The Scarlet Letter

A crowd of Puritan settlers gathers outside Boston's first prison, a stark wooden building with an oak door reinforced with iron spikes. The assembled throng consists of men in steeple-crowned hats and women in hoods, all waiting in their characteristic dark clothing before this grim edifice that represents one of the earliest establishments of the colony.

The narrator reflects on how the founders of new colonies invariably establish two essential institutions first: a cemetery and a prison. Boston's prison, built near Cornhill, arose almost simultaneously with the first burial ground around Isaac Johnson's grave, which later became part of King's Chapel's churchyard. Despite being only fifteen to twenty years old, the wooden jail already bears the weathered appearance of age, its iron-studded door rusted as though it had existed since time immemorial.

Between the prison and the street lies an unkempt patch of ground overtaken by weeds and unsightly vegetation, symbolically described as 'the black flower of civilized society.' However, amid this desolation grows a wild rose bush beside the prison door. The narrator suggests this rose bush might have either survived from the ancient wilderness or sprouted beneath the footsteps of Ann Hutchinson as she entered the prison. The chapter concludes with the narrator metaphorically plucking a rose to offer readers, suggesting it might symbolize moral beauty amidst the tale of human frailty and sorrow about to unfold.

On a summer morning, Boston residents gather outside the prison, where the narrator explains that under the colony's severe Puritan order, punishments ranging from whipping and banishment to execution could draw the same solemn public attention. Several women in the crowd judge Hester Prynne's sentence too leniently: one says she should have been branded on the forehead, another says she should die, while a younger woman observes that the pain of the mark will remain in Hester's heart. Reverend Master Dimmesdale is mentioned as Hester's pastor and as being grieved by the scandal. Mistress Hibbins is mentioned only as an example of a witch who might be executed.

The town-beadle opens the prison and leads Hester forward. She carries an infant about three months old and wears a red cloth letter A on her breast, elaborately embroidered with gold thread. After initially trying to conceal the letter with the child, she decides that one sign of shame cannot hide another and faces the crowd. Her clothing is more splendid than the colony's sumptuary rules permit, and the scarlet letter draws particular attention because of its elaborate workmanship.

Hester follows the beadle to the scaffold in the market-place. Her sentence requires her to stand on the platform for public view, but she is not fastened into the pillory. The governor, counsellors, a judge, a general, and the town's ministers observe from the meeting-house balcony while the crowd remains grave and solemn. Hester finds this silent scrutiny almost unbearable, even though she outwardly sustains herself through the punishment.

As Hester stands on the scaffold, her memory moves through her childhood in England, her parents, her younger self, and an older pale scholar whose left shoulder is slightly higher than his right. She also recalls a continental city associated with that man before her attention returns to the Boston market-place. The chapter ends with Hester clutching her child tightly enough to make the infant cry, then touching the scarlet letter to assure herself that the child and her shame are real.

While Hester stands on the scaffold, she notices a Native American at the edge of the crowd beside a small white stranger dressed in a mixture of European and Native clothing. The stranger has a furrowed, intelligent face and one shoulder higher than the other. Hester reacts strongly when she recognizes him, clutching her infant until the child cries. The stranger briefly shows horror on seeing Hester, then controls his expression and signals her to remain silent.

The stranger questions a townsman about Hester. He says he has suffered mishaps by sea and land, has been held among Native people to the south, and has been brought to Boston to be ransomed. The townsman explains that Hester is the wife of a learned Englishman who had lived in Amsterdam, sent her ahead to Massachusetts, and has not been heard from since. Hester refuses to identify the father of her infant. The magistrates have spared her the death penalty, sentencing her instead to three hours on the scaffold and lifelong display of the scarlet letter. The stranger says the unnamed fellow sinner should also stand beside her and declares that he will be known.

Governor Bellingham, Reverend John Wilson, and other authorities observe from the meeting-house balcony. Wilson urges the younger Reverend Dimmesdale, Hester's pastor, to press her to name the child's father. Dimmesdale tells Hester that public confession would be better for the hidden sinner than a lifetime of concealed guilt. His appeal moves the crowd, but Hester refuses to speak.

A cold voice from the crowd, which Hester recognizes, tells her to give her child a father, but she again refuses. Dimmesdale responds to her refusal with admiration for her strength. Wilson then preaches at length about sin and the scarlet letter while Hester, emotionally exhausted, becomes largely insensible to the sermon. Her infant cries during the remainder of the ordeal, and Hester is finally led back into the prison.

After Hester returns to prison, she becomes so agitated that she must be watched for fear that she might harm herself or her infant. The child is also in pain. Jailer Master Brackett brings in the stranger from the market-place, now introduced as the physician Roger Chillingworth. Chillingworth treats the infant first, using medicine informed by his study of alchemy and his recent experience with Native medicinal knowledge, and the child soon falls asleep.

Chillingworth then prepares medicine for Hester. She suspects that he may intend to poison her, but he tells her that keeping her alive better serves any vengeance he might imagine because she will continue to bear the scarlet letter publicly. Hester drinks the medicine. Once her physical distress has been addressed, the two speak privately about their past.

Their conversation explicitly establishes that Chillingworth was Hester's husband. He calls their marriage a mistake born of his folly and her weakness, admitting that he should not have expected his age and physical deformity to suit Hester's youth. Hester says that she never loved him and had never pretended otherwise. Chillingworth says they have wronged each other and that he will not seek vengeance against Hester, but insists that the other man has wronged them both.

Hester refuses to identify the child's father. Chillingworth vows to discover him by observation, saying that although the man bears no visible mark like Hester's, he will read the secret in his heart. He says he does not intend to attack the man's life or public reputation, but he claims that the man will nevertheless become his.

Chillingworth requires Hester to conceal the fact that he was her husband and to let the world believe her husband dead. Hester swears to keep his identity secret. At the end of the interview, she asks whether he is like the Black Man of the forest and whether their new bond will ruin her soul. Chillingworth answers that it is not her soul.

After her release from prison, Hester Prynne must face the scarlet letter as a permanent part of daily life rather than a single public ordeal. Although her sentence does not require her to remain in Massachusetts, she chooses not to leave. She tells herself that the place of her wrongdoing should also be the place of her punishment, while suppressing another thought: that a person with whom she feels permanently connected still lives there.

Hester settles with her infant in a small, isolated cottage on the outskirts of the town. Her skill with needlework provides enough income for them to live. Her embroidery becomes fashionable for official clothing, military dress, funerals, and infant garments, although she is never asked to make a bridal veil. She dresses herself plainly except for the scarlet letter, dresses her child more elaborately, and gives much of her surplus income and labor to the poor.

Despite her useful work and charity, Hester remains socially excluded. Poor people whom she helps sometimes insult her, wealthier women wound her with contempt, clergymen publicly exhort her, and children follow her with taunts. Both strangers and familiar townspeople repeatedly direct their attention to the scarlet letter, renewing her sense of shame.

Hester also comes to feel, or imagine, that the scarlet letter gives her a sympathetic awareness of concealed wrongdoing in other people. The narrator leaves uncertain whether these impressions are truthful or deceptive suggestions, and Hester herself struggles against them. Townspeople meanwhile spread a story that the letter glows with infernal fire when Hester walks abroad at night.

Hester has named her daughter Pearl because the child is her only treasure and has come at great cost. Pearl grows into a physically beautiful, vigorous, and intelligent child. Hester dresses her in rich and imaginative clothing, and the child's appearance can range from rustic simplicity to elaborate splendor.

Hester worries about Pearl's character because she believes her own emotional state before Pearl's birth may have influenced the child. Pearl is passionate, changeable, and difficult to discipline. Hester tries both tenderness and strict control but finds that neither reliably governs her. At times Pearl's expressions and behavior are so strange to Hester that she questions whether the child is entirely human, although the narration presents these thoughts as Hester's fears and impressions rather than established fact.

Pearl is isolated from the other children of the settlement. She does not seek their friendship, and when they approach or insult her, she sometimes responds with stones and fierce cries. In solitary play she animates objects around the cottage, but her imagined figures tend to become enemies rather than companions. Hester sees Pearl's hostility and passion as reflections of emotions that had troubled her before the child's birth.

From infancy, Pearl has shown a strong fascination with the scarlet letter. She grasps at it as a baby and later throws flowers at it while Hester refuses to cover the mark. Hester sometimes wonders whether Pearl understands more about the letter than a child should, but the source does not establish that she actually knows its meaning.

When Hester asks Pearl who sent her into the world, Pearl rejects the answer that her Heavenly Father sent her and says she has no Heavenly Father. The exchange leaves Hester troubled. The chapter closes with Hester recalling that some townspeople, unable to account for Pearl's paternity and disturbed by her unusual behavior, have called her a demon offspring.

Hester goes to the mansion of Governor Bellingham to deliver a pair of embroidered gloves, but her more important purpose is to resist a plan by influential colonists to remove Pearl from her care. Those supporting the plan argue that if Pearl is of demonic origin she endangers Hester, while if she is capable of Christian development she should be raised by more suitable guardians. Bellingham is said to be among the strongest supporters of the proposal.

Hester travels to the mansion with Pearl, who wears a crimson velvet tunic embroidered with gold. Her clothing and appearance so closely resemble the scarlet letter that the narrator describes Pearl as the letter in another form. When a group of Puritan children threaten to throw mud at them, Pearl charges the children and drives them away before calmly returning to Hester.

At Bellingham's large and richly appointed house, a newly arrived bond-servant tells Hester that the Governor is inside with ministers and a physician and says that she may not see him at that moment. Hester insists on entering, and the servant does not oppose her. Inside, Pearl is fascinated by the glittering house and by a polished suit of armor.

Looking into the convex breastplate, Pearl calls Hester's attention to their reflections. The armor enlarges the scarlet letter until it appears to dominate Hester's image. Pearl then looks toward the garden and cries for a red rose. Hester tries to quiet her when she hears voices approaching, and the chapter ends as the Governor and several other men come toward the house.

Governor Bellingham enters the hall with Reverend John Wilson, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, and Roger Chillingworth. The narration establishes that two or three years have passed since Chillingworth settled in Boston and that he has become both physician and friend to Dimmesdale, whose health has deteriorated under his pastoral labors. The men find Pearl in the hall and begin considering whether Hester should retain custody of her.

Wilson tests Pearl's religious instruction by asking who made her. Although the narrator says Pearl knows the expected answer and has received religious teaching from Hester, she perversely claims that she was not made at all but was plucked by her mother from the wild rose bush beside the prison. Bellingham treats this answer as evidence against Hester's fitness to raise her.

Hester refuses to surrender Pearl, arguing that the child is both her happiness and her punishment. She appeals directly to Dimmesdale, saying that as her pastor he knows her better than the others do. Dimmesdale argues that Pearl was given to Hester both as a blessing and as continuing retribution, and that the mother possesses a knowledge of the child's nature that others cannot have. Bellingham accepts the argument and allows Pearl to remain with Hester, while requiring continued religious examination, schooling, and attendance at meeting.

After Dimmesdale's defense, Pearl unexpectedly takes his hand, presses her cheek against it, and receives a kiss on the forehead from him. Chillingworth then suggests that a philosopher might infer the child's father from Pearl's nature, but Wilson rejects such inquiry.

As Hester and Pearl leave, the narrator reports, with an explicit caveat that the encounter may be authentic or may be a parable, that Mistress Hibbins calls from a window and invites Hester to join a gathering in the forest associated with the Black Man. Hester replies that she must stay home with Pearl and says that if the authorities had taken the child, she would have gone. The narrator treats the episode as an illustration of Dimmesdale's argument that Pearl helps preserve Hester from further wrongdoing.

Roger Chillingworth continues living in Boston under the name he has chosen to conceal his former identity and connection to Hester. Because trained physicians are scarce in the colony, his knowledge of European medicine and of herbs and roots learned during his captivity makes him a valued practitioner. At the same time, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale's health is visibly declining: he grows pale and thin, his voice weakens, and he increasingly presses a hand over his heart.

Chillingworth takes a strong interest in Dimmesdale's condition and offers to treat him. Dimmesdale initially resists medical help, but pressure from church elders, deacons, and members of his congregation leads him to consult the physician. Chillingworth becomes his medical adviser, and the two men spend increasing amounts of time together on walks and in private conversation. Dimmesdale is drawn to Chillingworth's learning and intellectual range even when the physician's freer habits of thought unsettle him.

Chillingworth also studies Dimmesdale's character closely because he suspects that the minister's physical illness may be connected to something unspoken in his inner life. Despite their growing intimacy, Dimmesdale does not disclose the secret Chillingworth believes exists. At Chillingworth's suggestion, Dimmesdale's friends arrange for the two men to live in the same house, with the physician's rooms and laboratory near the minister's study.

Many townspeople initially regard Chillingworth's arrival and care as providential. Over time, however, others become suspicious of him. They circulate stories about his past, remark that his face has grown uglier and more sinister, and some come to believe that he is Satan or Satan's agent permitted to test Dimmesdale. The narrator notes that these suspicions rest largely on rumor and intuition rather than proof. Meanwhile, Dimmesdale's appearance continues to suggest severe suffering, leaving the outcome of the struggle uncertain.

Roger Chillingworth's inquiry into Dimmesdale has become a consuming pursuit. Although he began by imagining himself an impartial investigator seeking truth, he now probes the minister's inner life with increasing fascination. The narrator compares him first to a miner searching for treasure and then to a sexton digging into a grave. Dimmesdale sometimes senses that something hostile has entered his life, but because illness has made him generally distrustful, he does not clearly identify Chillingworth as an enemy and continues their familiar association.

While the two men talk beside a window overlooking the graveyard, Chillingworth uses dark weeds growing from an unmarked grave to raise the subject of concealed sin. Dimmesdale argues that some guilty people may remain silent because public disgrace would destroy their ability to do good, while Chillingworth insists that such people deceive themselves and should accept the shame that belongs to them.

Their conversation is interrupted when Hester and Pearl pass through the graveyard. Pearl places burrs along the scarlet letter on Hester's breast, throws one toward Dimmesdale, and calls Chillingworth an old black man who has already caught the minister. The chapter does not establish that Pearl possesses supernatural knowledge; it records her words and the adults' reactions. After Hester and Pearl leave, Dimmesdale says that openly displaying suffering may be better than concealing it.

Chillingworth then tells Dimmesdale that his illness may have a spiritual component that has not been disclosed to his physician. Dimmesdale angrily rejects the intrusion and says that a disease of the soul belongs to God rather than to an earthly doctor. He later apologizes, and their former relationship resumes.

Not long afterward, Chillingworth finds Dimmesdale asleep in unusually deep slumber. He moves aside the minister's clothing and looks at his chest. The source does not tell the reader what Chillingworth sees. His response is a mixture of wonder, joy, horror, and intense excitement, showing that the sight has confirmed or transformed something in his investigation without yet revealing its nature.

After Chillingworth's discovery at the end of the previous chapter, his relationship with Dimmesdale appears outwardly unchanged but is inwardly transformed. Chillingworth believes that a revelation has given him a clearer path into the minister's hidden suffering. He does not receive the full confession he had once hoped to extract, but he learns how to aggravate Dimmesdale's fears and remorse while remaining close to him as physician and companion.

Dimmesdale, meanwhile, becomes increasingly uneasy around Chillingworth. He sometimes feels distrust, horror, and hatred toward the physician, but because he cannot explain those feelings and knows his own mind is diseased by guilt, he blames himself rather than acting on the warning. He therefore continues their familiar association.

At the same time, Dimmesdale's public reputation rises. His suffering gives his preaching unusual emotional force, and his congregation regards him as exceptionally holy. Their reverence intensifies his private torment because he knows that the image they worship is false. He repeatedly speaks from the pulpit about his own vileness, but because his confessions remain general and do not reveal the specific fact he is concealing, his listeners interpret them as proof of humility and revere him even more.

In private, Dimmesdale punishes himself. He scourges his shoulders, fasts as penance, and keeps long vigils. During these nights he experiences visions of devils, angels, dead relatives, Hester, and Pearl. He knows these figures are not physically real, but they express the inner reality of his guilt and false public life. The chapter ends when a new thought occurs to him and he dresses carefully, leaves his room, and goes out into the night.

On an obscure night in early May, Dimmesdale goes to the scaffold where Hester stood seven years earlier. Driven by remorse but still unable to confess publicly, he treats the midnight vigil as a private substitute for open penitence. He suddenly cries out, fearing the whole town will discover him. Governor Bellingham appears briefly at a window after hearing the sound, and Mistress Hibbins also looks out, apparently interpreting the cry as the noise of witches.

Reverend Wilson then passes with a lantern after attending the deathbed of Governor Winthrop, who has just died. Dimmesdale imagines calling to him but says nothing aloud. Later, Hester and Pearl pass by on their way home from Winthrop's deathbed, where Hester has measured him for a burial robe. Dimmesdale asks them to join him on the scaffold. Holding Pearl's hand with Hester on the other side, he feels a rush of new life. Pearl asks whether he will stand there with them at noon the next day. He refuses, saying they will stand together only at the Judgment Day.

A meteor suddenly illuminates the sky. Dimmesdale believes he sees an immense red letter A in its light, but the narrator explicitly attributes the letter-shape to Dimmesdale's disordered perception and notes that another observer might see a different symbol. Pearl points toward Chillingworth, who is standing nearby. Dimmesdale tells Hester that he has a nameless horror of the physician and asks who he is, but Hester remains silent because of her oath.

Pearl offers to tell Dimmesdale who Chillingworth is, then whispers unintelligible gibberish into his ear. She explains her mockery by reminding him that he would not promise to stand openly with her and Hester the next day. Chillingworth then approaches and leads the weakened minister home.

The next Sabbath, Dimmesdale preaches a sermon regarded as his most powerful yet. Afterward, a grey-bearded sexton returns Dimmesdale's black glove, found on the scaffold, and reports that townspeople interpreted a red letter seen in the sky as A for Angel because Governor Winthrop died that night. Dimmesdale says he had not heard of that interpretation.

Following the profound midnight encounter at the scaffold, Hester carries with her a disturbing new understanding of Dimmesdale's condition. His moral strength appears completely broken, though his intellect remains sharp, and she realizes that Chillingworth's influence has taken a devastating toll. Feeling a unique responsibility due to their shared sin and her knowledge of Chillingworth's true identity, Hester resolves to help the minister against his tormentor.

Over the years, the community's perception of Hester has gradually shifted from hostility to acceptance. Her quiet dignity, charitable works, and selfless aid during times of sickness and trouble have earned her a measure of respect. Some even begin to interpret the scarlet letter as standing for 'Abel,' meaning strength, rather than adultery. However, this transformation comes at a personal cost - Hester's beauty and vitality have been replaced by a stark austerity, her luxuriant hair hidden and her manner devoid of passion.

In her isolation, Hester's mind has turned from emotion to intellectual contemplation, leading her to question societal conventions and women's place within them. These radical thoughts, which might have made her a religious reformer like Ann Hutchinson had circumstances been different, are tempered only by her devotion to Pearl's upbringing. Hester's philosophical wanderings often lead her to dark conclusions about the futility of women's existence, yet she channels these energies into raising her daughter amid countless difficulties.

Having witnessed Dimmesdale's deterioration and recognized Chillingworth's poisonous influence, Hester acknowledges her own culpability in allowing this situation to develop through her promise of secrecy. Now stronger after years of hardship, she determines to confront Chillingworth and attempt to save Dimmesdale from his tormentor's grip. The chapter concludes with Hester spotting Chillingworth gathering herbs, presenting an opportunity for this confrontation.

Hester sends Pearl to play by the seashore while she approaches Chillingworth. He tells her that a magistrate has recently discussed whether the scarlet letter might be removed and says he supported taking it off. Hester replies that if she were worthy to be free of the badge, it would fall away or change its meaning without the magistrates' intervention.

As Hester studies Chillingworth, she sees how greatly he has changed during the past seven years. His former calm, scholarly appearance has given way to an eager and guarded fierceness. The narrator presents him as a man transformed by seven years of devoting himself to the analysis and intensification of another person's suffering.

Hester tells Chillingworth that her promise to conceal his former relationship with her has enabled him to remain close to Dimmesdale without being recognized. She says that by keeping the secret she has betrayed the one person to whom she still owed a special duty. Chillingworth answers that exposure could have destroyed Dimmesdale publicly, but he also claims that his medical care has prolonged the minister's life even while admitting that he has become the source of continual torment.

Chillingworth acknowledges that he was once peaceful, studious, just, and useful to others, but says that he has become a fiend. Hester accepts some responsibility for that transformation and asks why he has not taken revenge on her instead. He replies that he has left her to the scarlet letter.

Hester then tells him that she will reveal his identity to Dimmesdale. She asks Chillingworth to abandon his hatred and forgive, arguing that doing so would benefit him even if no good can otherwise come to any of them. Chillingworth refuses. He says he no longer believes pardon is within his power and interprets everything that has followed Hester's first wrong as a dark necessity or fate. He then tells Hester to act as she chooses regarding Dimmesdale and returns to gathering herbs.

After Chillingworth leaves, Hester watches him gather herbs and imagines the natural world turning poisonous around him. She admits to herself that she hates him and recalls their marriage with bitterness, telling herself that he deceived her into believing she could be happy with him. The narrator explicitly judges this reaction as unjust and asks whether seven years of suffering under the scarlet letter have truly produced repentance in Hester.

While Hester has been speaking with Chillingworth, Pearl entertains herself along the shore. She plays with her reflection, launches birch-bark boats, chases sea foam, throws pebbles at shore birds, and stops when she believes she has injured one. She then fashions a mermaid costume from seaweed and places a green letter A on her own breast in imitation of Hester's scarlet letter.

Pearl repeatedly asks Hester what the scarlet letter means and why Dimmesdale keeps his hand over his heart. She says the two are connected, but when Hester presses her for the reason, Pearl admits that she has told all she knows. Hester cannot determine whether Pearl truly understands the symbol or is only pursuing the mystery with unusual curiosity.

For the first time, Hester considers whether Pearl may be becoming mature enough to receive some portion of her confidence and whether the child's persistent interest in the scarlet letter might ultimately serve a merciful as well as punitive purpose. Hester nevertheless decides that she cannot reveal the truth. She tells Pearl that she wears the letter only because of its gold thread. The narrator notes that this is the first time in seven years that Hester has been false to the meaning of the symbol. Pearl continues asking about the letter and Dimmesdale's hand over his heart until Hester finally threatens punishment if she will not stop.

Hester remains determined to tell Dimmesdale the truth about Chillingworth but cannot find a suitable opportunity. She avoids meeting the minister in his study partly because she fears Chillingworth's interference, partly because her own consciousness makes secrecy feel suspicious, and partly because she believes that she and Dimmesdale need the openness of the natural world for their conversation. After learning that Dimmesdale has gone to visit the Apostle Eliot among his Native converts, she takes Pearl into the forest to meet him on his return.

As Hester and Pearl walk through the dark woods, patches of sunlight seem to retreat from Hester while Pearl runs into them freely. Pearl says the sunshine avoids her mother because of the mark on her bosom and notes that she herself wears nothing there yet. The episode reinforces the contrast between Hester's burdened state and Pearl's restless vitality.

Pearl then asks about the Black Man, repeating a story she overheard from an old woman about a figure who carries a book through the forest, makes people sign it in blood, and places a mark on them. She connects the story to Mistress Hibbins and to Hester's scarlet letter. When Pearl asks whether Hester has ever met the Black Man, Hester answers that she met him once and that the scarlet letter is his mark.

Deeper in the woods, Hester and Pearl rest beside a melancholy brook. Pearl wonders why the brook is sad, and Hester says it might tell her sorrow if Pearl had sorrow of her own. When Hester hears someone approaching, she sends Pearl away to play nearby.

The approaching figure is Dimmesdale. Away from public observation, he looks haggard, weak, and deeply despondent, leaning on a staff and appearing almost without the will to continue walking. As Pearl has repeatedly noticed, he keeps a hand over his heart.

Hester and Dimmesdale meet alone in the forest and begin by speaking cautiously about their health and suffering. Dimmesdale tells Hester that he has found no peace and that the public reverence surrounding him only increases his misery because it rests on a false image of holiness. He says that his penance has brought no true penitence and that he longs for even one person who knows him as he really is.

Hester tells him that he has such a person in her, then reveals the fact she has concealed for seven years: Roger Chillingworth is her husband and has been living under the same roof as Dimmesdale. Dimmesdale reacts with horror and anger, telling Hester that he cannot forgive her for allowing his hidden guilt to be exposed to his enemy. Hester insists on forgiveness, and after a struggle he does forgive her. He then judges Chillingworth's deliberate revenge to be a darker wrong than the sin he and Hester committed together.

The two consider what Chillingworth may do now that Hester intends to expose his identity. Hester believes he is unlikely to reveal their secret openly, but Dimmesdale says he cannot continue living beside him. Hester urges the exhausted minister to leave the settlement, first suggesting the wilderness and then passage across the sea to Europe, where he could begin another life.

Dimmesdale resists because he believes he lacks the strength to leave his post and enter the wider world alone. Hester urges him to abandon the life that has destroyed him and begin again elsewhere. When he repeats that he cannot go alone, Hester answers that he will not have to. The chapter ends with that promise, while the moral consequences of their proposed escape remain unresolved.

Dimmesdale reacts to Hester's promise with hope, joy, fear, and uneasiness at her boldness. The narrator contrasts Hester's seven years outside ordinary social life with Dimmesdale's continued confinement within religious and social authority. Hester has become accustomed to questioning established rules, while Dimmesdale, despite his past transgression, remains deeply bound by them. The narrator therefore treats their proposed escape not simply as renewal, but as another morally dangerous choice made by a man weakened by suffering and confusion.

Dimmesdale nevertheless decides to flee with Hester rather than remain in his present life. Once the decision is made, he feels an unfamiliar surge of hope and imagines that he may have entered a better life. Hester tells him not to look back.

Hester then removes the scarlet letter and throws it among the leaves beside the brook. She also removes the cap that has confined her hair. She feels an intense release from the burden of shame, and her former softness, color, and beauty appear to return. At the same moment, sunlight breaks through the forest. The narrator describes nature as sympathizing with the happiness of the two, while also continuing to frame the forest as outside the laws and religious order of the settlement.

Hester tells Dimmesdale that he must now know Pearl more fully and calls the child back. Dimmesdale admits that Pearl has often made him uneasy and asks whether she will accept him.

While Hester and Dimmesdale have been talking, Pearl has moved freely through the forest, gathering berries and flowers and encountering animals that largely tolerate her presence. The narrator even reports an improbable tale of a wolf allowing Pearl to touch it, then qualifies that story. Pearl decorates herself with flowers and greenery and returns toward Hester. She approaches slowly when she sees Dimmesdale waiting beside her mother.

Hester and Dimmesdale watch Pearl approach through the forest and speak openly about the child as the living bond between them. Dimmesdale admits that he has often feared that his own features might be visible in Pearl's face strongly enough for others to notice. Hester reassures him that soon he will no longer need to fear acknowledging whose child she is.

When Pearl reaches the opposite side of the brook, she stops instead of joining them. She studies Hester and Dimmesdale together and repeatedly points at Hester's breast. As Hester continues calling to her, Pearl becomes increasingly angry and finally erupts into screams and violent gestures. Hester realizes that Pearl is disturbed by the absence of the scarlet letter, something she has always seen her mother wear.

Hester tells Pearl to bring the discarded letter to her, but Pearl insists that Hester retrieve it herself. Hester crosses to the brook, picks up the letter, and fastens it again to her breast. She also confines her hair beneath her cap. The appearance of freedom and renewed beauty from the previous chapter disappears, and Hester feels a sense of doom as the symbol returns to its accustomed place.

Only after Hester restores the scarlet letter does Pearl cross the brook and embrace her. Pearl kisses Hester's face and then kisses the letter as well. She asks whether Dimmesdale will return to town hand in hand with them. Hester says not yet, but tells Pearl that in the future they will share a home and that Dimmesdale will love and teach her.

Pearl remains unwilling to accept him. Hester brings her to Dimmesdale, who kisses her forehead, but Pearl immediately runs to the brook and washes the kiss away. She then stays apart while Hester and Dimmesdale finish making arrangements connected with their plans.

As Dimmesdale leaves the forest ahead of Hester and Pearl, he reviews the practical plan for their departure. They have decided that Europe offers a better refuge than the American wilderness. A ship recently arrived from the Spanish Main is preparing to sail for Bristol, and Hester believes she can quietly secure passage for two adults and a child through her acquaintance with the captain and crew. The timing especially appeals to Dimmesdale because he is scheduled to preach the Election Sermon before the ship leaves, allowing him to complete what he regards as his final public duty.

Returning toward town, Dimmesdale feels physically stronger and perceives familiar places and people as strangely altered. The narrator explains that the external world has not changed; Dimmesdale himself has. His decision in the forest has produced what feels like a complete change in his inner life.

That change appears in a series of disturbing impulses. He barely restrains himself from speaking blasphemously to an elderly deacon, from attacking the belief in immortality while speaking to an elderly churchwoman, from corrupting a young female parishioner, from teaching obscene words to children, and from trading profane jokes and oaths with a drunken sailor. He acts on none of these impulses, but they alarm him and make him wonder whether he has given himself over to evil.

Mistress Hibbins then speaks to him as though his forest visit involved the Black Man. Dimmesdale denies her implication and says he went to visit the Apostle Eliot. The narrator adds that, whether or not the encounter with Hibbins was real, Dimmesdale has knowingly chosen what he understands as deadly sin by agreeing to the forest plan.

Back in his study, Dimmesdale meets Chillingworth. Each appears to understand that their relationship has changed, but neither states the truth directly. Dimmesdale refuses further medicine, while Chillingworth presses close to the subject without openly naming it. After Chillingworth leaves, Dimmesdale eats with an unusually strong appetite, burns the unfinished Election Sermon he had already begun, and writes a new sermon through the night with such intensity that he imagines himself inspired.

On Election Day, Hester and Pearl enter a crowded Boston marketplace where the colony is preparing for the installation of a new governor. Hester wears her usual coarse gray clothing and scarlet letter, while Pearl is dressed brightly and moves with unusual excitement. The narrator suggests, rather than states as fact, that an unusually perceptive observer might imagine Hester is voluntarily facing the crowd one final time before leaving and perhaps converting her long public humiliation into a kind of triumph.

The holiday gives the normally restrained settlement an uncommon degree of public festivity. Craftsmen, people from outlying forest settlements, Native visitors, and sailors mingle in the marketplace. Wrestling and quarterstaff contests take place, while a proposed sword exhibition on the pillory platform is stopped by the town beadle. The sailors belong to the crew of the vessel recently arrived from the Spanish Main; the source does not identify them as Spanish.

Pearl asks whether Dimmesdale will greet her during the public procession as he did privately in the forest and on the scaffold. Hester tells her that he will not acknowledge them there. Pearl remarks on the contrast between his private closeness and his public distance.

Hester then sees Roger Chillingworth speaking familiarly with the commander of the Bristol-bound ship on which she plans to escape. Afterward, the shipmaster approaches Hester and tells her that Chillingworth intends to sail with them, claiming to be a close friend of the gentleman in Hester's party. Hester conceals her alarm. Across the crowded marketplace, she sees Chillingworth watching her with a smile that she understands as carrying a secret and threatening meaning.

The Election Day procession advances toward the meeting-house with music, soldiers, magistrates, and clergy. The narrator names several early colonial leaders, including Bradstreet, Endicott, Dudley, and Bellingham, while describing the authority and dignity associated with the magistrates of the period.

Dimmesdale follows among the prominent figures and appears to possess more energy than Hester has ever seen in him. His step is no longer feeble and his hand does not rest on his heart, but the narrator leaves the source of this strength uncertain. Dimmesdale is deeply absorbed in the thoughts that will soon become his Election Sermon and seems scarcely aware of the procession around him.

Hester watches him and feels that he has become remote and almost unreachable compared with the man she met in the forest. Pearl shares or reflects that impression and asks whether this is really the same minister who kissed her beside the brook. Hester warns her not to speak publicly about what happened in the forest.

Mistress Hibbins then approaches Hester and claims to recognize Dimmesdale as someone who has also been in the forest. She predicts that the mark he conceals will eventually be revealed publicly. Hester treats Hibbins as mentally unsound but is unsettled by her confidence.

Because the meeting-house is full, Hester stands near the scaffold and listens to Dimmesdale's sermon through the walls. She cannot distinguish the words clearly, but she hears a continuing undertone of suffering in his voice. Pearl moves freely through the marketplace. The shipmaster gives her a gold chain and sends Hester another message: Chillingworth has said that he will bring the gentleman of their party aboard himself.

The news nearly overwhelms Hester. At the same time, visitors, sailors, Native onlookers, and townspeople gather at a distance to stare at the scarlet letter. Hester recognizes nearly all of the matrons who watched her emerge from prison seven years earlier. On what she expects to be one of her final hours wearing the symbol, public attention makes it hurt more intensely than it has since the first day.

Dimmesdale finishes the Election Sermon at the height of his public reputation. The congregation regards the sermon as extraordinarily inspired and hears in it a sorrowful undertone suggesting that their minister may soon die. When the procession resumes, however, Dimmesdale appears physically exhausted and barely able to walk.

As he reaches the marketplace, Dimmesdale stops opposite the scaffold where Hester stands with Pearl. He refuses support from Reverend Wilson and Governor Bellingham, then calls Hester and Pearl to him. Chillingworth rushes forward and tries to prevent what Dimmesdale is about to do, warning him that public disgrace can still be avoided. Dimmesdale rejects him and asks Hester to help him reach the scaffold.

On the platform, Dimmesdale tells the crowd that he should have stood there with Hester seven years earlier. He directs their attention to Hester's scarlet letter and declares that he too bears a sign of concealed sin. He then tears away the ministerial band from his breast. The narration says that something is revealed but explicitly refuses to describe it. Dimmesdale collapses immediately afterward.

Chillingworth tells Dimmesdale that he has escaped him, and Dimmesdale asks God to forgive Chillingworth as well. Pearl then kisses Dimmesdale. The narrator states that the scene breaks the spell around her and that her tears mark the development of human sympathy and her future participation in ordinary human joy and sorrow.

Hester asks whether she and Dimmesdale will meet again after death. Dimmesdale does not promise that they will. Instead, he points back to the law they broke, expresses fear that their hoped-for eternal reunion may be impossible, and leaves the matter to God's mercy. His final word is farewell, and he dies on the scaffold.

After Dimmesdale's death, witnesses give conflicting accounts of what happened on the scaffold. Most say they saw a scarlet letter marked upon his breast, but they disagree about its origin. Some attribute it to self-punishment, some to Chillingworth's magic and drugs, and others to remorse acting upon the body. Certain other witnesses deny that any mark existed at all and deny that Dimmesdale's final words acknowledged a connection to Hester's guilt. The narrator rejects that latter interpretation while acknowledging that the mark's origin remains conjectural.

Chillingworth rapidly declines after Dimmesdale's death and dies within the year. His will, administered by Governor Bellingham and Reverend Wilson, leaves substantial property in New England and England to Pearl, making her extremely wealthy. Not long afterward, Hester and Pearl disappear from the colony.

Years later, Hester returns alone to her old seaside cottage and voluntarily resumes wearing the scarlet letter. Pearl's fate is never established with complete certainty. Letters, gifts, and other signs lead local gossips, Surveyor Pue, and the narrator's later source tradition to believe that Pearl survived, married, lived happily elsewhere, and remained affectionate toward her mother.

Hester spends the remainder of her life in New England. The scarlet letter gradually loses its old meaning as an object of scorn and comes instead to be regarded with sorrow, awe, and reverence. Women burdened by unhappy or disordered relationships seek Hester's counsel. She tells them that in a future age a new truth will establish relations between men and women on a surer basis of mutual happiness, while acknowledging that she herself is not the person destined to reveal it.

After Hester dies, she is buried near Dimmesdale, though their graves remain separate. A single tombstone serves both graves. Its heraldic device is a red letter A on a black field.