THE MARKET-PLACE


  THE grass-plot before the jail, in Prison Lane, on a certain

summer morning, not less than two centuries ago, was occupied by a

pretty large number of the inhabitants of Boston; all with their

eyes intently fastened on the iron-clamped oaken door. Amongst any

other population, or at a later period in the history of New

England, the grim rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of

these good people would have augured some awful business in hand. It

could have betokened nothing short of the anticipated execution of

some noted culprit, on whom the sentence of a legal tribunal had but

confirmed the verdict of public sentiment. But, in that early severity

of the Puritan character, an inference of this kind could not so

indubitably be drawn. It might be, that a sluggish bond-servant, or an

undutiful child, whom his parents had given over to the civil

authority, was to be corrected at the whipping-post. It might be, that

an Antinomian, a Quaker, or other heterodox religionist, was to be

scourged out of the town, or an idle and vagrant Indian, whom the

white man"s fire-water had made riotous about the streets, was to be

driven with stripes into the shadow of the forest. It might be, too,

that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the bitter-tempered widow

of the magistrate, was to die upon the gallows. In either case,

there was very much the same solemnity of demeanour on the part of the

spectators; as befitted a people amongst whom religion and law were

almost identical, and in whose character both were so thoroughly

interfused, that the mildest and the severest acts of public

discipline were alike made venerable and awful. Meagre, indeed, and

cold, was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from such

bystanders, at the scaffold. On the other hand, a penalty which, in

our days, would infer a degree of mocking infamy and ridicule, might

then be invested with almost as stern a dignity as the punishment of

death itself.

  It was a circumstance to be noted, on the summer morning when our

story begins its course, that the women, of whom there were several in

the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in whatever penal

infliction might be expected to ensue. The age had not so much

refinement, that any sense of impropriety restrained the wearers of

petticoat and farthingale from stepping forth into the public ways,

and wedging their not unsubstantial persons, if occasion were, into

the throng nearest to the scaffold at an execution. Morally, as well

as materially, there was a coarser fibre in those wives and maidens of

old English birth and breeding, than in their fair descendants,

separated from them by a series of six or seven generations; for,

throughout that chain of ancestry, every successive mother has

transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate and

briefer beauty, and a slighter physical frame, if not a character of

less force and solidity, than her own. The women who were now standing

about the prison-door stood within less than half a century of the

period when the man-like Elizabeth had been the not altogether

unsuitable representative of the sex. They were her country-women; and

the beef and ale of their native land, with a moral diet not a whit

more refined, entered largely into their composition. The bright

morning sun, therefore, shone on broad shoulders and well-developed

busts, and on round and ruddy cheeks, that had ripened in the

far-off island, and had hardly yet grown paler or thinner in the

atmosphere of New England. There was, moreover, a boldness and

rotundity of speech among these matrons, as most of them seemed to be,

that would startle us at the present day, whether in respect to its

purport or its volume of tone.

  "Goodwives," said a hard-featured dame of fifty, "I"ll tell ye a

piece of my mind. It would be greatly for the public behoof, if we

women, being of mature age and church-members in good repute, should

have the handling of such malefactresses as this Hester Prynne. What

think ye, gossips? If the hussy stood up for judgment before us

five, that are now here in a knot together, would she come off with

such a sentence as the worshipful magistrates have awarded? Marry, I

trow not!"

  "People say," said another, "that the Reverend Master Dimmesdale,

her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart that such a

scandal should have come upon his congregation."

  "The magistrates are God-fearing gentlemen, but merciful overmuch-

that is a truth," added a third autumnal matron. "At the very least,

they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne"s

forehead. Madam Hester would have winced at that, I warrant me. But

she- the naughty baggage- little will she care what they put upon

the bodice of her gown! Why, look you, she may cover it with a brooch,

or such like heathenish adornment, and so walk the streets as brave as

ever!"

  "Ah, but," interposed, more softly, a young wife, holding a child by

the hand, "Let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will

be always in her heart."

  "What do we talk of marks and brands, whether on the bodice of her

gown, or the flesh of her forehead?" cried another female, the ugliest

as well as the most pitiless of these self-constituted judges. "This

woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die. Is there not

law for it? Truly there is, both in the Scripture and the

statute-book. Then let the magistrates, who have made it of no effect,

thank themselves if their own wives and daughters go astray!"

  "Mercy on us, goodwife," exclaimed a man in the crowd, "is there

no virtue in woman, save what springs from a wholesome fear of the

gallows? That is the hardest word yet! Hush, now, gossips! for the

lock is turning in the prison-door, and here comes Mistress Prynne

herself."

  The door of the jail being flung open from within, there appeared,

in the first place, like a black shadow emerging into sunshine, the

grim and grisly presence of the town-beadle, with a sword by his side,

and his staff of office in his hand. This personage prefigured and

represented in his aspect the whole dismal severity of the Puritanic

code of law, which it was his business to administer in its final

and closest application to the offender. Stretching forth the official

staff in his left hand, he laid his right upon the shoulder of a young

woman, whom he thus drew forward; until, on the threshold of the

prison-door, she repelled him, by an action marked with natural

dignity and force of character, and stepped into the open air, as if

by her own free will. She bore in her arms a child, a baby of some

three months old, who winked and turned aside its little face from the

too vivid light of day; because its existence, heretofore, had brought

it acquainted only with the grey twilight of a dungeon, or other

darksome apartment of the prison.

  When the young woman- the mother of this child- stood fully revealed

before the crowd, it seemed to be her first impulse to clasp the

infant closely to her bosom; not so much by an impulse of motherly

affection, as that she might thereby conceal a certain token, which

was wrought or fastened into her dress. In a moment, however, wisely

judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide

another, she took the baby on her arm, and, with a burning blush,

and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be abashed,

looked around at her townspeople and neighbours. On the breast of

her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery

and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. It was

so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous

luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and

fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore; and which was of a

splendour in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly

beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony.

  The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a

large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw

off the sunshine with a gleam, and a face which, besides being

beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had

the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes. She

was ladylike, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those

days; characterised by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the

delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace, which is now recognised

as its indication. And never had Hester Prynne appeared more ladylike,

in the antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the

prison. Those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her

dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even

startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the

misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped. It may be true,

that, to a sensitive observer, there was something exquisitely painful

in it. Her attire, which, indeed, she had wrought for the occasion, in

prison, and had modelled much after her own fancy, seemed to express

the attitude of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by

its wild and picturesque peculiarity. But the point which drew all

eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearer- so that both men and

women, who had been familiarly acquainted with Hester Prynne, were now

impressed as if they beheld her for the first time- was that SCARLET

LETTER, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom.

It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations

with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.

  "She hath good skill at her needle, that"s certain," remarked one of

her female spectators; "but did ever a woman, before this brazen

hussy, contrive such a way of showing it! Why, gossips, what is it but

to laugh in the faces of our godly magistrates, and make a pride out

of what they, worthy gentlemen, meant for a punishment?"

  "It were well," muttered the most iron-visaged of the old dames, "if

we stripped Madam Hester"s rich gown off her dainty shoulders; and

as for the red letter, which she hath stitched so curiously, I"ll

bestow a rag of mine own rheumatic flannel, to make a fitter one!"

  "Oh, peace, neighbours, peace!" whispered their youngest

companion; "do not let her hear you! Not a stitch in that

embroidered letter, but she has felt it in her heart."

  The grim beadle now made a gesture with his staff.

  "Make way, good people, make way, in the King"s name!" cried he.

"Open a passage; and, I promise ye, Mistress Prynne shall be set where

man, woman, and child, may have a fair sight of her brave apparel,

from this time till an hour past meridian. A blessing on the righteous

Colony of the Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the

sunshine! Come along, Madam Hester, and show your scarlet letter in

the market-place!"

  A lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of spectators.

Preceded by the beadle, and attended by an irregular procession of

stern-browed men and unkindly-visaged women, Hester Prynne set forth

towards the place appointed for her punishment. A crowd of eager and

curious schoolboys, understanding little of the matter in hand, except

that it gave them a half-holiday, ran before her progress, turning

their heads continually to stare into her face, and at the winking

baby in her arms, and at the ignominious letter on her breast. It

was no great distance, in those days, from the prison-door to the

market-place. Measured by the prisoner"s experience, however, it might

be reckoned a journey of some length; for, haughty as her demeanour

was, she perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those

that thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung into the

street for them all to spurn and trample upon. In our nature, however,

there is a provision alike marvellous and merciful, that the

sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its

present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it. With

almost a serene deportment, therefore, Hester Prynne passed through

this portion of her ordeal, and came to a sort of scaffold, at the

western extremity of the market-place. It stood nearly beneath the

eaves of Boston"s earliest church, and appeared to be a fixture there.

  In fact, this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine,

which now, for two or three generations past, has been merely

historical and traditionary among us, but was held, in the old time,

to be as effectual an agent, in the promotion of good citizenship,

as ever was the guillotine among the terrorists of France. It was,

in short, the platform of the pillory; and above it rose the framework

of that instrument of discipline, so fashioned as to confine the human

head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it up to the public gaze. The

very ideal of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in this

contrivance of wood and iron. There can be no outrage, methinks,

against our common nature- whatever be the delinquencies of the

individual- no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to

hide his face for shame; as it was the essence of this punishment to

do. In Hester Prynne"s instance, however, as not unfrequently in other

cases, her sentence bore, that she should stand a certain time upon

the platform, but without undergoing that gripe about the neck and

confinement of the head, the proneness to which was the most

devilish characteristic of this ugly engine. Knowing well her part,

she ascended a flight of wooden steps, and was thus displayed to the

surrounding multitude, at about the height of a man"s shoulders

above the street.

  Had there been a papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have

seen in this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire and mien,

and with the infant at her bosom, an object to remind him of the image

of Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied with

one another to represent; something which should remind him, indeed,

but only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless motherhood,

whose infant was to redeem the world. Here, there was the taint of

deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life, working such

effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman"s beauty,

and the more lost for the infant that she had borne.

  The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always

invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow-creature, before

society shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of

shuddering, at it. The witnesses of Hester Prynne"s disgrace had not

yet passed beyond their simplicity. They were stern enough to look

upon her death, had that been the sentence, without a murmur at its

severity, but had none of the heartlessness of another social state,

which would find only a theme for jest in an exhibition like the

present. Even if there had been a disposition to turn the matter

into ridicule, it must have been repressed and overpowered by the

solemn presence of men no less dignified than the Governor, and

several of his counsellors, a judge, a general, and the ministers of

the town; all of whom sat or stood in a balcony of the meetinghouse,

looking down upon the platform. When such personages could

constitute a part of the spectacle, without risking the majesty or

reverence of rank and office, it was safely to be inferred that the

infliction of a legal sentence would have an earnest and effectual

meaning. Accordingly, the crowd was sombre and grave. The unhappy

culprit sustained herself as best a woman might, under the heavy

weight of a thousand unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her and

concentrated at her bosom. It was almost intolerable to be borne. Of

an impulsive and passionate nature, she had fortified herself to

encounter the stings and venomous stabs of public contumely,

wreaking itself in every variety of insult; but there was a quality so

much more terrible in the solemn mood of the popular mind, that she

longed rather to behold all those rigid countenances contorted with

scornful merriment, and herself the object. Had a roar of laughter

burst from the multitude- each man, each woman, each little

shrill-voiced child, contributing their individual parts- Hester

Prynne might have repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful

smile. But, under the leaden infliction which it was her doom to

endure, she felt, at moments, as if she must needs shriek out with the

full power of her lungs, and cast herself from the scaffold down

upon the ground, or else go mad at once.

  Yet there were intervals when the whole scene, in which she was

the most conspicuous object, seemed to vanish from her eyes, or at

least, glimmered indistinctly before them, like a mass of

imperfectly shaped and spectral images. Her mind, and especially her

memory. was preternaturally active, and kept bringing up other

scenes than this roughly hewn street of a little town, on the edge

of the Western wilderness; other faces than were lowering upon her

from beneath the brims of those steeple-crowned hats. Reminiscences,

the most trifling and immaterial, passages of infancy and school-days,

sports, childish quarrels, and the little domestic traits of her

maiden years, came swarming back upon her, intermingled with

recollections of whatever was gravest in her subsequent life; one

picture precisely as vivid as another; as if all were of similar

importance, or all alike a play. Possibly, it was an instinctive

device of her spirit, to relieve itself, by the exhibition of these

phantasmagoric forms, from the cruel weight and hardness of the

reality.

  Be that as it might, the scaffold of the pillory was a point of view

that revealed to Hester Prynne the entire track along which she had

been treading, since her happy infancy. Standing on that miserable

eminence, she saw her native village, in old England, and her paternal

home; a decayed house of grey stone, with a poverty-stricken aspect,

but retaining a half-obliterated shield of arms over the portal, in

token of antique gentility. She saw her father"s face, with its bald

brow, and reverend white beard, that flowed over the old-fashioned

Elizabethan ruff; her mother"s, too, with the look of heedful and

anxious love which it always wore in her remembrance, and which,

even since her death, had so often laid the impediment of a gentle

remonstrance in her daughter"s pathway. She saw her own face,

glowing with girlish beauty, and illuminating all the interior of

the dusky mirror in which she had been wont to gaze at it. There she

beheld another countenance, of a man well stricken in years, a pale,

thin, scholar-like visage, with eyes dim and bleared by the

lamplight that had served them to pore over many ponderous books.

Yet those same bleared optics had a strange, penetrating power, when

it was their owner"s purpose to read the human soul. This figure of

the study and the cloister, as Hester Prynne"s womanly fancy failed

not to recall, was slightly deformed, with the left shoulder a

trifle higher than the right. Next rose before her, in memory"s

picture-gallery, the intricate and narrow thoroughfares, the tall grey

houses, the huge cathedrals, and the public edifices, ancient in

date and quaint in architecture, of a Continental city; where a new

life had awaited her, still in connection with the misshapen

scholar; a new life, but feeding itself on time-worn materials, like a

tuft of green moss on a crumbling wall. Lastly, in lieu of these

shifting scenes, came back the rude market-place of the Puritan

settlement, with all the townspeople assembled and levelling their

stern regards at Hester Prynne- yes, at herself- who stood on the

scaffold of the pillory, an infant on her arm, and the letter A, in

scarlet, fantastically embroidered with gold thread, upon her bosom!

  Could it be true? She clutched the child so fiercely to her

breast, that it sent forth a cry; she turned her eyes downward at

the scarlet letter, and even touched it with her finger, to assure

herself that the infant and the shame were real. Yes!- these were

her realities- all else had vanished!