After two years she fell into sin, committing the adultery that resulted in her baby and the scarlet "A" on her breast. Chillingworth pretends not to know Hester, and learns her story from a man in the crowd: she was married to an English scholar who was supposed to follow her to Boston but never showed up. While on the scaffold, Hester is terrified to recognize her estranged husband, Chillingworth, in the crowd. A crowd waits expectantly as Hester is forced to climb up a scaffold to endure public shame for her sin. A bright red "A" is embroidered on her chest. The story begins as Hester Prynne, the novel's protagonist, is led out of a prison carrying an infant, named Pearl, in her arms. The novel is set in seventeenth-century Boston, a city governed by strict Puritan law. While working at the Salem Custom House (a tax collection agency), the narrator discovered in the attic a manuscript accompanied by a beautiful scarlet letter "A." After the narrator lost his job, he decided to develop the story told in the manuscript into a novel. The Scarlet Letter begins with a prelude in which an unnamed narrator explains the novel's origin.
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