Answer:
The event in chap 1, Scarlett Letter that takes place before the story begins is that a crowd gathers outside the door of a prison.
Step-by-step explanation:
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter,” is about a woman named Hester who has an illegitimate child and is being branded as an adulteress. It also explores the themes of social humiliation, sin, knowledge, human condition, evil’s nature, identity, society, independence of female characters, guilt, empathy, and nature vs society.
In the beginning of the novel, the dreary-looking crowd gathers near the gates of the 17th century prison gates in Boston and watches Hester Prynne. She is a young woman with an infant who emerges from the prison door and goes to a scaffold where she is to be publicly condemned for adultery.
She wears a letter “A” stitched in gold and scarlet. The women pass disparaging comments and the others taunt or stare at her. Hester loses herself in her memories for a while but jolts back to reality again. This is the event that takes place before the novel really begins .