106 pages • 3 hours read
Nathaniel HawthorneThe Scarlet Letter
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 1850A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Chapters 21-24Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 21 Summary: “The New England Holiday”
On the morning of Election Day, Hester takes Pearl to watch the procession in the marketplace. Pearl is in high spirits and once again questions her mother about why Dimmesdale won’t greet them publicly.
Hester tries to distract Pearl by drawing her attention to the festivities around them, which are more exuberant than those that would characterize later generations of Puritans: “[T]he great, honest face of the people smiled, grimly, perhaps, but widely too. Nor were sports wanting, such as the colonists had witnessed, and shared in, long ago, at the country fairs and on the village-greens of England” (201). The crowd also includes several Native Americans, along with the crew of the ship Hester and Dimmesdale plan to board, who “transgressed, without fear or scruple, the rules of behavior that were binding on all others; smoking tobacco under the beadle’s very nose, although each whiff would have cost a townsman a shilling” (202).
The captain of this ship enters the marketplace with Chillingworth before recognizing and approaching Hester. He casually mentions the need to prepare for one more passenger, then explains that Chillingworth has told him he is traveling with Hester and Dimmesdale. Hester looks up to see Chillingworth smirking at her.
Chapter 22 Summary: “The Procession”
As the procession of musicians, soldiers, and government officials files past, Hester reels from what the ship’s captain told her. Dimmesdale follows near the end of the parade, looking healthy but also strangely detached from his surroundings: “There was his body, moving onward, and with an unaccustomed force. But where was his mind? Far and deep in its own region, busying itself, with preternatural activity” (207). Hester finds the sight disconcerting, feeling she hardly recognizes Dimmesdale. Pearl, also agitated, asks whether Dimmesdale is the same man they met in the forest.
Mistress Hibbins approaches Hester and says it’s hard to reconcile Dimmesdale’s saintly appearance with his outings to the forest. She claims that her own dealings with the Devil give her insight into the sins of others and draws attention to Dimmesdale’s tendency to cover his heart with his hand. When Pearl eagerly asks Mistress Hibbins about this, the latter invites Pearl to fly with her on her broomstick.
Meanwhile, Dimmesdale enters the meeting house and begins his sermon. The building is too full for Hester to enter, but she can make out the sound of Dimmesdale’s voice; his plaintive tone moves her deeply. Throughout the sermon Pearl dashes around the marketplace playing and chatting with passersby. One of the people she approaches is the ship’s captain, who tells her to pass word to Hester that Chillingworth has booked Dimmesdale’s passage. The news devastates Hester, who is also drawing more attention than usual from out-of-town visitors wanting to see the letter she wears: “when she was so soon to fling aside the burning letter, it had strangely become the centre of more remark and excitement, and was thus made to sear her breast more painfully, than at any time since the first day she put it on” (214).
Chapter 23 Summary: “The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter”
The crowd pours out of the meeting house praising Dimmesdale’s sermon, which extolled the holiness of the new society the Puritans have established. His melancholy tone, however, struck his listeners as a sign of impending death. As Dimmesdale himself emerges, the crowd cheers wildly, only to fall silent when they see how sick and weak he looks. Shrugging off Reverend Wilson’s attempts to help him, Dimmesdale approaches the scaffold and notices Hester and Pearl standing nearby.
Despite Chillingworth’s efforts to restrain him, Dimmesdale calls out to Hester and asks for her help in ascending the scaffold. Pearl accompanies them, holding Dimmesdale’s hand. As Chillingworth laments that Dimmesdale has escaped his influence, Dimmesdale reassures Hester that everything has worked out for the best, then turns and addresses the crowd. Drawing attention to the letter Hester wears, he announces that throughout her long punishment, “there stood one in the midst of [Salem], at whose brand of sin and infamy [they] have not shuddered!” (221). He claims Hester’s marking is “no more than the type of what has seared his inmost heart” (221), then draws aside his shirt, baring his chest to the crowd.
Hester catches Dimmesdale as he collapses. He begs God’s forgiveness on Chillingworth’s behalf, then turns to Pearl, who kisses him tearfully. He also says goodbye to Hester; though he doubts they will be allowed to meet again in the afterlife, he feels only gratitude for the redemption God has granted to him. He then dies as the crowd struggles to make sense of what has happened.
Chapter 24 Summary: “Conclusion”
Several different accounts of Dimmesdale’s final moments emerge in the following days. Although most people glimpsed a letter A branded on his chest, there is no consensus as to whether he made the mark himself, or whether it appeared via supernatural means. Furthermore, some spectators deny having seen the letter (or having heard any admission of guilt). The narrator, however, claims that the papers he discovered in the Custom House are consistent with Dimmesdale’s confession:
“Among many morals which press upon us from the poor minister’s miserable experience, we put only this into a sentence:—‘Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!’” (224).
Dimmesdale’s death seems to drain Chillingworth of his will to live; he grows sick and dies less than a year later, leaving much of his estate to Pearl. Pearl loses her stranger habits and mannerisms after Dimmesdale’s death, and Hester takes her to Europe, where she is rumored to have eventually married and had children. Hester eventually returns to her cottage in Salem, continuing to wear the scarlet letter though she’s no longer required to, as “the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world’s scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, yet with reverence too” (227). Hester offers advice and comfort to Salem’s women, assuring them that the relationship between the sexes will one day change for the better. When she dies many years later, she is buried close to Dimmesdale and beneath the same tombstone, which is engraved with a letter A.
Chapters 21-24 Analysis
The way Dimmesdale finally proclaims his guilt—by exposing the letter branded onto his chest—lends credence to the idea that sin is an objective reality that can’t be concealed forever: Dimmesdale’s guilt is literally inscribed on his body. It’s significant, however, that the narrator doesn’t describe the letter—or even confirm that it exists—in the actual moment that Dimmesdale reveals it. The only visual account of the scene appears in the following chapter and is filtered through the perceptions of various onlookers, none of whom can agree on where the letter came from or whether it was even there. The fact that many in the crowd walk away as convinced of Dimmesdale’s innocence as ever might seem to undercut the value of his admission, but it’s in keeping with the novel’s broader ideas about sin, private experience, and public opinion. Hawthorne suggests that it’s impossible to fully control the way society interprets one’s identity. Dimmesdale, however, must openly confess to satisfy his own internal sense of right and wrong; his redemption is less about publicly proclaiming his guilt than finally living up to his private moral code.
The conclusion of Dimmesdale’s storyline also marks the end of Chillingworth’s. Introduced as a basically moral person, Chillingworth has become so vindictive that he sees even Dimmesdale’s death as a defeat. In a sense, Chillingworth’s transformation into an “unhumanized mortal” is simply a more extreme version of Puritan society’s twisted understanding of justice; in its preoccupation with shame and punishment rather than forgiveness, this system encourages cruelty and a false sense of superiority among those passing judgment. Chillingworth emerges as perhaps the most sinful of the novel’s characters, although the narrator urges readers to avoid judging even him: “[T]o all these shadowy beings, so long our near acquaintances—as well Roger Chillingworth as his companions—we would fain be merciful” (225).
If Chillingworth’s character arc ends in (self-inflicted) dehumanization, Pearl’s is in some sense its opposite. For most of the novel Pearl is less a character than a symbol—specifically, a “messenger of anguish” (222) meant to further her parents’ moral development. With Dimmesdale’s redemption, however, she no longer needs to serve this purpose, and she becomes fully human: “[A]s her tears fell upon her father’s cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it” (222). The implication is that Pearl becomes a fully integrated member of society, and the narrator’s clues as to her ultimate fate suggest that this is what happens: Pearl becomes economically tied to human affairs when she inherits Chillingworth’s fortune, and she ultimately settles into the highly traditional female role of wife and mother. As critical of society as the novel is, it also suggests that existing within a social framework of rules and norms is an integral part of the human experience.
Hester’s story, meanwhile, serves as a reminder that deferring to society in some respects does not necessarily involve compromising one’s own sense of self. Rather than seeking to escape or challenge public perceptions, Hester works within the confines of her own ostracism to create a new social role for herself. This role is perhaps not ideal; in a perfect world, Hester would like to be the “prophetess” of an entirely new system of gender relations. Nevertheless, she successfully crafts a public identity that aligns with her inner self and values. Far from signaling internalized shame, her decision to continue wearing the letter A marks a form of victory over Puritan society: Hester defies the magistrates by freely choosing what was once an involuntary punishment but has since become a symbol of her value to the community.
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