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A for Adultery – The Scarlet Letter 67
loved in the forest, as she hopes for an escape and an opening towards a new
life for the two of them. But their daughter, Pearl, puts it back in place soon
enough, as for her it is an indistinguishable part of her mother. In the end, however,
the two versions differ. In the film, the dying Dimmesdale, after having
revealed the A branded on his chest, in a last gesture rips off Hester’s A. In the
novel, Hester leaves the Puritan colony together with her daughter upon Dimmesdale’s
death, only to return several years later to lead a life in the service of
others, and still carrying the letter A. Hawthorne, however, also comments on a
change that takes place: from having been the badge of shame, the letter now
rather appears as a sign of selection.
Still, it must be noted that in Hawthorne’s novel, which starts with Hester
being led to the scaffold to receive her sentence (which is to wear the letter A
for “adultery” for the rest of her life), relies to a large degree on the visual construction
of the scene and on the exchange of looks taking place. When Marion
wrote her script, she starts with the sequence of events that led to Hester being
condemned, i.e. with the love story between Hester Prynne and the Reverend
Dimmesdale, obviously enough for both dramatic and commercial reasons. In
the novel, Hester’s husband Roger Chillingworth, seeking revenge, only gradually
casts his suspicions on Dimmesdale, whereas, in the film, Dimmesdale involuntarily
betrays his guilty secret the first time that he meets Roger, as he –
believing that he is alone with Hester – cries out: “Our Child!” Also, in
Hawthorne’s novel, their love affair is never dealt with directly, and is only discovered
gradually by the reader.
Among other things, the first part of Marion’s script includes a scene where
Hester indulges in the sight of her beautiful hair. Marion didn’t have to search
far for inspiration, however, as Hawthorne already offers a most vivid and detailed
description of Hester’s appearance: her hair, her features, her eyes,
though in a different context, and – just like in the script – he takes side with
her against the Puritan onlookers. 12 The same insistence on her beauty occurs
when Hester in the novel looks back on her own past: “She saw her own face,
glowing with girlish beauty, and illuminating all the interior of the dusky mirror
in which she had been wont to gaze at it.” 13 This description might well
have inspired the mirror scene included in the beginning of Marion’s script,
where Hester checks her looks in a “mirror” –a piece of polished metal – covered
by a wall-hanging with the words “Vanity is an Evil Disease”. When Hester’s
bonnet in the script (as well as in the film) shortly thereafter falls off, so
that her long hair loosens and the rays of sunlight seem to flood down over her
head, this also seems to be a mere visualization of the description in the novel of
“dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a
gleam”. 14