Chapter II: The Market-Place
1 (p. 43) Mistress Hibbins:
Ann .Hibbins was hanged in Salem as a witch in 1656.
2 (p. 45) Hester Prynne’s
forehead: Reviewers have found historical and biblical sources
for the name of The Scarlet Letter’s
protagonist. In his notes to the Oxford World Classics edition of
The Scarlet Letter, Brian Harding traces
the first name to the biblical Hester, who as consort of the king
of Persia saved her people from massacre by the Persian grand
vizier. Mr. Harding traces the surname, which presumably she
acquired from her husband, to William Prynne, an intolerant
Calvinist in seventeenth-century England who for slandering the
royalty was punished by having his ears cropped off. Others have
speculated credibly that Hawthorne took Hester’s name from Hester
Craford, whom Major William Hathorne, in 1668, sentenced to a
public flogging for “fornication.”
3 (p. 46) appeared the
letter A: A Plymouth statute from 1694 prescribed that adulteresses
wear an A made of cloth. Salem’s statutory punishment for adultery
during the historical period in which The Scarlet Letter is set was
death; however, in practice the usual punishment was public
flogging.