The Scarlet Letter  by  Nathaniel Hawthorne

                                                                                     (Click on the scarlet letter to enter the site.)

Master List of Characters:

• The Narrator: Though he does not participate in the plot, the narrator is a storyteller who presents various versions of events and from the vantage point of 1850, comments on the characters and their actions.

• The people of Boston in the 1640s: Puritan colonists who set out to purify their lives and who live under strict moral codes. They punish the adulteress, Hester Prynne, by making her continually wear a scarlet letter

“A” as she lives among them.

·        The town beadle: A town official who leads Hester to the scaffold, the place of public punishment, and reads out her sentence.

·        Hester Prynne: A young Englishwoman who has given birth to a child out of wedlock and is now forced to wear the scarlet letter “A” publicly marking her as an adulteress. She refuses to make known the identity of the father.

·        Pearl: The daughter of Hester Prynne and her unknown lover; she brings both pleasure and pain to Hester.

·        Roger Chillingworth: The assumed name of Hester’s husband who sent her ahead to Boston and who arrives to witness her disgrace and his. He is determined to find the identity of her lover and to exact his revenge. He has lived among the native peoples and learned their herbal medicines.

·        The Reverend Mr. John Wilson: The eldest clergyman of Boston who thinks highly of the Reverend Dimmesdale. He is concerned that Pearl be properly raises.

·        Governor Bellingham: The royal oppointee who oversees the political needs of the colony.

·        The Reverend Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale: A young clergyman, who agonizes for many years over his real or imagined sinfulness and unworthiness.

·        Master Brackett: The jailer who summons Chillingworth to calm Hester and her child after the scaffold ordeal.

·        Mistress Hibbins: A sister of the governor and a reputed witch. She taunts both Hester and Dimmesdale about their secret.

·        The sea captain: A man known to Hester through het charity work. He agrees to take Hester, Pearl and Dimmesdale from Salem to Bristol, England.