Hester Prynne gave it up sooner than Martha Stewart

“I got so mad I turned the radio off,” said Patty Hylton. That was Thursday evening, a few hours before Martha Stewart foiled the press and gawking onlookers by checking into the Alderson, W.Va. prison before the sun came up. She didn’t give them the one thing they wanted and had been in southern West Virginia for days waiting for -- to see her hurrying in, head bent so that you couldn’t read shame in her eyes.

Hylton turned the Beckley radio station off for the announcer and his audience were turning the homemaking diva’s imminent arrival into spectacle. They could have been sideshow barkers shouting, “Step right up, folks, and see the Queen of New York City get her comeuppance.”

Taking advantage of the gaggle of reporters', tourists' and locals' dislike of Stewart, establishments were holding Martha Stewart look-alike contests, selling T-shirts that said “Alderson, West Virginia: A Great Place to Spend Time” and “West Virginia Living. It’s a Good Thing.” Parking spaces for ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Fox reporters were selling at a premium.

Money and the desire to be seen were at the bottom of the carnival atmosphere. The townspeople took advantage of the woman’s fame and troubles to make a few bucks, get their names and pictures in the newspapers and on the nightly news.

They were a Greek chorus in this spectacle playing out on a West Virginia stage, but it was a drama they didn’t get a chance to perform before the cameras. Stewart slipped in before they had time to circle her.

The chorus represents everybody with a morbid interest in watching the woman squirm. It smacks of the days when people went to hangings, jockeying for the best place to watch the execution, waiting to see if the “criminal” cracked before his or her neck did.

Nathaniel Hawthorne of “The Scarlet Letter” fame calls this attitude “scornful merriment.” That’s the mood that pervaded the Boston marketplace as his novel opens. Puritan men, women and children were on half-holiday to see the lurid Hester Prynne, a married woman who had borne a child by another man, make her way from the prison to the scaffold for public denouncement. Surely, she would be contrite as she passed through the throngs, holding her baby in her arms and wearing the infamous Letter A for adultery on the front of her dress.

Thwarting everyone’s expectations, she walked through the hecklers, her head high, more like a goddess than a penitent. She didn’t get the punishment she deserves, some of the women said; the letter should be branded on her forehead. A gifted seamstress, Prynne had embroidered the letter with such workmanship that it didn’t condemn. On the contrary, its brilliance complemented her beauty and seemed a badge of honor. The Greek chorus grumbled at the turn of events and could not forgive her. Prynne didn’t need their songs of joy or discord, however. She was what she was.

Stewart is, too. People want her to grovel, but it’s more like her to turn her time in prison into something that brightens her life instead of sullies it.

She has to be punished for that. That’s one reason for the sideshows: “Step right up, folks, and see the greedy, hated queen live in a cell and work for 12 cents an hour.” Greedy? Maybe. Hated? According to reports, her daughter Alexis slept in bed next to her mother during her mother’s darkest times. Hate working? Never. She thrives on it.

Hylton shouldn’t have bothered turning the radio off.