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The Scarlet Letter: the plot

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Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel is set in Puritan Boston in the seventeenth century. A woman is publicly shamed for adultery, and three lives are bound together by a secret.

The scaffold

An introduction, 'The Custom-House', claims the narrator found an old embroidered letter A and a manuscript telling the story.
Hester Prynne stands on the scaffold holding her baby, Pearl, wearing a scarlet A for adultery. She refuses to name the father.
Her long-absent husband arrives and takes the name Roger Chillingworth. He swears to find her lover.

The secret

The father is the young, admired minister Arthur Dimmesdale, who is tormented by hidden guilt and becomes ill.
Chillingworth, posing as a physician, lives with Dimmesdale and torments him secretly.
One night Dimmesdale stands on the scaffold with Hester and Pearl, but only in darkness.

The forest and the end

Hester and Dimmesdale meet in the forest and plan to escape to Europe. Hester removes the letter, but Pearl insists she put it back.
After a powerful sermon, Dimmesdale climbs the scaffold, confesses in public and dies in Hester's arms.
Chillingworth dies soon after, leaving his wealth to Pearl. Hester later returns to Boston and wears the letter by choice.
Worked example

Why are there three scaffold scenes?

  1. The first shows Hester's public shame.
  2. The second, at night, shows Dimmesdale's private guilt.
  3. The third, in daylight, shows his public confession, completing the structure.

Answer: They frame the novel, moving from Hester's public shame to Dimmesdale's hidden guilt and finally his public confession.

Key idea

The Custom-House frame, Hester on the scaffold, Chillingworth's vow, Dimmesdale's guilt and torment, the night scaffold, the forest plan, Dimmesdale's confession and death, Pearl's inheritance and Hester's return.

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