Reed, Paula. Hester: The Missing Years of the Scarlet Letter (2011)

Reed, Paula. Hester: The Missing Years of The Scarlet Letter. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2010. 306 pp. $24.99 hb. $14.99 pb. $9.99 eb. In effect, Hawthorne wrote two endings to The Scarlet Letter. He ended plot climactically on scaffold with Arthur Dimmesdale's dying confession. He concluded novel proper many later with Hester's return to Boston, where she lives an unspecified number of and then dies, interred with Dimmesdale under a common headstone. In between these two endings, takes nouveau riche to England. Hawthorne provides virtually no information about these European years--save for a few indications that is the object of love and interest with some inhabitant of another land, that she receives articles of comfort and luxury that could have purchased, that she also receives little ornaments, beautiful tokens of a continual remembrance. More suggestively, on one occasion Hester was seen embroidering a baby-garment, with such a lavish richness of golden fancy as would have raised a public tumult, had any infant, thus apparelled, been shown to our sombre-hued community. Given these clues, Puritan gossips believe that Pearl was not only alive, but married, and happy, and mindful of her mother (CE, 262). In Hester, Paula Reed has filled in missing years between Hawthorne's two endings in a richly imagined novel whose details seem as plausible as any other speculation. (1) Reed collapses Hawthorne's time frame (many years) somewhat, setting her novel during Cromwell Protectorate (1649-1660) and returning to Boston when she is still a relatively young woman (c. 37), but she remains true to Hawthorne's conception of his heroine and deftly picks up threads from The Scarlet Letter with which to sew a seamless narrative. opens where The Scarlet Letter ends--with and descending from scaffold and then, a year later, learning that Roger Chillingworth has died and has left all his wealth in New and Old England. Fearful of having wealthy remain in Boston, decides immediately to leave. Arriving in she discovers her father dead and her ancestral home a ruin. She does reunite with a childhood friend, Mary Starke Wright, now in London and married to Colonel Robert Wright of Cromwell's New Model Army. Both Wrights play important roles, as they take and into their home and thus provide a platform for both domestic and political intrigue. The one feature of with which found myself growing a bit impatient, involves extensive political intrigue in which finds herself implicated. To be sure, Hawthorne knew his English history, and careful readers of The Scarlet Letter will notice many references to contemporaneous English politics strewn across track of narrative. In Hester, however, Cromwellian-era politics drive plot, as Hester's sixth sense (to which Hawthorne, of course, alludes) enables her to detect sinful and deceitful auras in people she meets. Before we know it, has become Cromwell's lie detector. While he questions suspected enemies of state, assays their responses and then renders her verdict--often Guilty. I had a gift from God that used for glory of England, recognizes somewhat ruefully. Indeed, over time she keenly regrets aid she provides Cromwell and his chief advisor, John Thurloe, in sending men to prison and to execution. She begins to think that scarlet letter signifies Abdication of responsibility and Association with a cause in which she no longer believes (136). It may strike some readers as odd that Hester, who lives quietly on margins of Boston society, assumes such a high quasi-political office in Cromwellian England. Reed accounts for this seeming change by invoking Hawthorne's depiction of Hester's quiet strength and confidence. …