The Scarlet Letter | Summary (enotes)

Part I
The Scarlet Letter opens with an expectant crowd standing in front of a Boston prison in the early 1640s. When the prison door opens, a young woman named Hester Prynne emerges, with a baby in her arms and a scarlet letter "'A" richly embroidered on her breast. For her crime of adultery, to which both the baby and the letter attest, she must proceed to the scaffold and stand for judgment by her community.

While on the scaffold, Hester remembers her past. In particular, she remembers the face of a "misshapen" man, "well stricken in years," with the face of a scholar. At this moment, the narrator introduces an aged and misshapen character, who has been living "in bonds" with "Indian" captors. He asks a bystander why Hester is on the scaffold. The brief story is told: two years earlier, Hester had preceded her husband to New England. Her husband never arrived. In the meantime, she bore a child; the father of the infant has not come forward. As this stranger stares at Hester, she stares back: a mutual recognition passes between them.

On the scaffold, Boston's highest clergyman, John Wilson, and Hester's own pastor, Rev Dimmesdale, each ask her to reveal the name of her partner in crime. Reverend Dimmesdale makes a particularly powerful address, urging her not to tempt the man to lead a life of sinful hypocrisy by leaving his identity unnamed. Hester refuses.

After the ordeal of her public judgment, the misshapen man from the marketplace—her long lost husband—visits her, taking the name Roger Chillingworth. When she refuses to identify the father of her child, he vows to discover him and take revenge. He makes Hester swear to keep his identity a secret.

Part II
Now freed, Hester and her baby girl, Pearl, move to a secluded cabin. The narrator explains that

There is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked event has given the color to their lifetime.

Whether for this reason, or for others, Hester stays in the colony. She earns a living as a seamstress. Hester has "in her nature a rich, voluptuous, Oriental characteristic" that shows in her needlework. Although the Puritans' sumptuary laws (which regulate personal expenditure and displays of luxury) restrict ornament, she finds a market for her goods—the ministers and judges of the colony have occasion for pomp and circumstance, which her needlework helps supply. She uses her money to help the needy, although they scorn her in return. Hester focuses most of her love, and all of her love of finery, on her daughter, her "pearl of great price." Pearl grows up without the company of other children, a wild child in fabulous clothing. Even her mother questions her humanity and sees her as an ethereal, almost devilish, "airy sprite."

When Pearl is three, Hester discovers that certain "good people" of the town, including Governor Bellingham, seek to "deprive her of her child." She goes to the governor and pleads her case. She and Pearl find the governor in the company of Rev. Wilson, Rev. Dimmesdale, and his now close companion, Dr. Chillingworth. Pearl inexplicably runs to Rev. Dimmesdale and clasps his hand. To the men, Hester argues that God has sent Pearl both to remind her of her sin, and to compensate her for all she has lost. When they seem unswayed, Hester throws herself on Rev. Dimmesdale's mercy. He endorses her argument: Providence has bound up both sin and salvation in Pearl, whom Hester must be allowed to care for herself. The men reluctantly agree.

Since his arrival, Roger Chillingworth has assumed the identity of a physician. His scholarly background, combined with a knowledge of New World plants gained from his "Indian" captors, have prepared him well for this role. But healing masks his deeper purpose: revenge. He "devotes" himself to Rev. Dimmesdale, whose health has greatly declined. Chillingworth takes up lodging in the same house as the minister. As time passes, an "intimacy" grows up between them, and they seem to enjoy the difference in their points of view, as men of science and religion.

Unsuspected by his victim, Chillingworth digs into the "poor clergyman's heart, like a miner searching for gold." The only clue to Dimmesdale's condition lies in a characteristic gesture: he frequently presses his hand on his heart. One day, when Dimmesdale sleeps heavily (perhaps having been drugged), Chillingworth looks under his shirt. He sees something that the reader does not—something that evokes a "wild look of wonder, joy, and horror!" From that moment, their relationship changes for the worse. Having mastered Dimmesdale's secret, Chillingworth grows increasingly ugly, increasingly diabolical, and his real purpose becomes more perceptible. Many townspeople become convinced that Satan himself has sent him to torment the young minister.

Part III
Dimmesdale's secret has a paradoxical effect on his religious career. He knows himself to be the worst of sinners, and his sin makes his sermons more heartfelt, and more effective. This success intensifies his inner torment, and increases his sense of hypocrisy. One night he wanders out and climbs onto the scaffold. He considers waking the town and confessing his guilt. Hester and Pearl, after watching by a deathbed, find him, and join him. By this time Pearl is seven years old, and Hester's reputation has improved; now many associate the "A" with "Able," because of her good works. Pearl asks the minister if he will stand there with them the next day at noon; he promises that they will stand together—not tomorrow—but on "judgment day." A light suddenly bursts in the sky, appearing, to some, as the letter "A." Their vigil ends when Chillingworth appears and takes Dimmesdale home. Hester, disturbed by Dimmesdale's obvious torment, confronts Chillingworth. She entreats him to stop his vengeful scheme. He refuses. Pearl guesses at the connection between the reverend and her mother, but cannot wholly understand. She fixates on her mother's scarlet "A" in an ominous way. Worried that she has corrupted her child and both men, Hester decides to intervene and to tell Dimmesdale the truth.

Hester waits for Dimmesdale with Pearl in the woods. In the forest, the sun shines on Pearl, but never on Hester, who seems always enveloped in dark and shadow. Hester tells Dimmesdale all. The reader's suspicions about Dimmesdale are confirmed. '"Oh Arthur,' |cries] she, 'forgive me! . . . he whom they call Roger Chillingworth!—he was my husband!"' Dimmesdale realizes how full of deception his life has been. He and Hester decide to leave together and start a new life. Hester removes her scarlet letter and lets down her hair. For a moment, they are happy in their love. Seeing them, Pearl refuses to come until her mother resumes her ordinary appearance; she obstinately washes off the kiss that her father plants on her forehead. Yet the parents remain optimistic, and part with the promise to leave, secretly and by ship, in four days.

The day before their planned departure is Election Day, and Rev. Dimmesdale gives a sermon, intending it as a triumphant farewell. His spirits are strangely high. During the sermon, Hester finds their plans going awry. Chillingworth has guessed their intent and arranged to leave with them—they will never escape him. As Dimmesdale leaves the church, his strength fails him. In front of the whole community, he reaches for Hester and Pearl, and, with them, ascends the scaffold. He confesses his part in Hester's sin, and tears open his minister's collar, exposing what looks like—to some—a letter "A." He asks for the crowd's forgiveness, and in turn absolves his own tormentor, Chillingworth. Then he asks his daughter for a kiss and, when she gives it, "a spell is broken":

The great scene of grief, in which the wild infant bore a part, had developed all her sympathies, and as her tears fell upon her father's cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it. Towards her mother, too, Pearl's errand as a messenger of anguish was all fulfilled.

His breast finally unburdened, Dimmesdale dies.

Chillingworth soon follows him to the grave, leaving his money to Pearl. Hester takes her daughter to Europe, but returns alone years later. Hester resumes her scarlet letter "A" and her good works. When she dies, the village buries her next to Dimmesdale.