55 pages • 1 hour read
Laurie Lico AlbaneseHester
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Sewing and Embroidery
As a seamstress, Isobel uses her stitching to earn a living, but sewing and embroidery are symbolic as well. During her childhood, she learns sewing is a way for women to exchange and conceal information: “To clothe a woman is to hide her failings and frailties […] A dressmaker is talented with the needle, but above all she is a secret keeper” (14). Throughout Hester, Isobel uses her sewing to hide messages in her work, culminating in the revelation that Mercy is using the same method to signify a stop on the Underground Railroad. In this respect, sewing is a means of personal expression and freedom.
Isobel also finds guidance in her father’s refrain “Trust the needle” (45), which he advises before she leaves Scotland. This mindset leads to employment and escape from Edward in the climax, as well as a means to help others, as she uses her needle to warn Mercy to flee Edward. Men who sew are rare in the novel, but Darling’s assertion that he likes stitching reveals his reliability as a romantic partner. Thus, enjoyment of stitching indicates good character in the novel.
Witchcraft
Isobel spends much of the novel wondering if she is a witch and fearing being accused like her ancestress and namesake, Isobel Gowdie. She imagines witchcraft as something accidental but powerful, believing her “colors,” her hereditary synesthesia, is a curse. After Nat abandons a pregnant Isobel, accusing her as she feared, Mercy offers her own perspective on witchcraft:
Witch is a reason to kill you; witch might be someone to heal you; witch can be the Devil, or witch can be a woman so beautiful she makes you lose your sense. They’ve got so many ways of calling you a witch, they just change how it suits them (201).
Nat flirts with and has sex with Isobel at his convenience, but accuses her of seduction when it suits him. While Isobel’s fear of being accused, ingrained by her mother as a survival strategy, causes her to struggle to divorce herself from this threat, she also finds beauty in “magic”—whether it be her own colors, Mercy’s work, or her once connection with Nat. She understands witchcraft is only considered “dangerous” when wielded by the powerless, such as women or Black people, because this threatens the status quo of white patriarchy.
Scarlet “A’s”
Like in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the scarlet “A’s” in Laurie Lico Albanese’s Hester seemingly represent a single word—for Hawthorne, “A” stands for adultery, while for Albanese, “A” stands for Abington, the city of Isobel’s birth. However, Isobel’s scarlet “A’s” also represent persecution, as the women of her family have long sewn hidden letters to preserve their history. As she continues her stitch work as an adult, she thinks of the “A’s” as representing potential power. When she makes a handkerchief for Nat, she thinks, “I’ve given him a token of May tree flowers stitched upon his handkerchief, one with a tiny red A concealed in the middle of the flower where the pollen pools. Perhaps that is witchcraft?” (131). The “A’s” thus become a symbol of power and rebellion, an artistic expression of freedom that may have summoned Nat to Isobel’s side.
The scarlet “A’s” also offer commentary on Hawthorne’s representation of them. When Isobel leaves a stitched scarlet “A” for Nat, he returns it: “The white cotton is smudged and soiled, but the scarlet A stitched by my hand is deep and true” (214). The white representation of “purity” becomes damaged by Nat’s hand, while Isobel’s “A,” “deep and true,” is reclaimed as a symbol of feminine power. Due to her synesthesia, she literally sees the letter “A” as scarlet, casting her as the inspiration for the title of Hawthorne’s novel.
