Hester Prynne's prison sentence was over. The prison door was thrown open, and she walked out into the sunshine. Although the light fell equally on everyone, to Hester it seemed designed to show off the scarlet letter on her breast. Those first steps out of the prison may have been a greater torture than the elaborate public humiliation described before, when the entire town gathered to point its finger at her. At least then, her concentration and fierce combativeness allowed her to transform the scene into a sort of grotesque victory. And that was just a one-time event—the kind that happens only once in a lifetime—so she could expend several years' worth of energy to endure it. The law that condemned her was like an iron-fisted giant, and it had the strength to either support or destroy her. It had held her up throughout that terrible ordeal. But now, with this lonely walk from the prison door, her new reality began. This would be her everyday life, and she could use only everyday resources to endure it, or else she would be crushed by it. Tomorrow would bring its own struggle, and the next day, and the day after that—every day its own struggle, just like the one that was so unbearable today. The days in the distant future would arrive with the same burden for her to bear and to never put down. The accumulating days and years would pile up their misery upon the heap of shame. Through them all, she would be a symbol for the preacher and the moralist to point at: the symbol of feminine frailty and lust. The young and pure would be taught to look at Hester and the scarlet letter burning on her breast. She was the child of good parents, the mother of a baby that would grow to womanhood; she had once been innocent herself. But now she would become the embodiment of sin, and her infamy would be the only monument over her grave.
It may seem unbelievable that, with the whole world open to her, this woman would remain in the one and only place where she would face this shame. The conditions of her sentence didn't force her to stay in that remote and obscure Puritan settlement. She was free to return to her birthplace—or anywhere else in Europe—where she could hide under a new identify, as though she had become a new person. Or she could have simply fled to the forest, where her wild nature would be a good fit among Indians unfamiliar with the laws that had condemned her. But an irresistible fatalism exists that forces people to haunt the place where some dramatic event shaped their lives. And the sadder the event, the greater the bond. Hester's sin and shame rooted her in that soil. It was as if the birth of her child had turned the harsh wilderness of New England into her lifelong home. Every other place on Earth—even the English village where she had been a happy child and a sinless young woman—was now foreign to her. The chain that bound her to this place was made of iron, and though it troubled her soul, it could not be broken.
Perhaps there was also another feeling that kept her in this place that was so tragic for her. This had to be true, though she hid the secret from herself and grew pale whenever it slithered, like a snake, out of her heart. A man lived there who she felt was joined with her in a union that, though unrecognized on earth, would bring them together on their last day. The place of final judgment would be their marriage altar, binding them in eternity. Over and over, the Devil had suggested this idea to Hester and then laughed at the desperate, passionate joy with which she grasped at it, then tried to cast it off. She barely acknowledged the thought before quickly locking it away. What she forced herself to believe—the reason why she chose to stay in New England—was based half in truth and half in self-delusion. This place, she told herself, had been the scene of her guilt, so it should be the scene of her punishment. Maybe the torture of her daily shame would finally cleanse her soul and make her pure again. This purity would be different than the one she had lost: more saint-like because she had been martyred.
So Hester Prynne did not leave. On the outskirts of town, far from other houses, sat a small cottage. It had been built by an earlier settler but was abandoned because the surrounding soil was too sterile for planting and it was too remote. It stood on the shore, looking across the water at the forest-covered hills to the west. A clump of scrubby trees did not so much conceal the cottage as suggest that it was meant to be hidden. The magistrates granted Hester a license—though they kept close watch on her—and so she took what money she had and settled with her infant child in this lonesome little home. A shadow of mystery and suspicion immediately descended on the cottage. Children would creep close enough to watch Hester sewing, or standing in the doorway, or working in her little garden, or walking along the path to town. Though they were too young to understand why this woman had been shunned, they would run off with a strange fear when they saw the scarlet letter on her breast.
