The Scarlet Feather

A clergyman and his family face mounting financial troubles and the strains of divided loyalties between parish duty and social ambition. Domestic tensions involve the wife’s preference for high society, the couple’s grown children and evolving romantic attachments, and a legal summons that exposes debts and secrets. A sequence of proposals, confessions, contested inheritances and a surprising public disclosure drives the plot through pursuit and temporary flight, until truths are revealed and relationships are tested. A recurring symbolic ornament plays a crucial role in unmasking motives and bringing the household to a final reckoning.