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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