The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne — Read

One day, Hester Prynne brought a pair of gloves to the mansion of Governor Bellingham. She had fringed and embroidered the gloves, as he had ordered, for some important official occasion. Although this former ruler had lost the last election, he still held a place of honor and influence in colonial society.

There was another reason, more important than the delivery of his embroidered gloves, that Hester wanted to see this powerful man. She had learned that some of the leading townspeople, favoring stricter rules in religion and government, wanted to take Pearl away from her. These good people, believing Pearl to be a demon child (and with good reason), argued that their concern for Hester’s soul required them to remove this obstacle from her path to salvation. On the other hand, if the child really were capable of spiritual growth, they reasoned that its soul should have a better guardian than Hester Prynne. Governor Bellingham was said to be among the more prominent supporters of this plan. It may seem odd, perhaps even absurd, that a personal matter like this—which in later days would have been handled by the city council—would have been subject to public debate, with leading politicians taking sides. In that simpler time, though, legislators and statesmen involved themselves in the slightest matters, even ones much less important than the fate of Hester and her child. Not long before the time of our story, a dispute over the ownership of a pig caused not only a bitter debate within the legislature but also led to an important change in the structure of the legislative body.