The Scarlet Letter (Beginnings)

The Scarlet Letter
(Chapters 1-4: Pgs. 45-74)
To me, the first chapter of "The Scarlet Letter" had a lot of input.  The author at first begins by giving a detail in where the story takes place.  The scenery, I feel gives a real good inlet of the society.  A new world that was far from being an ideal society (utopia), but in fact had its flaws since its inhabitants had been living there for a short period of twenty years.  The jail was a big symbol of the corrupt city.  "Some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front"(46).  The first chapter also gives a great inlet of the Hester Prynne characteristics, by mentioning Anne Hutchinson.  Anne Hutchinson, was a puritan spiritual adviser whose religious teachings defied the Puritan leader of the Massachusetts Colony.  Hutchinson was a headstrong women and so is Hester Prynne during the opening scenes of chapter two (2).
In Chapter two(2) Hester is not only introduced, but the townspeople too.  I feel that the townspeople were very rude and ignorant.  The fact that the schoolboys had a short day in class because of Hester was too much.  They were just using Madam Prynne as an example for the whole town to see, what happens if they were to defy the church.  Your actions are made into a mockery in which everyone can judge you on.  Her crime was committing adultery, which is why she bore the letter "A".  I felt that the women and men in the town were not only jealous of her but afraid too.  This is because, even though Hester wanted to shriek out loud from the internal damage she was dealing with; she was still able to walk outside looking ladylike and beautiful (which is what men want in a women)  which made the women jealous.  As she was walking out of prison with the baby in her arms she held her head up high while smiling.  The townspeople (mostly the men) probably feared  how a women, who obviously didn't have much right during that period, could walk out with such poise and pride after committing a horrid crime.  Not to my surprise, they wanted her dead.  During the end of the chapter we are left with a little bit of Hester's history back home which reappears in Chapter three(3).
In Chapter three(3) when Hester's crime is made visible for the town to see, it captures a stranger's eye.  At first Hester didn't really take the stranger's stares' seriously because she didn't know him.  I felt that the stranger, whose identity isn't revealed yet is interested in Hester because he asks a townsman of who she is and what crime she has committed.  In this chapter I also felt that Hester has some compassion towards the young preacher Dimmesdale, who I feel in return feels the same way. I think that Hester loves the man who fathered her child because she still isn't giving us a hint of whom it might be.
To me, things in Chapter four(4) really heat up.  Hester is believed to be crazy and so a doctor comes.  At first I really didn't think to much of the visit because she was ill.  Until, I realize that the doctor is her husband and was the stranger whom she met earlier but didn't realize until now.  I think that after getting information from the townspeople on Hester he deliberately planned on being the doctor to visit her.  During the visit was when he planned to reveal his real identity.  Her husband at first wanted her dead, but later realized that he would rather enjoy seeing her live the way that the society wants ("A"); but not alone.  He is determined to find the man that impregnated her.