Review:
I'll start this by saying that I've never read the original and have no plans to change that.
This is framed as a story discovered by Nathaniel Hawthorne when he worked as a custom officer. Hester Prynne has been jailed by her Puritan community for the crime of adultery. She was married at a young age to an elderly scholar who sent her to Boston two years ago, alone, and there's no denying that her infant daughter, Pearl, has to be some other man's child. However, she refuses to name him, so she stands alone with her mark of shame, a scarlet letter A on her chest.
As she looks upon the crowd, she's shocked to see her husband. After assuming a new name, Roger Chillingworth, he begins his plan to find and torment the father of Hester's child. Meanwhile, Hester spends the next few years raising Pearl and being so unrelentingly helpful, pure, and good that the townspeople gradually begin to see her with new eyes, even as Hester worries that her sin has somehow affected her daughter.
