Why We’re Channeling Hester Prynne, Heroine of Literature and Film, this Halloween

Halloween has a way of leading our thoughts to witches—something wicked this way comes!—and thus to the sleepy, historically significant town of Salem, Massachusetts, where such creatures were famously considered most unwelcome—and more often than not met with quite unpleasant ends. Any mention of Salem recalls Hester Prynne, of course, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s tragic colonial heroine, punished for adultery (that A she sports isn’t some nifty nod to the monogram trend), and excommunicated by her Puritan townspeople in yet another example of a twisted societal double standard (the guy gets away scot-free—until he doesn’t). Thankfully she turns out to be quite the hardy thing, in the end, and she was played as such onscreen by cinema sirens the likes of Lillian Gish and Demi Moore. Prynne and her scarlet​ stigma have also inspired innumerable Halloween costumes: This year, why not let them inspire yours? Here, the heroine in many guises.