I think the quote is explaining how the people feel about Hester and the fact that her baby isn’t her husbands. They despise the fact that she committed adultery, and they know she should be punished for her crime. They also wish to know the baby’s true father, which Hester feigns away from, not wanting to tell anyone. The women in this community are extremely gossipy, wanting to know every tiny detail that they can about Hester and the baby. The book doesn’t even talk about the people, for the first two chapters it just talks about the setting, what everything around them looks like, not even the characters. Only in the third chapter do things start to finally get
