The Scarlet Letter Chapters 1 - 4
The novel begins with a description of the town of Boston in the 17th century. The city is described as gloomy and oppressive, with a prison and a cemetery near the city's center. A crowd of dreary-looking people gathers outside the prison gate in seventeenth-century Boston. The prison's door made of oak is studded with iron spikes, and the building was among the first constructed by the Puritans. The founders of the new colonies provided prisons and cemeteries as and when required. A rose bush growing alongside the prison door marks where Ann Hutchinson stepped when she was taken as a prisoner. The rose bush reminds the narrator of nature's kindness to the damned and provides a sweet moral blossom or relief in times of sorrow and gloom.
The crowd watches Hester Prynne, a tall and stunning young woman carrying an infant. She’s making her way to the scaffold, where she will be condemned publicly. The women pass derogatory comments on her, saying she must be executed or shot for committing adultery. They criticize the letter 'A' branded on her chest, stitched with gold and scarlet, which must stand for the adulterer. Only one young mother in the crowd could sympathize with the guilt that Hester was suffering.
The beadle emerges and calls Hester. Children and adults haunt and stare at her. The silent judgments of the crowd are too painful for her to bear. While standing on the scaffold, she starts witnessing flashbacks of her time in London and her elderly scholar-husband with whom she had lived in Amsterdam.
Hester spots her husband, Roger Chillingworth, in the crowd, who hadn't fulfilled his promise of following her after sending her to America. Roger is hunchbacked with deformed shoulders and wears a fusion of American and European clothes. The sight of Hester at the scaffold frightens both of them. He gestures to Hester to remain silent about her identity and asks a man standing next to him about the crime that she has committed. The stranger tells Roger that Hester married a man in Amsterdam who sent her to England before him as he had some affairs to settle. The man never came to Boston to join her. Hester heard nothing from her husband for the next two consecutive years, which the magistrates considered problematic while sentencing her.
Roger further inquires about the baby's father, which Hester has kept a secret. She is made to stand on the scaffold for three hours and brand the initial 'A' on her chest for a lifetime. One of the judges, Reverend Dimmesdale, asks her to reveal the baby's father's identity as she shouldn't be protecting a man out of tenderness and pity. Hester refuses, and Dimmesdale doesn't press her further. Reverend Wilson comes forward and delivers a sermon on sin. Hester hears the address patiently, silencing her daughter Pearl when she begins to scream. She is then taken back to prison.
Hester and Pearl are upset after their unpleasant experience, and Chillingworth offers to tend to both of them. He learned Alchemy and studied medicine from the American tribe, where he was held captive. Hester refuses to drink the potion he offers as she considers it poisonous. She assumed Chillingworth to take revenge on her. He assures her that no retribution could be as harsh as the magistrate's sentence. So, Hester lets him tend to her and the child. Chillingworth apologizes to Hester for having married a woman he didn't love and who was much younger than him.
He asks Hester about the identity of her lover so that he can find him. He also makes Hester promise not to reveal his real identity to anyone, or he will harm his lover or reputation if she does so. His demonic grin makes Hester realize that he has come there as a devil in disguise to damn her soul. Chillingworth has revenge on his mind.
Analysis
The book begins with a note from the author, and in the note, he describes his connection with the setting of Salem as well as his short stint as an officer of the custom house. The author tells us about the characters that work in the custom house alongside him, and how he came to discover the account of Hester through some documents that he discovered in the Customs house. It wasn’t uncommon for novelists of that time to frame their stories along with real-life events, and Nathaniel Hawthorne did indeed work in the Custom House of Salem.
The introduction reveals themes that are developed in the account of Hester, and the foremost theme is being bound to a physical location through dark history. Nathaniel feels bound to Salem because of his ancestors, who lived in that region and performed terrible deeds during the infamous Salem Witch Trials. Hester experiences a similar attraction towards the settlement because how she was ostracised from the community.
In the first few chapters of the novel, we begin to learn about Hester’s adulterous act which has brought down the wrath of the Puritan settlement on her. The readers meet Hester as she is receiving the verdict of the Magistrates, and as she is being publicly shamed in front of the whole settlement. The people of the community are more concerned with the public shaming of sin, rather than aiding the sinner with forgiveness and redemption. Hester’s punishment as an adulterer is an attempt by the people to create a union between Hester’s private life, and her public identity, which was a central feature of Puritanism at the time. However, she refuses to comply with their values as she refuses to name the sinner even when she is confronted by her ex-husband, Roger Chillingworth.
