Introduction

In the mid-seventeenth century, in Puritan Boston, the young and beautiful Hester Prynne stands on the scaffold holding her newborn daughter Pearl, exposed to the public gaze, with a scarlet letter 'A' embroidered in gold thread on her breast, the sign of adultery. Her husband had sent her ahead to the New World years before and has not been heard of since. However the magistrates and ministers press her, she refuses to name the child's father. In the crowd stands her missing husband, just arrived; concealing his identity under the name Chillingworth, he vows to find the man and take revenge. The truth is that the father is Dimmesdale, the town's revered young minister, tormented by guilt and wasting away, while Chillingworth, living beside him as his physician, secretly tortures his soul. Hester wins people's respect by her endurance and good works, and the meaning of the scarlet letter gradually changes to 'Able'.