In colonial New England, beautiful, young Hester Pryne bears a child although her husband is presumed lost at sea. She refuses to name the father and is condemned to wear a scarlet “A” and live as an outcast. As she transforms the badge of shame into a symbol of freedom, Hawthorne’s dramatic masterpiece envisions an authentic relation between the sexes—and a different way of imagining love, sin, and redemption—that can form the basis for America’s radical project of a true democracy.