Spots 
A wooden prison door bound with iron ironwork stands as the first necessity of a new settlement, alongside a burial ground. Beside its threshold grows a wild rosebush, offering fragrance and pity to the condemned who pass through. The grim Puritans assemble in black cloaks and steepled hats, expecting stern justice for any transgression against their moral order.
Hester Prynne emerges from the prison bearing her infant daughter, Pearl, and wearing a scarlet letter A embroidered in gold thread upon her gown. She walks to the public scaffold, enduring the merciless stares of the Boston crowd. While standing on display, Hester remembers her past in England and continental Europe, anchoring herself against the public humiliation.
Among the onlookers, Hester spots her long-lost husband standing beside a Native American guide. The husband signals Hester with a finger to his lips, concealing his identity under the name Roger Chillingworth. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, Hester's young pastor, is commanded by senior minister John Wilson to urge Hester to name her child's father, but she steadfastly refuses.
Roger Chillingworth enters Hester's prison cell in his role as a physician to calm both her and the feverish infant. He admits his own folly in marrying a young woman who did not love him, yet demands that Hester keep his true identity secret. Chillingworth swears to discover the father of Hester's baby, promising slow and hidden retribution.
Released from prison, Hester settles in an abandoned cottage on the outskirts of Boston, isolated from the community. She earns a living through exquisite needlework, supplying clothing for magistrates, ceremonies, and burials, though never for weddings. The scarlet letter on her breast grants her an uncanny intuition for the hidden sins harbored by others.
Hester names her daughter Pearl because the child was purchased at great cost, costing Hester her place in society. Pearl grows into an wild, uncontrollable child who shuns other children and displays a fascinating obsession with the scarlet letter. Hester frequently marvels at the girl's mercurial temperament, searching Pearl's eyes for signs of demonic origin or divine grace.
Hester visits Governor Bellingham's mansion to deliver a pair of embroidered gloves and to plead against rumors that Pearl will be taken from her. Inside the hall, Hester gazes into a suit of polished armor, where the convex reflection magnifies the scarlet letter until it looms over her entire body. Pearl becomes entranced by the governor's rose garden outside the window.
Governor Bellingham and John Wilson question Pearl on her catechism, and when Pearl answers that she was picked from a rosebush, they resolve to remove her from Hester. Hester turns to Arthur Dimmesdale, appealing to his pastoral knowledge of her soul to defend her maternal right. Dimmesdale convinces the magistrates that Pearl serves as Hester's salvation and daily retribution.
Roger Chillingworth attaches himself to Reverend Dimmesdale as personal physician, observing the minister's declining physical health and mysterious chest pain. Townspeople initially welcome the doctor's arrival as divine aid for their beloved pastor. Over time, some observers notice a darkening in Chillingworth's countenance, suspecting demonic influence behind his remedies.
Chillingworth probes Dimmesdale's conscience, arguing that unconfessed guilt rots the body from within. While Dimmesdale sleeps deeply in his chair, Chillingworth pulls back the minister's vestment and gazes upon his bare chest. The physician leaps with sinister joy at what he beholds marked upon Dimmesdale's skin.
Chillingworth weaponizes his knowledge to torment Dimmesdale mentally, driving the pastor into deeper self-loathing. Dimmesdale achieves great popularity in the pulpit because his personal suffering gives his sermons an agonizing authenticity. In private, the minister fasts, holds midnight vigils, and scourges himself with a whip behind locked doors.
Driven by torment, Dimmesdale mounts the scaffold at night where Hester was exposed years before. Hester and Pearl join him on the platform during their walk home from a deathbed vigil, holding hands under a dark sky. A meteor blazes across the night, illuminating the trio while Chillingworth watches them silently from the shadows below.
Seven years of living on the margins transform Hester's reputation from outcast to a figure of charity and strength. The community begins to reinterpret the scarlet letter as standing for Able rather than Adultery. Hester's physical beauty has faded into quiet austerity, but her mind has grown independent of Puritan dogma.
Hester confronts Chillingworth near the seashore to ask him to stop tormenting Dimmesdale. She notes how the physician has transformed into a vengeful fiend over seven years of relentless malice. Chillingworth acknowledges his own degradation, asserting that fate has bound them all in an inescapable web of retribution.
Hester realizes she harbors true hatred for Chillingworth, despite her commitment to Christian forgiveness. Meanwhile, Pearl arranges green seaweed into the shape of a scarlet letter across her own chest. When Pearl repeatedly asks what the letter means and why the minister holds his hand over his heart, Hester conceals the truth.
Hester takes Pearl into the dense forest to intercept Reverend Dimmesdale on his return journey from visiting Native American converts. Sunlight flees from Hester as she walks beneath the canopy, though it shines brightly upon the child. Pearl hears tales of the Black Man of the woods and asks if Dimmesdale carries his mark.
Deep in the forest, Hester and Dimmesdale sit together and finally speak openly of their shared misery. Hester reveals Chillingworth's true identity as her husband, and Dimmesdale initially despairs before forgiving her. They realize their mutual love has not faded, and Hester proposes that they flee New England together for Europe.
Resolved to escape their past, Hester unclasps the scarlet letter and flings it into the withered leaves, letting her dark hair fall free. Nature seems to bless their decision as sunlight suddenly bursts through the forest trees. Dimmesdale experiences a surge of hope, though he fears Pearl will not accept him.
Pearl stands across a forest brook, refusing to cross over to Hester until her mother pins the scarlet letter back onto her gown. Once the letter is restored, Pearl crosses the stream and kisses Hester, but washes away Dimmesdale's kiss in the water. The boundary between innocence and guilt is reestablished before they exit the woods.
Dimmesdale returns to Boston full of wild energy, fighting impulses to utter blasphemies to elders, young maidens, and children along the street. He encounters Chillingworth and politely declines further medical treatment, declaring he no longer needs the doctor's drugs. That night, Dimmesdale throws his old manuscript into the fire and writes an entirely new Election Sermon.
The citizens of Boston gather in the marketplace to celebrate Election Day, welcoming the inauguration of a new governor. Hester stands in the crowd, maintaining her usual quiet demeanor, while Pearl observes the colorful gathering of sailors and Native Americans. A ship captain informs Hester that Chillingworth has booked passage on the same ship bound for Europe.
A grand civic procession of magistrates and soldiers marches through the streets, led by Dimmesdale, who exhibits extraordinary vigor and detachment. Hester watches him with growing foreboding, feeling a vast distance between them despite their planned escape. Mistress Hibbins speaks to Hester, ominously warning that the minister's secret will soon be exposed to all.
Dimmesdale delivers his triumphant Election Sermon, then walks toward the scaffold and calls Hester and Pearl to his side. Before the astonished crowd and a horrified Chillingworth, the minister tears open his shirt to reveal his own branded chest. Dimmesdale collapses into Hester's arms, receives a kiss from Pearl, and dies after offering a final prayer.
Within a year, Chillingworth dies, leaving his substantial estate to Pearl, who later moves to Europe and marries into nobility. Hester returns to her cottage by the sea years later, voluntarily wearing the scarlet letter to counsel troubled women. Upon her death, she is buried beside Dimmesdale under a single gravestone marked with a red letter A on a black field.
A stern Puritan community punishes adultery while secret guilt destroys a minister from within.