Step inside The Scarlet Letter

The film without the cuts. And the book itself.

A woman walks out of a prison door carrying an infant and wearing her shame on her chest - and she holds her head up.

9:41

The Cast

Hester Prynne

Main

A woman stands before Boston with a red letter on her breast and refuses to surrender the name of the man beside her in guilt.

Locations

Boston Prison-Door

prison threshold

A grim iron-studded prison door, and a wild rose blooming right beside it.

Passage

Can mercy survive where society brands suffering as deserved and inescapable?

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The Author’s Pen

The Wild Rose Bush

Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pigweed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison. But on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.

Reading

Nature keeps offering kindness even to people the town has already condemned. The narrator has been describing the Puritan prison, and the weeds around it seem to belong to the soil, as if cruelty and punishment grow naturally in this place. But right at the door, where a prisoner would pass on the way in and again on the way out to be hanged, a wild rose blooms anyway. Hawthorne calls the prison itself "the black flower of civilized society," which turns the town's justice into something dark and unnatural, while the rose stands for a gentler feeling the settlers have shut out.

World Index

The Plot

Hester on the ScaffoldChillingworth Enters as PhysicianHester and Pearl on the MarginChillingworth's Predation and Dimmesdale's TormentThe Forest MeetingElection Day and the RevelationHester Returns

The Cast

Hester PrynneArthur DimmesdalePearlRoger ChillingworthGovernor BellinghamReverend John WilsonMistress HibbinsPuritan Community / Boston Crowd

Locations

Boston MarketplaceBoston Prison-DoorDimmesdale’s StudyElection Day Procession RouteGovernor Bellingham’s HallHester’s CottageThe Brook-SideThe Burial GroundThe Forest DellThe Forest PathThe Meeting-HouseThe ScaffoldThe Seashore

Objects of Note

Dimmesdale’s Hand Over His HeartHester’s NeedleworkMedicinal Herbs and RootsPearl’s Scarlet ClothingPearl’s Seaweed LetterThe Black GloveThe Election SermonThe Final Grave EmblemThe Meteor Interpreted as a LetterThe Possible Mark on Dimmesdale’s BreastThe Prison Rose-BushThe Scarlet Letter

Core Concepts

Endurance becomes moral authorityHidden guilt corrodes more deeply than public punishmentPearl embodies truth that adults resistPublic shame cannot fix identityRevenge deforms the avengerSymbols never remain fixedThe forest permits truth but not escape

The Author's Pen

The Prison Door TurnsThe Letter ASinless Motherhood By ContrastFinger on His LipsSpeak Out His NameHester Will Not SpeakThe Hidden LetterHester's Cottage on the ShoreHalf Truth And Self DelusionHester's Fashionable HandiworkThe Sentence Never SleepsThe Scarlet Letter Endowed With LifePearl as Spirit MessengerHidden Behind The LetterPearl Keeps Me HereThe Child as SalvationScrutiny Before Doing GoodThe Physician’s EcstasyA More Intimate RevengeTruth Turned FalsehoodAll Three TogetherWarnings Written in the SkyThe Scarlet A Means AbleThe Letter Meant AbleRedeeming Her ErrorPearl's Unanswered QuestionsThe Withdrawing SunlightPearl and the SunshineForgiveness and Blacker RevengeThou Shalt Not Go AloneThe Scarlet Letter's FreedomThe Weight Until FreedomPearl Owns Her MotherForest Secrets in the Market PlaceThe Hidden Red StigmaPearl's KissThou Hast Escaped MeTheories of the StigmaThe Letter TransformedOne Tombstone for Both

Plot point 01

Hester on the Scaffold

A woman walks out of a prison door carrying an infant and wearing her shame on her chest - and she holds her head up.

Objects of Note

The Scarlet Letter

A red letter stitched on Hester's breast is a punishment, a child's question, and a meaning no one can pin down.

The Cast

Arthur Dimmesdale

Main · Boston clergy

A young minister keeps one hand over his heart while the town hears holiness in the voice that conceals his guilt.

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The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The cast, locations, objects of note, core concepts, and selected passages in the Author’s Pen - at your own pace.

One of 127 classics in the Literah library

The Scarlet Letter World, as it plays on your phone

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