Hester and the Physician, from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter"

Hester and the Physician, from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter"

Felix Octavius Carr Darley

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Darley illustrates Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter, A Romance" (published 1850). The drawing was reproduced in 1879 as the sixth 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). This image responds to an encounter in chapter 14 between Hester and her estranged husband, an elderly professor whom she thought lost at sea. Instead, he endured a long captivity by Native Americans and, upon release, reached Boston on the day of Hester's public humiliation. This prompted him to assume the name Roger Chillingworth, to practise medicine, and to plot revenge on his wife's lover. Convinced that he has discovered the latter's identity, Hester here begs Chillingworth to be merciful. See 14.111.1,.3–.5 for other Darley drawings from the set.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hester and the Physician, from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter"Hester and the Physician, from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter"Hester and the Physician, from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter"Hester and the Physician, from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter"Hester and the Physician, from Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter"

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.