flannel, to make a fitter one!"
"O, peace, neighbors, peace!" whispered their youngest companion; "do
not let her hear you! Not a stitch in that embroidered letter but she
has felt it in her heart."
The grim beadle now made a gesture with his staff.
"Make way, good people, make way, in the King's name!" cried he. "Open
a passage; and, I promise ye, Mistress Prynne shall be set where man,
woman, and child may have a fair sight of her brave apparel, from this
time till an hour past meridian. A blessing on the righteous Colony of
the Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine!
Come along, Madam Hester, and show your scarlet letter in the
market-place!"

A lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of spectators. Preceded
by the beadle, and attended by an irregular procession of
stern-browed men and unkindly visaged women, Hester Prynne set forth
towards the place appointed for her punishment. A crowd of eager and
curious school-boys, understanding little of the matter in hand,
except that it gave them a half-holiday, ran before her progress,
turning their heads continually to stare into her face, and at the
winking baby in her arms, and at the ignominious letter on her breast.
It was no great distance, in those days, from the prison-door to the
market-place. Measured by the prisoner's experience, however, it might
be reckoned a journey of some length; for, haughty as her demeanor
was, she perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those
that thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung into the
street for them all to spurn and trample on. In our nature, however,
there is a provision, alike marvellous and merciful, that the sufferer
should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present
torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it. With almost a
serene deportment, therefore, Hester Prynne passed through this
portion of her ordeal, and came to a sort of scaffold, at the western
extremity of the market-place. It stood nearly beneath the eaves of
Boston's earliest church, and appeared to be a fixture there.
In fact, this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine, which
now, for two or three generations past, has been merely historical and
traditionary among us, but was held, in the old time, to be as
effectual an agent, in the promotion of good citizenship, as ever was
the guillotine among the terrorists of France. It was, in short, the
platform of the pillory; and above it rose the framework of that
instrument of discipline, so fashioned as to confine the human head in
its tight grasp, and thus hold it up to the public gaze. The very
ideal of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in this contrivance
of wood and iron. There can be no outrage, methinks, against our
common nature,—whatever be the delinquencies of the individual,—no