Setting is an important factor when it comes to telling any kind of story. Nathaniel Hawthorne"s story is that of four main settings. The Governors Mansion, the prison, the platform, and the woods. He uses these places to further exaggerate the tale of the main characters, Arthur Dimmesdale, Hester Prynne, and Roger Chillingworth. Each place has a different meaning and emotional significance to a character. The words in the book give imagery to the novel and give it a more textured feeling. This is important when trying to keep the reader"s attention when the book has language unfamiliar to most. The Governors Mansion, the prison, the platform, and the woods have a significant part in the tale of sin and redemption. .

             The governor"s mansion is the place where Hester is placed under a microscope. The author describes the home of Bellingham as less than modest. It seems like the house of royalty, "This was a large wooden house, built in a fashion of which there are specimens still extant in the streets of our elder towns. There was the freshness of the passing year on its exterior, and the cheerfulness, gleaming forth from the sunny windows, of a human habitation into which death had never entered. It had indeed a very cheery aspect. it glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had been flung against it by the double handful. The brilliancy might have befitted Aladdin's palace, rather than the mansion of a grave old Puritan Ruler." (page 84) This house is certainly nothing like Hester"s, so she and her daughter are in amazement of all the fixtures in the dwelling. .

             The armor in Bellingham's hall has a distinct purpose. It is a distorted mirror that magnifies the scarlet letter on Hester's dress and diminishes the woman who wears it. Here, in the Governor's mansion, at the heart of the Puritan establishment, Hester Prynne, the individual, vanishes behind the symbol of her shame.