American Novels · High School
The Scarlet Letter
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 romance, chapter by chapter: one embroidered letter and seven years in Puritan Boston.
A young woman walks out of a Boston prison holding her three-month-old daughter. Sewn onto her dress is a scarlet letter A, the mark of adultery, and she must climb a public scaffold so the whole town can stare at it. She will not tell anyone who the baby’s father is. Somewhere in the crowd, a man she knows very well is watching her. On the balcony above her stands a young minister who knows the answer to the question everyone is asking.
Nathaniel Hawthorne published The Scarlet Letter in 1850, but he set it two centuries earlier, in the 1640s, in the colony his own ancestors helped to rule. It is a short book with long sentences, and it rewards slow reading. Under its old-fashioned style is a story that still feels sharp: what happens when a community decides what a person is, and what a hidden secret does to the one who keeps it.
This guide covers the history behind the book, a who’s who, a summary of every chapter plus the long “Custom-House” introduction, the main themes and symbols, and passages worth reading closely. A quiz and discussion questions at the end let you check your understanding.
Before you read: The novel deals with adultery, public shaming, self-harm by a guilt-stricken character, and a death. It describes no sex or violence directly, but the emotional material is heavy. The book is in the public domain, so you can read it free online; the Sources section links a full text.
Puritan Boston: The World of the Novel
The story takes place in Boston between about 1642 and 1649. Hawthorne wrote it in Salem in 1849 and 1850. Keep both dates in mind: he is a nineteenth-century writer looking back, with mixed feelings, at the founders of his own state.
Who were the Puritans?
The Puritans were English Protestants who wanted to “purify” the Church of England of practices they saw as Catholic. Many sailed to New England in the 1630s to build a godly community. In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded in 1630 with Boston as its center, church and government worked hand in hand. Hawthorne describes “a people amongst whom religion and law were almost identical” (Chapter 2).
Sin as public business
Because the colony saw itself as a covenant with God, one person’s sin seemed to threaten everyone. Punishments were public: the stocks, the pillory, whipping, and, for some crimes, death. A townsman tells the stranger in Chapter 3 that the legal penalty for Hester’s crime “is death,” but the magistrates have chosen mercy: three hours on the scaffold and the letter for life.
Real people in the story
Hawthorne mixes invented characters with real ones. Richard Bellingham was a governor of the colony, John Wilson was Boston’s senior minister, and Ann Hibbins, who appears in the novel as Bellingham’s sister (historically, his sister-in-law), was hanged as a witch in Boston in 1656. Governor John Winthrop dies during Chapter 12, which helps date that scene to 1649.
Hawthorne’s ancestors
Hawthorne’s first American ancestor, William Hathorne, was a Puritan magistrate known for harsh sentences, including against Quakers. William’s son John Hathorne was one of the judges at the Salem witch trials of 1692. Hawthorne probably added the “w” to his name in his early twenties. In “The Custom-House” he writes that he will “take shame upon myself for their sakes.”
“The Custom-House”
The book opens with a long, partly comic sketch of Hawthorne’s years as Surveyor of the Salem Custom House (1846–1849), a political job he lost after the 1848 election. He claims he found an old faded letter A in the building’s upstairs storeroom, wrapped in papers telling Hester’s story. That “discovery” is a fiction, a frame that makes the tale feel like recovered history.
Published in 1850
Ticknor, Reed and Fields of Boston published the book on March 16, 1850. Its first printing of 2,500 copies sold out within about ten days, making it one of the first mass-produced books in America. Some Salem readers were furious at how “The Custom-House” portrayed them, but Hawthorne reprinted the sketch in the second edition without changing a word.
Characters
The cast is small. Four people sit at the center, joined by a single secret, while the town looks on.
The four at the center
- Hester Prynne
- A young married woman whose husband sent her ahead to Boston and never arrived. After she gives birth, she is sentenced to wear the scarlet A. Proud and gifted with the needle, she refuses to name her partner and slowly earns the town’s respect through years of quiet service.
- Pearl
- Hester’s daughter, a baby in Chapter 2, three in Chapter 8, and seven by Chapter 13. Wild and strangely perceptive, she asks the questions nobody else dares to ask, especially about the letter and the minister.
- Arthur Dimmesdale
- Hester’s young pastor, a brilliant and beloved preacher who is Pearl’s secret father. He keeps his guilt hidden for seven years, and it eats away at his body and mind. He often presses his hand over his heart.
- Roger Chillingworth
- Hester’s much older husband, a scholar who arrives in Boston on the day of her shaming after being held captive by Native people. He hides his identity under a new name, sets up as a physician, and makes it his life’s work to find and torment her partner.
The colony’s leaders
- Governor Richard Bellingham
- A stern older magistrate who presides at Hester’s shaming and later considers taking Pearl away from her.
- Reverend John Wilson
- Boston’s eldest minister, learned and kindly but rigid. He pressures Hester to confess and quizzes Pearl on her catechism.
- Mistress Hibbins
- The governor’s sour-tempered sister, rumored to be a witch who meets the “Black Man” in the forest. She invites Hester to join her there (Chapter 8).
The town and the frame
- The townspeople
- A chorus of gossips and onlookers. The harshest voices in Chapter 2 belong to a group of older women. Over the years the town’s opinion of Hester shifts.
- The town-beadle and Master Brackett
- The officer who leads Hester to the scaffold, and the jailer who brings Chillingworth to her cell.
- The narrator, “the Surveyor”
- A version of Hawthorne himself. In “The Custom-House” he tells us how he supposedly found the letter, and he narrates the whole tale from two hundred years later.
The Novel, Chapter by Chapter
The book has no formal parts, but it is built around three scenes on the same scaffold: at the start, in the middle, and at the end. We have grouped the 24 chapters around them. Chapter titles are Hawthorne’s own.
First: “The Custom-House” (introduction)
Before Chapter 1 comes a long essay that many readers skip. Don’t skip all of it. Hawthorne describes the sleepy Salem Custom House and the elderly officials he supervised, and he apologizes for his stern Puritan ancestors. Then he tells how, in an unused upstairs room, he found “a certain affair of fine red cloth, much worn and faded”: an embroidered letter A, wrapped in papers by an earlier surveyor, Jonathan Pue, recording Hester Prynne’s story. When he placed it on his chest, it felt like “red-hot iron.” He ends by joking that he was “decapitated” when he lost his job in a change of government, so the book comes to us as the papers of a dead surveyor.
Watch for: Hawthorne’s idea of “a neutral territory, somewhere between the real world and fairy-land,” his definition of a romance.The First Scaffold · Chapters 1–8
Shame in daylight, and a fight for Pearl
- Chapter 1
The Prison-Door
A crowd of grim Puritans waits outside the Boston jail. Beside its heavy oak door grows a wild rose-bush, which the narrator offers the reader as a hopeful sign at the start of a “tale of human frailty and sorrow.”
Watch for: the rose against the prison. - Chapter 2
The Market-Place
Hester steps out holding her baby. The A on her dress is so richly embroidered in gold thread that the townswomen take it as defiance. She stands on the scaffold for hours, remembering her parents’ home in England and her marriage to a deformed older scholar in a continental city.
Watch for: how the women in the crowd judge her. - Chapter 3
The Recognition
Hester spots a stranger at the edge of the crowd, with a Native companion, and knows him at once as her husband. He learns her story from a townsman and signals her to keep silent. Mr. Wilson asks young Mr. Dimmesdale to make her name the father. Dimmesdale’s plea is moving, but Hester refuses.
Watch for: what Dimmesdale’s words really mean once you know the secret. - Chapter 4
The Interview
Back in her cell, Hester is visited by the stranger, now calling himself Roger Chillingworth and acting as a physician. He calms the baby with medicine and admits he was wrong to marry a young woman who did not love him. He swears Hester to keep his identity secret and vows to discover her lover himself.
Watch for: “Sooner or later, he must needs be mine!” - Chapter 5
Hester at Her Needle
Released, Hester could leave the colony but stays, living in a lonely cottage by the shore. Her fine needlework becomes fashionable for ruffs, gloves, and funerals, though never for a bride’s veil. She gives to the poor, who often insult her, and feels the letter gives her a strange sense of other people’s hidden sins.
Watch for: why she stays where she sinned. - Chapter 6
Pearl
Hester names her daughter Pearl, “as being of great price.” Pearl is beautiful and fierce, with moods no punishment can control. The village children shun her. As a baby, the first thing she reaches for is the A, and Hester begins to wonder whether Pearl is a blessing or a punishment.
Watch for: “Thy Heavenly Father sent thee!” - Chapter 7
The Governor’s Hall
Hearing that the leaders may take Pearl away, Hester goes to Governor Bellingham’s mansion to deliver a pair of gloves. Pearl is dressed in brilliant scarlet. In a polished breastplate the A appears hugely magnified, almost hiding Hester.
Watch for: Pearl dressed as the letter itself. - Chapter 8
The Elf-Child and the Minister
Asked by Mr. Wilson who made her, Pearl announces she was plucked from the rose-bush by the prison door. Hester begs Dimmesdale to speak for her, and he persuades the governor to let Pearl stay. Leaving, Mistress Hibbins invites Hester to a midnight meeting in the forest. Hester says that if they had taken Pearl, she would have gone.
Watch for: Pearl as the thing that keeps Hester from despair.
The Second Scaffold · Chapters 9–12
A doctor’s suspicion and a midnight vigil
- Chapter 9
The Leech
“Leech” is an old word for a doctor. Dimmesdale’s health is failing, and Chillingworth becomes his physician and then moves into the same house, a widow’s home beside the graveyard. Townspeople notice Chillingworth’s face growing darker and uglier, and some whisper that he is Satan’s agent.
Watch for: how a doctor becomes a predator. - Chapter 10
The Leech and His Patient
Chillingworth probes the minister like a miner digging for gold. He talks about a strange plant growing from an unmarked grave, and about men who hide their sins. From the window they see Pearl dancing on gravestones; she tosses burrs at the minister. Later Chillingworth finds Dimmesdale asleep, pulls aside his robe, and looks at his chest with “a wild look of wonder, joy, and horror!”
Watch for: what Hawthorne never shows us. - Chapter 11
The Interior of a Heart
Now sure of his target, Chillingworth tortures Dimmesdale quietly from inside his trust. The minister’s suffering makes his sermons more powerful, and when he calls himself vile from the pulpit his people only revere him more. In secret he whips himself, fasts, and keeps all-night vigils.
Watch for: confessions that conceal more than they reveal. - Chapter 12
The Minister’s Vigil
Late at night Dimmesdale climbs the scaffold and shrieks, but the town sleeps on. Hester and Pearl, returning from Governor Winthrop’s deathbed, join him hand in hand. Pearl asks if he will stand with them “to-morrow noontide.” He whispers, “At the great judgment day.” A meteor lights the sky, and he sees in it a huge letter A. Chillingworth is watching. The next morning the sexton returns the minister’s glove, found on the scaffold, and reports that the A in the sky stood for “Angel.”
Watch for: the three of them in the light, and who sees them.
Seven Years Later · Chapters 13–20
The forest and a plan to escape
- Chapter 13
Another View of Hester
Pearl is now seven. Hester’s nursing of the sick has changed the town’s view: many now say the A stands for “Able.” But her inner life has grown bold and lonely; she questions the place of women in society. Shocked by the minister’s state, she decides she must help him.
Watch for: a symbol whose meaning changes. - Chapter 14
Hester and the Physician
On the seashore Hester confronts Chillingworth. She is horrified at how he has become a fiend. She asks him to stop; he says it is not in his power to pardon, and that their fates are set. Hester announces she will tell Dimmesdale who he is.
Watch for: Chillingworth’s own transformation. - Chapter 15
Hester and Pearl
Pearl decorates herself with seaweed and makes a green letter A of eel-grass on her own chest. She presses her mother: what does the letter mean, and why does the minister keep his hand over his heart? For the first time in seven years Hester lies, saying she wears the letter “for the sake of its gold-thread.”
Watch for: Pearl’s questions as pressure toward truth. - Chapter 16
A Forest Walk
Hester waits for Dimmesdale on a forest path. Sunshine flickers ahead of them, but it seems to flee from Hester and play around Pearl. Pearl asks about the Black Man of the forest and whether the A is his mark. Pearl is sent to play by the brook as the minister approaches.
Watch for: light and shadow. - Chapter 17
The Pastor and His Parishioner
The two talk alone for the first time in seven years. Hester reveals that Chillingworth is her husband. Dimmesdale is furious, then forgives her, saying the old man’s revenge “has been blacker than my sin.” Hester urges him to escape to Europe and start over, and promises he will not go alone.
Watch for: “What we did had a consecration of its own.” - Chapter 18
A Flood of Sunshine
Dimmesdale agrees to flee. Hester unclasps the A and throws it away, then takes off her cap and lets down her hair. At once sunlight pours into the forest. She calls Pearl to meet her father.
Watch for: nature approving what Puritan law forbids. - Chapter 19
The Child at the Brook-Side
Pearl stands on the far side of the brook and will not cross. She points at her mother’s bare chest and shrieks until Hester pins the letter back on and hides her hair. Only then does Pearl come. When the minister kisses her forehead, she runs to the brook and washes the kiss away.
Watch for: why Pearl insists on the letter. - Chapter 20
The Minister in a Maze
Hester has arranged passage on a ship that sails for Bristol in three days. Dimmesdale is relieved: he can still preach the Election Sermon first. Walking home, he feels wild urges to say wicked things to his parishioners. Mistress Hibbins greets him as if they share a secret. At home he throws his old sermon in the fire and writes a new one all night.
Watch for: “No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude.”
The Third Scaffold · Chapters 21–24
Election Day and the revelation
- Chapter 21
The New England Holiday
The town gathers for the holiday that marks the new governor’s election. Sailors and Native visitors crowd the market-place among the Puritans. The ship’s captain tells Hester that Chillingworth has booked a place on the same ship.
Watch for: the trap closing. - Chapter 22
The Procession
Dimmesdale marches with unusual energy and seems far away from Hester. She listens to his sermon from outside the church, standing beside the scaffold. Mistress Hibbins hints she knows about the forest meeting. Curious crowds press in to stare at the A once more.
Watch for: Hester, the sermon’s best listener, stuck outside. - Chapter 23
The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter
After his greatest sermon, the weak and pale minister calls Hester and Pearl to the scaffold. Chillingworth tries to stop him. Dimmesdale climbs up with them, confesses before the town, and tears open his robe. Pearl kisses him, and he dies in Hester’s arms. Chillingworth repeats, “Thou hast escaped me!”
Watch for: the spell that breaks for Pearl. - Chapter 24
Conclusion
Witnesses disagree about what they saw on the minister’s chest. Chillingworth withers and dies within a year, leaving Pearl a fortune. Hester and Pearl vanish from Boston. Years later Hester returns alone and wears the A of her own free will, counseling troubled women. She is buried near Dimmesdale under one shared stone.
Watch for: the moral the narrator chooses to state outright.
Narration and Style
A narrator two centuries away
The voice telling the story is the “Surveyor” from “The Custom-House,” a version of Hawthorne writing in the 1840s. He can enter any character’s mind, but he often stands back like a historian with incomplete records. He says “it may be,” reports rumors, and offers several explanations for one event. In Chapter 24 he even lists the competing accounts of what was on Dimmesdale’s chest and lets you choose.
A romance, not a novel
Hawthorne called the book A Romance. For him a romance could leave everyday realism behind and enter “a neutral territory, somewhere between the real world and fairy-land.” That is why a child can seem like an elf, a man’s face can darken with evil, and a meteor can draw a letter in the sky. Critics place him in dark romanticism, a branch of American Romantic writing focused on guilt and the hidden side of human nature.
Ambiguity on purpose
Hawthorne rarely tells you exactly what is true. Is the A in the sky real, or only in the minister’s guilty eye? Is Pearl supernatural or simply a lonely, clever child? Was there a letter on Dimmesdale’s chest? The book trains you to notice evidence and to hold more than one reading at a time.
Reading the sentences
The style is formal, with long sentences full of commas and dashes, and dialogue in old forms like “thou” and “hast.” Try reading difficult passages aloud, find the main subject and verb first, and treat the dashes as asides. The plot is simple, so most of the meaning lives in the descriptions.
Themes
Sin and guilt
Hester and Dimmesdale commit the same sin, but she is punished in public while he hides. Hester grows stronger; he collapses. The book suggests that secret guilt does more damage than open shame. Chillingworth’s cold revenge is judged worst of all, because he “violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart” (Chapter 17).
Public face and private truth
Dimmesdale is admired as a saint while hiding the truth, and the strain splits him in two. The narrator’s one stated moral, “Be true!” (Chapter 24), asks readers to show the world at least some sign of their real selves.
The individual and the community
The Puritan town claims the right to judge and label one woman. Hester obeys the sentence outwardly but becomes an independent thinker inside, and over time she quietly changes how the community sees her. Ask whether the town or Hester changes more.
The meaning of a symbol
The A begins as a label of shame. Over seven years people read it as “Able,” and by the end it is something “looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too.” The letter never changes; the readers do.
Nature and freedom
The forest is wild, outside the town’s law. There Hester takes off the letter and sunshine floods in. Hawthorne lets nature seem to approve of love that Puritan law condemns, while also showing that the forest is where the Black Man is said to wait.
Women and their place
In Chapter 13 Hester wonders whether the whole system that governs women’s lives must be torn down and rebuilt. In the Conclusion she counsels unhappy women and hopes a future age will establish relations between men and women “on a surer ground of mutual happiness.” Writers in Hawthorne’s own circle, such as Margaret Fuller, were arguing about the same questions in the 1840s.
Symbols
The scarlet letter
The novel never spells out what the A stands for; the word “adultery” never appears in it. Hester makes it beautiful, with “fantastic flourishes of gold-thread,” so the punishment also becomes a work of art. Through the book it is read as shame, as “Able,” as “Angel,” as the Black Man’s mark, and finally as something close to holy.
Original illustration for Jugami.
Pearl
Hawthorne calls her “the scarlet letter endowed with life!” (Chapter 7). Hester dresses her in crimson, and Pearl keeps forcing the adults to face the truth: she will not cross the brook until her mother wears the A again. When her father finally confesses in public, she kisses him and becomes fully human.
The scaffold
The platform in the market-place is the book’s backbone. Hester stands there alone in daylight (Chapters 2–3). Dimmesdale stands there in the dark, where no one can see (Chapter 12). In the end all three stand there together in front of the town (Chapter 23). Each scene measures how far the truth has come into the open.
The forest and the brook
The forest lies outside Puritan control: a place of freedom and of danger. The brook between Pearl and her parents in Chapter 19 marks a boundary. On one side is the moment of escape; on the other is the world of the letter, where the truth still has to be faced.
The meteor
In Chapter 12, a meteor lights the sky while Dimmesdale stands on the scaffold. He sees “an immense letter,—the letter A,—marked out in lines of dull red light.” The narrator blames “the disease in his own eye and heart,” while the sexton reads it as “Angel” for Governor Winthrop.
The rose-bush
The wild rose by the prison door (Chapter 1) stands for nature’s mercy in a harsh place. Pearl later claims she was plucked from it, linking her to something natural and hopeful.
Light and sunshine
In the forest, sunshine runs from Hester but plays around Pearl, and when Hester throws off the letter the light floods in. Watch who is in light and who is in shadow in each scene.
Key Passages to Read Closely
The novel is in the public domain, so these passages are quoted in full sentences. Find each one in your copy and read the scene around it.
“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.”
Why it matters: The letter’s first appearance. Notice that the sentence makes us wait for the A, and that it is described as fine art before it is called a punishment.
“It was the scarlet letter in another form; the scarlet letter endowed with life!”
Why it matters: Pearl and the letter are two versions of the same thing. Track how each changes over the book.
“Such helpfulness was found in her,—so much power to do, and power to sympathize,—that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant Able; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman’s strength.”
Why it matters: The meaning of a symbol depends on its readers. Hester has not changed the letter, but she has changed what the town sees in it.
“We are not, Hester, the worst sinners in the world. There is one worse than even the polluted priest! That old man’s revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart.”
Why it matters: The novel ranks sins. A sin of passion is shown as human; cold, deliberate cruelty is shown as far worse.
“The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers,—stern and wild ones,—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.”
Why it matters: Hester’s punishment has freed her mind. The narrator admires her strength but is uneasy about where her thinking leads. Is he right?
“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”
Why it matters: The clearest statement of what hypocrisy does to Dimmesdale. Compare it with the moral in Chapter 24.
“Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!”
Why it matters: Of “many morals,” this is the one the narrator puts into a single sentence. Note that he does not ask for full confession, only for honesty.
Quotations follow the Project Gutenberg text (eBook #25344) of the 1878 James R. Osgood illustrated edition of The Scarlet Letter, first published by Ticknor, Reed and Fields in 1850. Chapter numbers match all standard editions.
About Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne was born Nathaniel Hathorne on July 4, 1804, in Salem, Massachusetts. His father, a sea captain, died of yellow fever in 1808, and he grew up among his mother’s family, the Mannings. He attended Bowdoin College in Maine, graduating in 1825; his friends there included the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and future president Franklin Pierce.
For years he wrote quietly in Salem, publishing the novel Fanshawe (1828) at his own expense and the story collection Twice-Told Tales (1837). He worked at the Boston Custom House, spent time at the Brook Farm commune, and in 1842 married Sophia Peabody. The couple lived at the Old Manse in Concord, where their neighbors included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau.
In 1846 he became Surveyor of the port of Salem. After losing the job in 1849, he wrote The Scarlet Letter quickly and published it in 1850. Its success started the most productive period of his career, including The House of the Seven Gables (1851). Herman Melville, who met him in 1850, dedicated Moby-Dick to him. Hawthorne later served as U.S. consul in Liverpool (1853–1857) and died on May 19, 1864, in Plymouth, New Hampshire, while traveling with Pierce.
Test Yourself
Twelve questions across the whole novel. Click an answer to check it.
The Market-Place Quiz
Choose one answer per question. You’ll see right away whether you’re right, with a short explanation. Your score appears at the end.
Discussion Questions
For class or for your own journal. None of these has one right answer, so back up your view with evidence from the text.
- Hester refuses to name Pearl’s father, even when Dimmesdale himself asks her to. Is her silence loyal or a mistake? What does it cost each of them?
- Who is the worst sinner in the novel? Use Dimmesdale’s claim in Chapter 17 as a starting point, and argue for or against it.
- Hester could leave Boston at any time, but she stays. Why? Look at the reasons she gives herself in Chapter 5.
- Is Pearl a real child, a symbol, or both? Find a moment where she behaves like an ordinary seven-year-old and one where she seems more than human.
- Over seven years the town reads the A as “Able.” Did the community change, did Hester change, or both?
- Why do you think Hawthorne added “The Custom-House” to the front of the book? What does his story about finding the letter add to Hester’s story?
- Was Dimmesdale’s final confession an act of courage, or did it come too late to count? What would have happened if he had sailed with Hester?
- Hester returns to Boston and wears the A by choice. Is the ending a defeat or a victory for her?
Sources and Credits
- Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter: A Romance (Boston: Ticknor, Reed and Fields, 1850). Quotations from the 1878 James R. Osgood illustrated edition, Project Gutenberg eBook #25344. Chapter summaries are our own paraphrases.
- Wikipedia, “The Scarlet Letter” (publication, first printing, setting) and “Nathaniel Hawthorne” (biography, ancestors, Custom House and consul posts).
- University of Virginia Library, “This Just In: Scarlet Letters from the Backlog” (first-edition date, March 16, 1850, and print runs).
- Wikipedia, “Ann Hibbins” and “Salem witch trials.”
Art: The banner, embroidered-letter illustration, icon, and share image are original SVG illustrations created for Jugami. No film stills or book-cover images are used.