The Scarlet Letter

On the morning of the new Governor’s inauguration, Hester Prynne and little Pearl entered the marketplace. It was already full of craftsmen and other common townspeople. There were a great many of them and many rougher figures too: people wearing the deerskin garments common in the forest settlements that surrounded the town.

On this public holiday, as on every day for the last seven years, Hester wore a garment of coarse gray cloth. Its color and its cut combined to make her fade from sight, until the scarlet letter brought her back into focus, revealing her in the light of its own moral judgment. Her face, which the townspeople knew well, showed the stony self-control they were used to seeing there. It was like a mask—or rather, like the frozen calm of a dead woman’s face. The similarity stemmed from the fact that, as far as the town was concerned, Hester was as good as dead. She had left the world in which she still seemed to walk.