The Scarlet Letter Chapters 1 -6 Commentary

Commentary: From the point that Hester enters the marketplace in Chapter Two, the dramatic action can be divided into three parts: the scene in the marketplace, with Hester on the scaffold; the "interview" between hester and Chillingworth in Chapter Fifteen; and a series of scenes that show Hester's place in the community and reveal her psychological state.

In much the same immediate and visual way that the novel does, the first scene provides early impressions of Hester, Chillingworth, and Dimmesdale. The setting is public, and the narrator establishes Hester as the center of attention. As she comes out of the prison, we see her in close-up. Her dark abundant hair flows free, her unearthly eyes stare, her lips are parted; her gaze seems both insolently proud and apart from the "good" Puritans. As she approaches the scaffold, we see through her eyes the crowd parting, and the Town-Beadle's staff. She seems alone, aloof, individual, while the others are but part of a crowd.

Chillingworth appears on the outskirts of the crowd, not really a part of the main group of which Hester is the center. He is in a coat of thick black fur, disheveled and misshapen. His dress, his manner, the way he moves through the throng, all serve to establish him as an outsider.

Dimmesdale sits on a balcony opposite and at the same level as Hester, a man fine-featured and sensitive, dressed properly in the severe black hat and coat of the clergy. Being on the same level suggests their relationship, though he is separated from Hester. The minister's nervous look, downcast eyes, and reluctance to question her hint at his -- and her -- secret.

The second scene takes place in Hester's prison cell, which is dark, shut in, a private setting that contrasts markedly with the public marketplace. Here we hear the screams of Hester and her child; in private, Hester can finally vent the anguish she so stonily and silently suppressed in public. The novel emphasizes this contrast between the public Hester and the private Hester throughout. Similarly, we are given a very different impression of Chillingworth here, a more sympathetic one, as we learn that he is a lonely man who has just returned from the wilderness to society, a man who has compensated for his physical deformity by developing his intellect. Both Hester and Chillingworth acknowledge the ways they have wronged and been wronged by each other. The "scales hang fairly balanced," Chillingworth states.

Yet when Chillingworth turns to conduct his own inquest of Hester (paralleling, now in a private context, the inquest of the previous scene), to demand the name of her lover, he shows a fierceness, and intensity, which contrasts with his recent gentleness. Hester, as in the first scene, remains silent; she not only keeps the secret of the indentity of her lover, but is sworn to a second secret.

The next couple of chapters consists primarily of a series of fairly rapid episodes showing Hester about the town, and with Pearl. Her alienation from the community is realed by the way others respond to her. Her inner torment and obsession with her sin are conveyed here through a series of symbolic images. We see, as she does, images of fire, a scaffold, the sea, accompanied with descriptions of her anguish, and her strange and growing awareness of the sins of others.

Pearl becomes one of Hester's obsessions and is shown in many of her actions and all she does for her child. But the child is a challenge that continues to grow daily. Pearl's life is different than the other Puritan children and so she becomes an outsider. Her behavior so disturbs the authorities that they decide to take her away from Hester. By convincing them that Pearl is the scarlet letter incarnate -- her guilt and torture as well as her joy -- Hester persuades the authorities to let her keep the child who is her only tie to life. Her own pastor, Dimmesdale, eloquently supports the plea.

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