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”she will be a living sermon against sin, until the ignominious letter be engraved upon her tombstone.”
An elderly English scholar sends his young wife, Hester Prynne, to set up their home in the Puritan Boston of the mid-seventeenth century. Arriving two years later, he discovers Hester in the pillory, cradling her illegitimate child in her arms. Refusing to name her lover, she is sentenced to wear a scarlet A, signifying Adulteress, as a token of her sin. Desperate for revenge, her husband assumes a new name, and in the guise of a doctor begins a cruel and ultimately destructive search for the father of her child.
The Scarlet Letter is a disturbing tale of conflict between a passionate woman and her stern Puritan judges. The laws of scripture and the statute-book are broken by someone who believes in the higher law of her own heart. To read the story is to become drawn into judging Hester: does Hawthorne himself reject or endorse her challenge to the system of moral authority?
