C 2 –
The grass-plot before the jail, in Prison Lane, on a certain summer
morning, not less than two centuries ago, was occupied by a pretty
large number of the inhabitants of Boston, all with their eyes intently
fastened on the iron-clamped oaken door. Amongst any other
population, or at a later period in the history of New England, the
grim rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these good
people would have augured some awful business in hand. It could
have betokened nothing short of the anticipated execution of some
rioted culprit, on whom the sentence of a legal tribunal had but
confirmed the verdict of public sentiment. But, in that early severity of
the Puritan character, an inference of this kind could not so
indubitably be drawn. It might be that a sluggish bond-servant, or an
undutiful child, whom his parents had given over to the civil authority,
was to be corrected at the whipping-post. It might be that an
Antinomian, a Quaker, or other heterodox religionist, was to be
scourged out of the town, or an idle or vagrant Indian, whom the
white man’s firewater had made riotous about the streets, was to be
driven with stripes into the shadow of the forest. It might be, too, that
a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the bitter-tempered widow of the
magistrate, was to die upon the gallows. In either case, there was
very much the same solemnity of demeanour on the part of the
spectators, as befitted a people among whom religion and law were
almost identical, and in whose character both were so thoroughly
interfused, that the mildest and severest acts of public discipline
were alike made venerable and awful. Meagre, indeed, and cold,
was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from such
bystanders, at the scaffold. On the other hand, a penalty which, in
our days, would infer a degree of mocking infamy and ridicule, might
then be invested with almost as stern a dignity as the punishment of
death itself.
It was a circumstance to be noted on the summer morning when
our story begins its course, that the women, of whom there were
several in the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in whatever
penal infliction might be expected to ensue. The age had not so
much refinement, that any sense of impropriety restrained the
wearers of petticoat and farthingale from stepping forth into the
public ways, and wedging their not unsubstantial persons, if
occasion were, into the throng nearest to the scaffold at an
execution. Morally, as well as materially, there was a coarser fibre in
those wives and maidens of old English birth and breeding than in
their fair descendants, separated from them by a series of six or
seven generations; for, throughout that chain of ancestry, every
successive mother had transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a
more delicate and briefer beauty, and a slighter physical frame, if not
character of less force and solidity than her own. The women who
were now standing about the prison-door stood within less than half
a century of the period when the man-like Elizabeth had been the not
altogether unsuitable representative of the sex. They were her
countrywomen: and the beef and ale of their native land, with a
moral diet not a whit more refined, entered largely into their
composition. The bright morning sun, therefore, shone on broad
shoulders and well-developed busts, and on round and ruddy
cheeks, that had ripened in the far-off island, and had hardly yet
grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere of New England. There
was, moreover, a boldness and rotundity of speech among these
matrons, as most of them seemed to be, that would startle us at the
present day, whether in respect to its purport or its volume of tone.
“Goodwives,” said a hard-featured dame of fifty, “I’ll tell ye a piece
of my mind. It would be greatly for the public behoof if we women,
being of mature age and church-members in good repute, should
have the handling of such malefactresses as this Hester Prynne.
What think ye, gossips? If the hussy stood up for judgment before us
five, that are now here in a knot together, would she come off with
such a sentence as the worshipful magistrates have awarded?
Marry, I trow not”
“People say,” said another, “that the Reverend Master
Dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart that
such a scandal should have come upon his congregation. ”
“The magistrates are God-fearing gentlemen, but merciful
overmuchÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯that is a truth,” added a third autumnal matron. “At the
very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester
Prynne’s forehead. Madame Hester would have winced at that, I
warrant me. But sheÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯the naughty baggageÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯ little will she care
what they put upon the bodice of her gown Why, look you, she may
cover it with a brooch, or such like. heathenish adornment, and so
walk the streets as brave as ever”
“Ah, but,” interposed, more softly, a young wife, holding a child by
the hand, “let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be
always in her heart. ”
“What do we talk of marks and brands, whether on the bodice of
her gown or the flesh of her forehead?” cried another female, the
ugliest as well as the most pitiless of these self-constituted judges.
“This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die; Is
there not law for it? Truly there is, both in the Scripture and the
statute-book. Then let the magistrates, who have made it of no
effect, thank themselves if their own wives and daughters go astray”
“Mercy on us, goodwife” exclaimed a man in the crowd, “is there
no virtue in woman, save what springs from a wholesome fear of the
gallows? That is the hardest word yet! Hush now, gossips for the
lock is turning in the prison-door, and here comes Mistress Prynne
herself. ”
The door of the jail being flung open from within there appeared, in
the first place, like a black shadow emerging into sunshine, the grim
and gristly presence of the town-beadle, with a sword by his side,
and his staff of office in his hand. This personage prefigured and
represented in his aspect the whole dismal severity of the Puritanic
code of law, which it was his business to administer in its final and
closest application to the offender. Stretching forth the official staff in
his left hand, he laid his right upon the shoulder of a young woman,
whom he thus drew forward, until, on the threshold of the prison-
door, she repelled him, by an action marked with natural dignity and
force of character, and stepped into the open air as if by her own free
will. She bore in her arms a child, a baby of some three months old,
who winked and turned aside its little face from the too vivid light of
day; because its existence, heretofore, had brought it acquaintance
only with the grey twilight of a dungeon, or other darksome
apartment of the prison.
When the young womanÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯the mother of this childÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯stood fully
revealed before the crowd, it seemed to be her first impulse to clasp
the infant closely to her bosom; not so much by an impulse of
motherly affection, as that she might thereby conceal a certain token,
which was wrought or fastened into her dress. In a moment,
however, wisely judging that one token of her shame would but
poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby on her arm, and with
a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would
not be abashed, looked around at her townspeople and neighbours.
On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an
elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread,
appeared the letter A. It was so artistically done, and with so much
fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a
last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore, and which
was of a splendour in accordance with the taste of the age, but
greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of
the colony.
The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a
large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw
off the sunshine with a gleam; and a face which, besides being
beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had
the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black
eyes. She was ladylike, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility
of those days; characterised by a certain state and dignity, rather
than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace which is
now recognised as its indication. And never had Hester Prynne
appeared more ladylike, in the antique interpretation of the term,
than as she issued from the prison. Those who had before known
her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a
disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive
how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and
ignominy in which she was enveloped. It may be true that, to a
sensitive observer, there was some thing exquisitely painful in it. Her
attire, which indeed, she had wrought for the occasion in prison, and
had modelled much after her own fancy, seemed to express the
attitude of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its
wild and picturesque peculiarity. But the point which drew all eyes,
and, as it were, transfigured the wearerÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯so that both men and
women who had been familiarly acquainted with Hester Prynne were
now impressed as if they beheld her for the first timeÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯was that
SCARLET LETTER, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated
upon her bosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the
ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by
herself.
“She hath good skill at her needle, that’s certain,” remarked one of
her female spectators; “but did ever a woman, before this brazen
hussy, contrive such a way of showing it? Why, gossips, what is it but
to laugh in the faces of our godly magistrates, and make a pride out
of what they, worthy gentlemen, meant for a punishment?”
“It were well,” muttered the most iron-visaged of the old dames, “if
we stripped Madame Hester’s rich gown off her dainty shoulders;
and as for the red letter which she hath stitched so curiously, I’ll
bestow a rag of mine own rheumatic flannel to make a fitter one!”
“Oh, peace, neighboursÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯peace!” whispered their youngest
companion; “do not let her hear you! Not a stitch in that embroidered
letter but she has felt it in her heart. ”
The grim beadle now made a gesture with his staff. “Make way,
good peopleÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯make way, in the King’s name!” cried he. “Open a
passage; and I promise ye, Mistress Prynne shall be set where man,
woman, and child may have a fair sight of her brave apparel from
this time till an hour past meridian. A blessing on the righteous
colony of the Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the
sunshine! Come along, Madame Hester, and show your scarlet letter
in the market-place!”
A lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of spectators.
Preceded by the beadle, and attended by an irregular procession of
stern-browed men and unkindly visaged women, Hester Prynne set
forth towards the place appointed for her punishment. A crowd of
eager and curious schoolboys, understanding little of the matter in
hand, except that it gave them a half-holiday, ran before her
progress, turning their heads continually to stare into her face and at
the winking baby in her arms, and at the ignominious letter on her
breast. It was no great distance, in those days, from the prison door
to the market-place. Measured by the prisoner’s experience,
however, it might be reckoned a journey of some length; for haughty
as her demeanour was, she perchance underwent an agony from
every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as if her heart had
been flung into the street for them all to spurn and trample upon. In
our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvellous and
merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he
endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles
after it. With almost a serene deportment, therefore, Hester Prynne
passed through this portion of her ordeal, and came to a sort of
scaffold, at the western extremity of the market-place. It stood nearly
beneath the eaves of Boston’s earliest church, and appeared to be a
fixture there.
In fact, this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine,
which now, for two or three generations past, has been merely
historical and traditionary among us, but was held, in the old time, to
be as effectual an agent, in the promotion of good citizenship, as
ever was the guillotine among the terrorists of France. It was, in
short, the platform of the pillory; and above it rose the framework of
that instrument of discipline, so fashioned as to confine the human
head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it up to the public gaze. The
very ideal of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in this
contrivance of wood and iron. There can be no outrage, methinks,
against our common natureÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯whatever be the delinquencies of the
individualÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide
his face for shame; as it was the essence of this punishment to do.
In Hester Prynne’s instance, however, as not unfrequently in other
cases, her sentence bore that she should stand a certain time upon
the platform, but without undergoing that gripe about the neck and
confinement of the head, the proneness to which was the most
devilish characteristic of this ugly engine. Knowing well her part, she
ascended a flight of wooden steps, and was thus displayed to the
surrounding multitude, at about the height of a man’s shoulders
above the street.
Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might
have seen in this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire and
mien, and with the infant at her bosom, an object to remind him of
the image of Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious painters
have vied with one another to represent; something which should
remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred image of
sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the world. Here,
there was the taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of
human life, working such effect, that the world was only the darker
for this woman’s beauty, and the more lost for the infant that she had
borne.
The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always
invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow-creature, before
society shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of
shuddering at it. The witnesses of Hester Prynne’s disgrace had not
yet passed beyond their simplicity. They were stern enough to look
upon her death, had that been the sentence, without a murmur at its
severity, but had none of the heartlessness of another social state,
which would find only a theme for jest in an exhibition like the
present. Even had there been a disposition to turn the matter into
ridicule, it must have been repressed and overpowered by the
solemn presence of men no less dignified than the governor, and
several of his counsellors, a judge, a general, and the ministers of
the town, all of whom sat or stood in a balcony of the meeting-house,
looking down upon the platform. When such personages could
constitute a part of the spectacle, without risking the majesty, or
reverence of rank and office, it was safely to be inferred that the
infliction of a legal sentence would have an earnest and effectual
meaning. Accordingly, the crowd was sombre and grave. The
unhappy culprit sustained herself as best a woman might, under the
heavy weight of a thousand unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her,
and concentrated at her bosom. It was almost intolerable to be
borne. Of an impulsive and passionate nature, she had fortified
herself to encounter the stings and venomous stabs of public
contumely, wreaking itself in every variety of insult; but there was a
quality so much more terrible in the solemn mood of the popular
mind, that she longed rather to behold all those rigid countenances
contorted with scornful merriment, and herself the object. Had a roar
of laughter burst from the multitudeÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯each man, each woman, each
little shrill-voiced child, contributing their individual partsÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯Hester
Prynne might have repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful smile.
But, under the leaden infliction which it was her doom to endure, she
felt, at moments, as if she must needs shriek out with the full power
of her lungs, and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the
ground, or else go mad at once.
Yet there were intervals when the whole scene, in which she was
the most conspicuous object, seemed to vanish from her eyes, or, at
least, glimmered indistinctly before them, like a mass of imperfectly
shaped and spectral images. Her mind, and especially her memory,
was preternaturally active, and kept bringing up other scenes than
this roughly hewn street of a little town, on the edge of the western
wilderness: other faces than were lowering upon her from beneath
the brims of those steeple-crowned hats. Reminiscences, the most
trifling and immaterial, passages of infancy and school-days, sports,
childish quarrels, and the little domestic traits of her maiden years,
came swarming back upon her, intermingled with recollections of
whatever was gravest in her subsequent life; one picture precisely as
vivid as another; as if all were of similar importance, or all alike a
play. Possibly, it was an instinctive device of her spirit to relieve itself
by the exhibition of these phantasmagoric forms, from the cruel
weight and hardness of the reality.
Be that as it might, the scaffold of the pillory was a point of view
that revealed to Hester Prynne the entire track along which she had
been treading, since her happy infancy. Standing on that miserable
eminence, she saw again her native village, in Old England, and her
paternal home: a decayed house of grey stone, with a poverty-
stricken aspect, but retaining a half obliterated shield of arms over
the portal, in token of antique gentility. She saw her father’s face,
with its bold brow, and reverend white beard that flowed over the old-
fashioned Elizabethan ruff; her mother’s, too, with the look of heedful
and anxious love which it always wore in her remembrance, and
which, even since her death, had so often laid the impediment of a
gentle remonstrance in her daughter’s pathway. She saw her own
face, glowing with girlish beauty, and illuminating all the interior of
the dusky mirror in which she had been wont to gaze at it. There she
beheld another countenance, of a man well stricken in years, a pale,
thin, scholar-like visage, with eyes dim and bleared by the lamp-light
that had served them to pore over many ponderous books. Yet those
same bleared optics had a strange, penetrating power, when it was
their owner’s purpose to read the human soul. This figure of the
study and the cloister, as Hester Prynne’s womanly fancy failed not
to recall, was slightly deformed, with the left shoulder a trifle higher
than the right. Next rose before her in memory’s picture-gallery, the
intricate and narrow thoroughfares, the tall, grey houses, the huge
cathedrals, and the public edifices, ancient in date and quaint in
architecture, of a continental city; where new life had awaited her,
still in connexion with the misshapen scholar: a new life, but feeding
itself on time-worn materials, like a tuft of green moss on a crumbling
wall. Lastly, in lieu of these shifting scenes, came back the rude
market-place of the Puritan, settlement, with all the townspeople
assembled, and levelling their stern regards at Hester PrynneÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯yes,
at herselfÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯who stood on the scaffold of the pillory, an infant on her
arm, and the letter A, in scarlet, fantastically embroidered with gold
thread, upon her bosom.
Could it be true? She clutched the child so fiercely to her breast
that it sent forth a cry; she turned her eyes downward at the scarlet
letter, and even touched it with her finger, to assure herself that the
infant and the shame were real. Yes these were her realitiesÄ�ā‚¬ā€¯all
else had vanished!
