Hester Removes the Scarlet Letter

Hester Prynne removes the scarlet letter from her bosom during a forest meeting with Arthur Dimmesdale, an act that symbolizes a temporary liberation from shame and social condemnation, but which also triggers a crisis of identity and maternal authority when her daughter Pearl refuses to recognize her without the symbol.

The Act of Removal

In the forest, after deciding to flee with Dimmesdale, Hester Prynne undid the clasp that fastened the scarlet letter and threw it to a distance among the withered leaves. The mystic token alighted on the hither verge of the stream, glittering like a lost jewel. With the stigma gone, Hester heaved a long, deep sigh, and the burden of shame and anguish departed from her spirit. She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom. By another impulse, she took off the formal cap that confined her hair, and down it fell upon her shoulders, dark and rich, imparting the charm of softness to her features. A radiant and tender smile played around her mouth, and a crimson flush glowed on her cheek. Her sex, her youth, and the whole richness of her beauty came back from what men call the irrevocable past, and clustered themselves with her maiden hope and a happiness before unknown within the magic circle of this hour. As if the gloom of the earth and sky had been but the effluence of these two mortal hearts, it vanished with their sorrow, and forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest.

The Symbol's History and Meaning

The scarlet letter was a capital A, each limb precisely three inches and a quarter in length, wrought of fine red cloth with traces of gold embroidery, executed with wonderful skill of needlework in a now forgotten art. It had been intended as an ornamental article of dress, but its meaning was a riddle. When Hester first appeared on the scaffold, the letter was so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom that it had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity and enclosing her in a sphere by herself. Over the years, the letter became the symbol of her calling as a self-ordained Sister of Mercy, and many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification, saying that it meant Abel, so strong was Hester Prynne with a woman's strength. Yet the letter also burned on Hester's bosom, and its effect on her mind was powerful and peculiar, withering all the light and graceful foliage of her character.

The Crisis with Pearl

After Hester removed the letter, Pearl, who had been playing by the brook, refused to cross the water and come to her mother. The child stood on the far side, pointing her small forefinger at Hester's bosom, and burst into a fit of passion with piercing shrieks. Hester realized that Pearl missed something that she had always seen her wear. She advanced to the margin of the brook, took up the scarlet letter, and fastened it again into her bosom. As she did so, there was a sense of inevitable doom upon her. She gathered up the heavy tresses of her hair and confined them beneath her cap. As if there were a withering spell in the sad letter, her beauty, the warmth and richness of her womanhood, departed like fading sunshine, and a gray shadow seemed to fall across her. Only then did Pearl bound across the brook and clasp Hester in her arms, saying, "Now thou art my mother indeed!"

Thematic Significance

The removal and re-assumption of the scarlet letter dramatizes the inescapable nature of public shame and the deep entanglement of identity with the symbols society imposes. Hester's brief freedom reveals the cost of her penance and the impossibility of simply discarding the past. The letter, which had become a type of something to be sorrowed over and looked upon with awe and reverence, could not be cast aside without also casting aside the self that had been forged through years of suffering. The act underscores the novel's exploration of how sin, punishment, and redemption are woven into the very fabric of a person's being, and how the external mark, however unjust, becomes an internal reality that cannot be shed without consequence.