The Scarlet Letter: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

The crowd outside the prison grows restless waiting for Hester Prynne to appear. The faces in the crowd are grim, yet familiar, since Puritans gathered often to watch criminals be punished. The narrator says that the Puritans considered religion and law to be almost identical.

Some of the Puritan women waiting outside the prison say Hester deserved a harsher sentence. One states that Revered Dimmesdale, Hester's pastor, must be ashamed that a member of his congregation committed such an awful sin. Another says that Hester should have been executed for her sin.

Hester exits the prison holding a three month-old infant. The prison guard puts a hand on her shoulder, but she shrugs him off and goes out alone, with "natural dignity," looking proud, radiant, and beautiful.

On her chest Hester wears a scarlet letter "A," affixed with beautiful embroidery that strikes some women in the crowd as inappropriate. The narrator describes the letter in detail, noting that its "fertility" and "gorgeous luxuriance" pushed it beyond the Puritans' boundaries of acceptable dress.

Hester is tall, with a head of dark glossy hair, and a beautiful face with deeply set black eyes. She has a lady-like dignity, which the narrator says never was more powerfulor beautiful than when she emerged from prison.

As the crowd stares at Hester, the crowd focuses on the scarlet letter, which transfixes everyone. The letter sets Hester apart, enclosing her in "a sphere by herself" outside the watching crowd.

As part of her punishment, Hester must stand before the crowd on the scaffold for several hours. Her walk to the scaffold is inwardly agonizing, though Hester never reveals her suffering. The narrator observes that once upon the scaffold, the beautiful Hester took on the image of "Divine Maternity," and yet her beauty also had the "taint of deepest sin."

Governor Bellingham, a judge, and other officials observe the "spectacle" of Hester's punishment on the scaffold. The crowd, aware of the presence of authority, remains serious and grave. Hester feels the urge to scream at the crowd and leap off the scaffold, but she restrains herself.

Hester thinks about her past in order to endure her time on the scaffold. Lost in reminiscence, the harrowing scene before her eyes seems to vanish. Hester thinks about her youth spent in poverty in England. She envisions her parents' faces and sees also the face of a "misshapen scholar," her husband.

Finally Hester's thoughts return to the present. She looks out at the menacing crowd assembled before her. Hester touches the scarlet letter and squeezes her baby, Pearl, so tightly that Pearl cries. Hester then realizes that the letter and her baby are her only reality.