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Hester Prynne now found herself in an unwelcome situation. She had committed a terrible sin, one not only against the state but against justice, and now she needed to atone. The only way for her to do this was to assemble all the pieces of her life’s puzzle into a single, complete picture. She needed to make a clean beginning, and she needed to do it quickly.

Modern critics have often argued that the novel explores the problem of secretiveness itself. Hester Prynne’s actions are paradoxically transparent and opaque, while the Puritans’ behavior is neatly circumscribed and hidden. Prynne’s ostracism, Dimmesdale’s spiritual quest, and Chillingworth’s hypocritical sermon all involve the concealment of at least one important fact.

In addition to being a woman, Hester Prynne is a fallen woman. She has broken the holy seal that contained her previous “secret” and is forever bound by it. She is guilty of having a past she would rather not see. She commits a sin, and is damned; not only in the eyes of those around her, but also in her own eyes.

Hester calls for revenge and retribution on her ex-husband and his mistress, asking her four daughters to “make him rue the day he ever dared think that I would stoop to be the wife of him who would dare treat mine so shamefully and dishonorably.”

The earliest recorded versions of the book date to the months leading up to the publication date. The earliest version of The Scarlet Letter that is in the public domain is from 1849. It is in the form of two letters: one to Hester Prynne informing her of the publication of her book and the other to Chillingworth commenting on the book after reading it.