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Analysis. A crowd of men and women assembles near a dilapidated wooden prison. The narrator remarks that the founders of every new settlement have always sought first to build a prison and a graveyard.
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The Scarlet Letter, novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, published in 1850. It is considered a masterpiece of American literature and a classic moral study.
The novel is set in a village in Puritan New England. The main character is Hester Prynne, a young woman who has borne a child out of wedlock. Hester believes herself a widow, but her husband, Roger Chillingworth, arrives in New England very much alive and conceals his identity. He finds his wife forced to wear the scarlet letter A on her dress as punishment for her adultery. After Hester refuses to name her lover, Chillingworth becomes obsessed with finding his identity. When he learns that the man in question is Arthur Dimmesdale, a saintly young minister who is the leader of those exhorting her to name the child’s father, Chillingworth proceeds to torment him. Stricken by guilt, Dimmesdale becomes increasingly ill. Hester herself is revealed to be a self-reliant heroine who is never truly repentant for committing adultery with the minister; she feels that their act was consecrated by their deep love for each other. Although she is initially scorned, over time her compassion and dignity silence many of her critics.
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In the end, Chillingworth is morally degraded by his monomaniacal pursuit of revenge. Dimmesdale is broken by his own sense of guilt, and he publicly confesses his adultery before dying in Hester’s arms. Only Hester can face the future bravely, as she prepares to begin a new life with her daughter, Pearl, in Europe. Years later Hester returns to New England, where she continues to wear the scarlet letter. After her death she is buried next to Dimmesdale, and their joint tombstone is inscribed with “ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES.”
The scarlet letter A that Hester is forced to wear is finely embroidered with gold-coloured thread. As both a badge of shame and a beautifully wrought human artifact, it reflects the many oppositions in the novel, such as those between order and transgression, civilization and wilderness, and adulthood and childhood. The more society strives to keep out wayward passion, the more it reinforces the split between appearance and reality. The members of the community who are ostensibly the most respectable are often the most depraved, while the apparent sinners are often the most virtuous.
The novel also crafts intriguing symmetries between social oppression and psychological repression. Dimmesdale’s sense of torment at his guilty secret and the physical and mental manifestations of his malaise reflect the pathology of a society that needs to scapegoat and alienate its so-called sinners. Eventually, personal integrity is able to break free from social control. Perhaps more than any other novel, The Scarlet Letter effectively encapsulates the emergence of individualism and self-reliance from America’s Puritan and conformist roots.
- Ronan Mcdonald
A summary of Chapters 1–2 in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Learn exactly what happened in this chapter, scene, or section of The Scarlet Letter and what it means. Perfect for acing essays, tests, and quizzes, as well as for writing lesson plans.
Analysis. In this chapter, Hawthorne sets the mood for the "tale of human frailty and sorrow" that is to follow. His first paragraph introduces the reader to what some might want to consider a (or the) major character of the work: the Puritan society.
Plot. The Scarlet Letter by Hugues Merle (1861). Hester Prynne and Pearl in the foreground. In Puritan Boston, Massachusetts, a crowd gathers to witness the punishment of Hester Prynne, a young woman who has given birth to a baby of unknown paternity.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, 晧四郎 木畑
- 1850
A first-person, introductory chapter, written two hundred years after the events of the novel, indicate that the story will explore attitudes and beliefs that have evolved since the time the story’s set. The next chapter introduces the main character, Hester, emerging from the prison wearing a dress marked with a scarlet letter “A,” and ...
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by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Buy Study Guide. The Scarlet Letter Summary and Analysis of Chapters 1-4. Chapter One: The Prison Door. Summary. A large crowd of Puritans stands outside of the prison, waiting for the door to open.
