The Procession, from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter"
Felix Octavius Carr Darley American
Related author Nathaniel Hawthorne American
Not on view
Darley illustrates Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter, A Romance" (published in 1850). His drawing was reproduced in 1879 as the tenth print of twelve "Compositions in Outline." Set in seventeenth-century Boston, the story explores the consequences of a liason between Hester Prynne and the Puritan pastor, Arthur Dimmesdale. When Hester becomes pregnant, she refuses to identify her child's father, is imprisoned, and forced to wear a red letter "A" on her dress (to mark her as an adultress). Upon release, she lives in an isolated cottage, supports herself as a seamstress, and tends to her daughter Pearl–whose behavior grows increasingly wild and antisocial. The artist responds here to an incident in chapter 22, set amid celebrations held to mark the arrival of a new governor. That occasion allows Mistress Hibbens to approach Hester and call Pearl a child of the Devil–at an earlier point in the text, Hawthorne describes the old woman as a suspected witch. See 14.111.1–3,.5 for other drawings from the set.
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