VISUAL ART

Readers of The Scarlet Letter cannot help but be drawn to the symbol Hester Prynne is forced to wear: It is the visual clue from which everything in the novel flows. Painters in particular have been quick to see the possibilities of Hester’s situation as subject matter.

In 1860 American artist Thompkins Harrison Matteson committed to canvas the only image based on The Scarlet Letter created during Hawthorne’s lifetime. Matteson, who earlier painted Examination of a Witch, places Hester Prynne, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, and their illegitimate daughter, Pearl, in the foreground, standing on the platform of the pillory where Hester is initially shamed and where she later finds Dimmesdale doing penance. Spilling from the upper-right corner of the painting is the burst of light that accompanies Dimmesdale’s actions at the pillory. Hester’s elderly husband, Roger Chillingworth, lurks apart from the central group, glowering in curmudgeonly fashion. The tone of the work is dark, despite the celestial sunburst. Pearl alone is cheerful; the bright crimson of her bodice brings out the A on Hester’s shadowy, jade dress. Hawthorne advised Matteson on how to portray his characters.

French artist Hugues Merle chose Hester and an infant Pearl as the subjects for his 1861 painting The Scarlet Letter. Pearl gazes up at her mother, who wears a beautiful, intensely serious expression, and playfully fingers the A sown onto Hester’s dress. Merle, known for his portrayals of literary subjects and ever-aware of the sentimental potential of a scene, shows in the background two passersby, who seem to shun Hester; presumably townsfolk, these figures add a dimension of judgment to the painting and deepen the meaning of Hester’s beautiful and intensely serious expression.

George H. Boughton, an American painter and illustrator known for his renderings of pilgrims and provincial life, created the painting Hester Prynne in 1881. Reproduced here is a lithograph, made around 1890 by C. P. Slocombe, based on Boughton’s painting. A prim and morose Hester stares out at the viewer, while a man and boy scurry past, looking at her. This triangle of stares works to equate the observer with the man and the boy, while drawing us into Hester’s sadness. Boughton created illustrations for a later edition of The Scarlet Letter.

The “Red Letter” Plays

Suzan-Lori Parks, a Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist (2002) for her play TopdoglUnderdog, has written two works, which she terms her “Red Letter” plays, inspired by Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. The first, In the Blood, centers around the figure of Hester La Negrita, who sums up her situation tersely: “My life’s my own fault. I know that. But the world don’t help, Maam.” Park’s Hester, like Hawthorne’s, lives outside society—literally; she is a homeless black woman living in an urban jungle. In Park’s play, the letter “A” is not sewn onto a dress but scrawled onto the concrete streets of the unnamed city. Illiterate and prone to a violent temper, Hester struggles desperately to care for her five children, all born out of wedlock. Grasping for a semblance of order amid brutal poverty that a dysfunctional welfare system does little to relieve, Hester hides her children under a bridge for shelter. The actors who portray Hester’s children double as her adult nemeses, who cast her out with an acid and thorough vilification. In the Blood was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1999.

The second “Red Letter” play bears a title that most newspapers have refused to print: Fucking A. The title reflects Park’s sense of dialogue, which makes use of street idiom and expletive-laced, yet mellifluous, language. Hester Smith lives in a small, tropical (and fictional) country where she earns gold coins as an abortionist—hence the “A” and the letter tattoo with which she has been branded. Hester believes her son, Boy, has been wrongly imprisoned—she has, in fact, not seen him since he was a young child—and devotes her life to freeing him. Ten original songs, written and composed by Parks, serve as interstitial sparks to the narrative. In its 2003 New York production the play, directed by Michael Greif, featured S. Epatha Merkerson as Hester, supported by Mos Def, Daphne Rubin-Vega, and Bobby Cannavale.

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