Scarlet Letter (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

  So said Hester Prynne, and glanced her sad eyes downward at the scarlet letter. And, after many, many years, a new grave was delved, near an old and sunken one, in that burial-ground beside which King’s Chapel has since been built. It was near that old and sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle. Yet one tombstone served for both. All around, there were monuments carved with armorial bearings; and on this simple slab of slate—as the curious investigator may still discern, and perplex himself with the purport—there appeared the semblance of an engraved escutcheon. It bore a device, a herald’s wording of which might serve for a motto and brief description of our now concluded legend; so sombre is it, and relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow:—“ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES.”z

  ENDNOTES

  Introduction: The Custom-House

  1 (p. 5) Old Manse: Hawthorne previously displayed an “autobiographical impulse” in the essay “The Old Manse,” subtitled “The Author Makes the Reader Acquainted with his Abode,” which appears in Mosses from an Old Manse (1846). The sketch is similar in style and tone to “The Custom-House.”

  2 (p. 5) Memoirs of P. P., Clerk of this Parish: The reference is one of many tongue-in-cheek reflections on the author’s literary output and style in “The Custom-House.” “Memoirs” parodied the long-winded, pompous autobiography History of my Own Times (1723) by Bishop Gilbert Burnet. The parody appeared in Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus, a collection of satirical pieces written, without individual attribution, by John Arbuthnot, John Gay, Alexander Pope, and Jonathan Swift as The Scriblerus Club.

  3 (p. 6) tales that make up my volume: Hawthorne originally intended to publish “The Custom-House” and The Scarlet Letter in a collection with several additional short works.

  4 (p. 6) old King Derby: The reference is to Elias Hasket Derby (1739-1799), who initiated trade with the Orient from the port of Salem.

  5 (p. 9) Loco-foco Surveyor: “Loco-foco” initially referred to the radical wing of the Democratic party. Whigs appropriated the term from conservative Democrats and applied it pejoratively toward Democrats in general and, at the time of his removal from the customhouse, toward Hawthorne in particular.

  6 (p. 9) emigrant of my name: This was William Hathome, who traveled to Massachusetts from England in 1630 and settled in Salem shortly after, where he was revered as a magistrate and society elder. Hathorne sentenced those who transgressed Salem’s mores to such punishments as having one’s tongue bored with a hot iron or one’s ear lopped off at the same time Hathome operated a still for “strong waters.” Nathaniel Hawthorne changed the spelling of his familial name.

  7 (p. 10) a woman of their sect: The woman in question was Anne Coleman, who was dragged half naked behind a cart, flogged, and driven into the forest.

  8 (p. 10) left a stain upon him: William Hathorne’s son John, another judge and patriarch of Puritan society, participated in the preliminary phases of the witch trials of 1692.

  9 (p. 12) as chief executive officer of the Custom-House: Hawthorne was appointed Surveyor of the Salem Custom House in 1846, during the administration of President James K. Polk. Although Hawthorne’s term was to have lasted four years, he was removed after only three, following widespread Whig victories in the elections of 1848.

  10 (p. 13) General Miller: General James F. Miller, a hero of the War of 1812, would have been seventy years old when Hawthorne became surveyor.

  11 (p. 16) a certain permanent Inspector: William Lee had been inspector since 1814 and was in his late seventies when Hawthorne took office.

  12 (p. 21) “I’ll try, Sir!”: Miller reportedly responded with these words to a battle order that he gain control of a British battery near Niagara Falls.

  13 (p. 22) new idea of talent: Hawthorne is referring to his friend Zachariah Burchmore, who also lost his office when the Whig administration took over.

  14 (p. 23) Brook Farm: This was a cooperative agrarian community founded by a Unitarian minister, George Ripley, in 1841 as a utopian alternative to an increasingly industrialized and materialistic society. Hawthorne invested in and joined the community in its first year of existence but left after seven months, finding that the hard physical labor demanded by communal living sapped his literary powers. He later sued to have his investment returned.

  15 (p. 23) Emerson’s: Ralph Waldo Emerson, at whose family homestead Nathaniel and Sophia Hawthorne lived for three years, articulated the Transcendentalist beliefs embraced by Brook Farm’s founders.

  16 (p. 23) Ellery Channing: William Ellery Channing was a young poet of modest output whose brief stay at Brook Farm overlapped with Hawthorne’s.

  17 (p. 23) Thoreau and Walden: The reference is to the writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau, who described, in Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854), his experience of living in a self-built cabin on the shore of Walden Pond, outside Concord, Massachusetts.

  18 (p. 23) Hillard’s culture: George Stillman Hillard, a Boston lawyer who also pursued literary interests and offered political and financial assistance to Hawthorne, was a life-long friend of the latter.

  19 (p. 23) Longfellow’s hearth-stone: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a class-mate of Hawthorne’s at Bowdoin College in Maine and had already achieved recognition in 1837, when he wrote an extremely favorable review of Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales (1837).

  20 (p. 23) Alcott: Amos Bronson Alcott, father of Louisa May Alcott, was a philosopher and teacher who pursued his idealist vision by founding the utopian community Fruitlands.

  21 (p. 23) Surveyor of the Revenue: As surveyor, Hawthorne was responsible for determining the customs duty on imported goods.

  22 (p. 24) of Bums or of Chaucer: The Scottish poet Robert Burns served briefly as an excise officer, and Geoffrey Chaucer served for twelve years as a customs officer in London.

  23 (p. 25) old Billy Gray,-old Simon Forrester: William Gray and Simon Forrester were wealthy Salem sea merchants in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

  24 (p. 26) Governor Shirley and Jonathan Pue: William Shirley was the colonial governor of Massachusetts from 1741 to 1749 and from 1753 to 1756. Jonathan Pue, whose death was recorded as occurring in 1760, was Hawthorne’s early predecessor in the post of the Salem customhouse surveyor.

  25 (p. 27) included in the present volume: Hawthorne decided not to publish “Main Street” with The Scarlet Letter, but included the story in The Snow Image (1852).

  26 (p. 27) Essex Historical Society: Despite Hawthorne’s suggestion, the Pue documents are apparently fictitious.

  27 (p. 30) claimed as his share of my daily life: As surveyor, Hawthorne worked three and a half hours a day and was paid $1,200 a year.

  28 (p. 35) election of General Taylor to the Presidency: Following the election of Zachariah Taylor, a Whig, Hawthorne enlisted friends in journalism and politics to counter the inevitable campaign to deprive him of his office. Hawthorne’s political opponents accused him of partisanship and incompetence in fulfilling his duties. Hawthorne’s reliance on powerful outsiders only further alienated him from Whigs as well as Democrats, who resented Hawthorne’s reticent engagement in the ceremonial functions of office. Despite his ambivalence about serving as “Surveyor of the Revenue,” Hawthorne remained bitter long after his removal from the post.

  29 (p. 39) THE TOWN PUMP!: Hawthorne published “A Rill from the Town-Pump,” describing life in Salem in Twice-Told Tales (1837).

  Chapter I: The Prison-Door

  1 (p. 41) Isaac Johnson’s lot: Isaac Johnson was among the first settlers of Boston. Upon his death, in 1630, he was buried on his own land, upon which was built a cemetery, graveyard, and church.

  2 (p. 41) some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town: Although the story of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale is fictional, historical events described in The Scarlet Letter set the opening scene of the novel as 1642 and the closing one as 1649.

 
; 3 (p. 42) Ann Hutchinson: Ann Hutchinson was a prominent religious leader in Boston who preached that faith, rather than good works and abidance by religious law, brought one closer to God. After trying Hutchinson for heresy, the Church banished and ultimately excommunicated her. She moved to Rhode Island and later to Long Island, where she and her family were slaughtered by Native Americans, except for one daughter, who was abducted. The implied connection between Hutchinson and Hester Prynne foreshadows the latter’s iconoclastic reveries, when the world’s law becomes “no law for her mind” (page TK).

  Chapter II: The Market-Place

  1 (p. 43) Mistress Hibbins: Ann .Hibbins was hanged in Salem as a witch in 1656.

  2 (p. 45) Hester Prynne’s forehead: Reviewers have found historical and biblical sources for the name of The Scarlet Letter’s protagonist. In his notes to the Oxford World Classics edition of The Scarlet Letter, Brian Harding traces the first name to the biblical Hester, who as consort of the king of Persia saved her people from massacre by the Persian grand vizier. Mr. Harding traces the surname, which presumably she acquired from her husband, to William Prynne, an intolerant Calvinist in seventeenth-century England who for slandering the royalty was punished by having his ears cropped off. Others have speculated credibly that Hawthorne took Hester’s name from Hester Craford, whom Major William Hathorne, in 1668, sentenced to a public flogging for “fornication.”

  3 (p. 46) appeared the letter A: A Plymouth statute from 1694 prescribed that adulteresses wear an A made of cloth. Salem’s statutory punishment for adultery during the historical period in which The Scarlet Letter is set was death; however, in practice the usual punishment was public flogging.

  Chapter III: The Recognition

  1 (p. 55) Governor Bellingham: Richard Bellingham became governor of colonial Massachusetts in 1641, but was excluded from office in 1642 following the scandal caused by his marriage to a woman betrothed to a friend of his.

  2 (p. 56) John Wilson: Wilson was a preacher at First Church, Boston, and a prominent opponent of Ann Hutchinson.

  Chapter VII: The Governor’s Hall

  1 (p. 83) a step or two from the highest rank: Bellingham lost the governorship in 1642 not through “the chances of a popular election,” but because of a scandal (see note 1, chap. 3). In The Scarlet Letter, this episode took place in 1645, three years after Hester Prynne appears at the pillory.

  2 (p. 84) property in a pig: This is a reference to a 1642 dispute in which the Massachusetts governor took sides with one wealthy Captain Keayne, accused by a common woman named Mrs. Sherman of stealing her pig.

  3 (p. 87) the Pequod war: The Pequot tribe of eastern Connecticut ran raids on white settlers before 1637, when the militias of several northeastern colonies, aided by members of other Native American tribes, slaughtered more than six hundred Pequot men, women, and children.

  4 (p. 87) Bacon, Coke, Noye, and Finch: Francis Bacon, Edward Coke, William Noye, and John Finch were important British lawyers and statesmen during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

  5 (p. 88) Mr. Blackstone: William Blackstone was the first white settler in Boston, arriving there in 1623 but leaving eventually to get away from the Puritans. According to legend, he rode a bull and planted apple orchards and rosebushes.

  Chapter VIII: The Elf-Child and the Minister

  1 (p. 91) Lord of Misrule: This title was appointed in medieval times to one whose role entailed overseeing pranks and revelry during Christmas celebrations.

  2 (p. 93) Westminster Catechism: The New England Primer combined teaching of the alphabet with basic Christian material, such as “The Lord’s Prayer” and knowledge of the Fall. The “shorter” Westminster Catechism taught basic Calvinist theology to children.

  Chapter IX: The Leech

  1 (p. 104) the Gobelin looms: Tapestries produced in the sixteenth century by the Gobelin family of France were considered the finest to be had. The tapestries hanging in Dimmesdale’ s library depict a biblical scene in which Nathan extracts from King David the admission of his seduction of Bathsheba and his deception of her husband, Uriah, whom David sent to his death in battle.

  2 (p. 105) Sir Thomas Overbury’s murder: In 1613 Sir Thomas Overbury paid with his life for opposing the marriage of the earl of Rochester to the adulterous countess of Essex, who arranged to have Overbury poisoned by Ann Turner.

  3 (p. 105) Doctor Forman: Simon Forman was an infamous quack whom Ann Turner solicited for potions to assist the countess of Essex in her affair with the earl of Rochester.

  Chapter XI: The Interior of a Heart

  1 (p. 118) Pentecost, in tongues of flame: On Pentecost (now celebrated on the seventh Sunday following Easter), the Holy Spirit gave the apostles the ability to speak in “tongues as of fire,” which could be understood by each listener in his or her own language.

  Chapter XII: The Minister’s Vigil

  1 (p. 124) Governor Winthrop: John Winthrop was elected the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony before he even arrived from England in 1630. He died in 1649.

  Chapter XVI: A Forest Walk

  1 (p. 151) Apostle Eliot: John Eliot earned the name “Apostle to the Indians” for preaching to Native Americans and translating the Old and New Testaments into Native American dialects.

  Chapter XX: The Minister in a Maze

  1 (p. 181) Ann Turner: Ann Turner’s sentence for her role in the poisoning of Sir John Overbury specified that she be hanged in the starched collars and cuffs she made fashionable.

  Chapter XXII: The Procession

  1 (p. 195) Bradstreet, Endicott, Dudley, Bellingham: Simon Bradstreet, John Endicott, and Thomas Dudley, like Richard Bellingham, all served as New England governors during the seventeenth century.

  2 (p. 196) Increase Mather: Mather was a highly influential Puritan preacher and scholar.

  INSPIRED BY THE SCARLET LETTER

  VISUAL ART

  Readers of The Scarlet Letter cannot help but be drawn to the symbol Hester Prynne is forced to wear: It is the visual clue from which everything in the novel flows. Painters in particular have been quick to see the possibilities of Hester’s situation as subject matter.

  In 1860 American artist Thompkins Harrison Matteson committed to canvas the only image based on The Scarlet Letter created during Hawthorne’s lifetime. Matteson, who earlier painted Examination of a Witch, places Hester Prynne, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, and their illegitimate daughter, Pearl, in the foreground, standing on the platform of the pillory where Hester is initially shamed and where she later finds Dimmesdale doing penance. Spilling from the upper-right corner of the painting is the burst of light that accompanies Dimmesdale’s actions at the pillory. Hester’s elderly husband, Roger Chillingworth, lurks apart from the central group, glowering in curmudgeonly fashion. The tone of the work is dark, despite the celestial sunburst. Pearl alone is cheerful; the bright crimson of her bodice brings out the A on Hester’s shadowy, jade dress. Hawthorne advised Matteson on how to portray his characters.

  French artist Hugues Merle chose Hester and an infant Pearl as the subjects for his 1861 painting The Scarlet Letter. Pearl gazes up at her mother, who wears a beautiful, intensely serious expression, and playfully fingers the A sown onto Hester’s dress. Merle, known for his portrayals of literary subjects and ever-aware of the sentimental potential of a scene, shows in the background two passersby, who seem to shun Hester; presumably townsfolk, these figures add a dimension of judgment to the painting and deepen the meaning of Hester’s beautiful and intensely serious expression.

  George H. Boughton, an American painter and illustrator known for his renderings of pilgrims and provincial life, created the painting Hester Prynne in 1881. Reproduced here is a lithograph, made around 1890 by C. P. Slocombe, based on Boughton’s painting. A prim and morose Hester stares out at the viewer, while a man and boy scurry past, looking at her. This triangle of stares works to equate the observer with the man and the boy, while drawing us into Hester’s sadness. Bough
ton created illustrations for a later edition of The Scarlet Letter.