Chapter I: The Prison-Door

1 (p. 41) Isaac Johnson’s lot: Isaac Johnson was among the first settlers of Boston. Upon his death, in 1630, he was buried on his own land, upon which was built a cemetery, graveyard, and church.

2 (p. 41) some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town: Although the story of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale is fictional, historical events described in The Scarlet Letter set the opening scene of the novel as 1642 and the closing one as 1649.

3 (p. 42) Ann Hutchinson: Ann Hutchinson was a prominent religious leader in Boston who preached that faith, rather than good works and abidance by religious law, brought one closer to God. After trying Hutchinson for heresy, the Church banished and ultimately excommunicated her. She moved to Rhode Island and later to Long Island, where she and her family were slaughtered by Native Americans, except for one daughter, who was abducted. The implied connection between Hutchinson and Hester Prynne foreshadows the latter’s iconoclastic reveries, when the world’s law becomes “no law for her mind” (page TK).