The wrath of the colony toward malefactors is brutally obvious in the first scaffold scene in Chapter 2. The “good women” of the colony discuss the community good that could be realized if they were in charge of public punishment. “At the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne’s forehead.” Another woman in the crowd who is the “most pitiless of these self-constituted judges” points to the scriptural basis of their law in the colony: “This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die. Is there not law for it? Truly, there is, both in the Scripture and the statute book. Then let the magistrates, who have made it of no effect, thank themselves if their own wives and daughters go astray!”
The Puritans had great difficulty in loving the sinner and hating the sin in Massachusetts Bay Colony. When Chillingworth asks a person in the crowd about Hester’s crime, he is told that the sentence was softened from death by “their [the magistrates and ministers’] great mercy and tenderness of heart” because she is a beautiful widow and probably was “tempted to her fall.” The scholar/doctor says this penalty is wise because she will be “a living sermon against sin.” The only softening of community opinion is from the young woman in the crowd who says that no matter how Hester might cover the letter on her dress, she will always know inside that she is a sinner.
