Scarlet Letter (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (37 page)

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).

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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. Boughton created illustrations for a later edition of
The Scarlet Letter.

Suzan-Lori Parks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist (2002) for her play
TopdoglUnderdog,
has written two works, which she terms her “Red Letter” plays, inspired by Hawthorne’s
The Scarlet Letter.
The first,
In the Blood,
centers around the figure of Hester La Negrita, who sums up her situation tersely: “My life’s my own fault. I know that. But the world don’t help, Maam.” Park’s Hester, like Hawthorne’s, lives outside society—literally; she is a homeless black woman living in an urban jungle. In Park’s play, the letter “A” is not sewn onto a dress but scrawled onto the concrete streets of the unnamed city. Illiterate and prone to a violent temper, Hester struggles desperately to care for her five children, all born out of wedlock. Grasping for a semblance of order amid brutal poverty that a dysfunctional welfare system does little to relieve, Hester hides her children under a bridge for shelter. The actors who portray Hester’s children double as her adult nemeses, who cast her out with an acid and thorough vilification.
In the Blood
was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1999.

The second “Red Letter” play bears a title that most newspapers have refused to print:
Fucking
A. The title reflects Park’s sense of dialogue, which makes use of street idiom and expletive-laced, yet mellifluous, language. Hester Smith lives in a small, tropical (and fictional) country where she earns gold coins as an abortionist—hence the “A” and the letter tattoo with which she has been branded. Hester believes her son, Boy, has been wrongly imprisoned—she has, in fact, not seen him since he was a young child—and devotes her life to freeing him. Ten original songs, written and composed by Parks, serve as interstitial sparks to the narrative. In its 2003 New York production the play, directed by Michael Greif, featured S. Epatha Merkerson as Hester, supported by Mos Def, Daphne Rubin-Vega, and Bobby Cannavale.

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