The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne — Read

One summer morning in the early seventeenth century, a large number of Boston residents were gathered in front of the prison, staring at its oak door. In another place or time, the grim faces of these good people would have suggested a terrible event, such as the impending execution of a criminal so notorious that the court’s verdict merely confirms what the community already knows. But given the harsh Puritan character, one could not be so sure about the cause for this scene. Perhaps a lazy servant or rebellious child was about to be publicly whipped. Maybe a religious heretic was to be beaten out of town or an Indian, drunk on the settlers’ whiskey, was to be lashed back into the woods. It could be that a witch like old Mistress Hibbins, the foul-tempered widow of the local judge, was to be hanged. Whatever their reason for being there, the crowd gathered on that morning was quite solemn. This cold demeanor suited a community in which religion and law so intermixed in the hearts of the people that mild punishments were just as terrifying as the serious ones. A criminal could expect little sympathy on his execution day. Back then, even a light penalty—the sort that might be laughed off today—was handed out as sternly as a death sentence.

It should be noted that on the summer morning when our story begins, the women in the crowd seemed especially interested in the forthcoming punishment. This was not a refined age. No sense of impropriety kept these women from elbowing their way to the front, even at a hanging. In their morals as in their bodies, these women were coarser than women these days. Today, six or seven generations removed from those ancestors, women are smaller and more delicate in frame and character. But the women standing in front of that prison door were less than fifty years from the time when manly Queen Elizabeth was the model for femininity. Being the queen’s countrywomen, these women were raised on the same English beef and ale, which combined with an equally coarse moral diet to make them who they were. So the bright sun shone that morning on a group of broad shoulders, large busts, and round, rosy cheeks that were raised on English stock and not yet made pale or thin by the New England air. The bold and frank speech of these women would also startle us today, both in its meaning and its volume.