The Scarlet Letter Flashcard Example #13497

Nathaniel Hawthorne

1850

He is a descendant of a super Puritan judge from the time of the Salem Witch Trials (Hathorn in The Crucible.) This leads to an internal conflict on Hawthorne’s own part which makes him kind of torn between the ideals of the puritans and the romantics

Romanticism

Massachusetts Bay Colony, Salem, Massachusetts, sometime during the 1650’s or so (1642)

They are awaiting Hester Prynne, who is going to serve part of her punishment for adultery

The Prison Door and the Rose Bush – there are lots of different interpretations, but you can see them as the competing ideas of Puritanism (the prison door) and romanticism (the rose bush), or as a symbol of the change/growth of Hester herself over the course of the book

Even though they see themselves as a perfect society/utopia, they still acknowledge that they cannot escape the realities of either evil or death

Anne Hutchinson, a “saintly woman” who was seen as a criminal for being religiously rebellious during her lifetime

As a sign of hope to illuminate the darkness of the story to follow

The puritans in Massachusetts see their society as a place where there is no silent sin and where evil is consciously combatted (think Puritan drama of the soul)

There are many women of varying ages who seem unusually interested in the proceedings

Relatively speaking, false – puritans basically saw any sin as being equally evil as any other sin, which is one of the reasons that there is such a large crowd gathered to see Hester. They would have come out to see anyone, be it an unruly child or a murderer. Hawthorne basically implies that this comes from the lack of separation of church and state in Puritan society (as well as the fact that no one can mind their own damn business…)

In Puritan society, they were prized for being able to work and stay alive. In Hawthorne’s time, they were basically prized for being beautiful and delicate. So, yay progress? Or not…

She must stand on the scaffold in front of the whole town for three hours, and then must wear the scarlet letter for the rest of her life. (She also obviously serves some jail time, but we don’t really know how much or whether she was ever officially sentenced for a particular amount of time.)

Almost all of them (excepting a younger woman who thinks the emotional scar is enough) feel that Hester should have been judged more harshly – they suggest branding her forehead where she can’t hide the A and, well, death

Her husband, who had sent her ahead of him to the new world, is suspected to be dead, so people feel at least vaguely sympathetic

Use Pearl to cover her scarlet letter (which is kind of iffy since they both mean the same thing, but it’s worth a shot)

She is, if anything, more beautiful than before being put in jail, and she has made the scarlet letter she is forced to wear extravagant and kind of beautiful

True

The Virgin Mary (but only because of the sharp contrast)

Literally nothing except stare at her

Her past (specifically, her father and her husband are mentioned)

Hester’s husband, who has apparently been kidnapped by/was living with the natives since the ship bringing him to new world sank. Hester knows it is him because of his uneven shoulders and his expression

She will be a “living sermon against sin”

The father of Hester Prynne’s baby

Governor Bellingham, the governor of the town, John Wilson, an elderly clergyman and mentor to Dimmesdale, and Arthur Dimmesdale himself, Hester’s minister

Because he is her pastor – the entire situation is kind of an example of dramatic irony at least in hindsight, since Dimmesdale himself is the father of the baby

He’s super duper eloquent and also really cute ??

Admit the name of her child’s father, so that he can be openly confessed instead of living in sin for the rest of his life (hmmm….okay, Dimmesdale.)

3 – Dimmesdale, Wilson and then her husband in the crowd

Because Hester and, more importantly, the baby are both sick after standing in the sun for three hours. The physician, obviously, is Hester’s husband from England.

Roger Chillingworth

The “leech” which was just a name used for doctors (it can also be seen as a symbolic reference to the way that Chillingworth affects Dimmesdale

That he will kill her and the baby out of revenge

He thinks it is greater punishment for her to live and have to bear the shame of the scarlet letter

He should have known better and not married her in the first place (this is part of that long, melodramatic speech about how he never should have expected a pretty girl like her to want an ugly, deformed, overly studious guy like him that really irritated me)

1) the identity of her baby’s father
2) the fact that Chillingworth was her husband

She knows that her day to day life of isolation is going to be a literal trial; also, it’s terrible to be a symbol instead of a person

Her sin ties her to there – basically, Hawthorne proposes that we as human beings feel compelled to stay where the big events of our lives happen, and while this hasn’t been a positive experience for Hester, it has been an important one (Hawthorne also kind of alludes to the fact that Hester wants to stay where her lover is, which is kinda romantic with a lowercase r)

She and her daughter live alone in an isolated cottage, where she does needlework and helps the poor but is entirely ostracized and looked down upon

She does make officials robes for ceremonies, gloves, baby linens, funerals clothes, and a bunch of other stuff. However, she does NOT make wedding veils.

False – the only thing she does for herself is make pretty things for her daughter

Pearl, because she is her mother’s “greatest treasure” (it’s supposed to be a biblical reference to the parable where a woman sells all that she owns to buy an expensive Pearl, because Hester has literally given up her entire reputation and social standing in having Pearl

True – Hawthorne makes the comparison that she was worthy to play in the Garden of Eden with angels after the fall of man

*she’s insanely pretty
*she’s totally “wild” and won’t listen to rules (although I feel like most three year olds are kind of like that)
*she seems to have some element of the supernatural to her (people theorize that she is an “elf child” or even a demon
*she seems preternaturally precocious and always knows a little more than she should
*her emotions are super random but VERY passionate

Hester’s scarlet letter

They’re all enemies/antagonists

When the baby is asleep

About three years

Technically to deliver a pair of gloves she has made him, but more significantly to look into the rumors that the town magistrates are thinking about taking Pearl away from her

If she really is a demon child, which half of the colony thinks is like a legit thing, then they want to protect Hester from her. On the other, if she’s a normal human child, obviously there is someone better than Hester to raise her (Hawthorne alludes to the fact that there is a lot of icky political maneuvering going on too, but we’ll pretend to ignore that)

She’s wearing a red dress – Pearl, the other symbol of her mother’s shame, is the LITERAL scarlet letter

The sunlight, which she wants to be gathered up for her to play with (which leads to “thou must gather thine own sunshine, for I have none to give thee)

Pearl points it out because she can see her mother’s reflection, where the only thing emphasized is the scarlet letter A

A red rose (think the rose bush from the beginning of the book)

Bellingham, Wilson, Dimmesdale and Chillingworth

Only Pearl

Wilson, a member of the clergy, is used to extravagance and materialism

She obviously hasn’t been brought up with a proper Christian sensibility – she can’t even identify God as the one that made her (actually, she can, she’s just being difficult, but the point remains)

Nowhere – her mother plucked her from the rosebush outside the prison door (this kind of emphasizes the ideas of romanticism and hope that are already associated with the rosebush)

She can teach Pearl better because she lives with the shame of the scarlet letter and knows sin firsthand

Because God gave Pearl to Hester, likely as a means of salvation

He seems darker, uglier and more evil

The widowed sister of Bellingham, who is rumored to be a witch and does a bunch of witchy stuff whenever she randomly shows up

Pearl is with her (see, Pearl really is Hester’s salvation!)

He is a doctor, and the town desperately needed one

Dimmesdale, their super saintly minister, seems to be slowly fading away – he’s obviously weaker, paler and always has his hand over his heart

That he is evil/the devil

They’re basically BFFs – they’re living in the same house and basically spend most of their time talking about God and the universe and all sorts of fun stuff

Hawthorne gives us two reasons: first of all, Chillingworth is really smart and subtle about this whole thing. Second of all, Dimmesdale is so paranoid and emotionally unstable that he kind of assumes EVERYONE is his enemy, so he can’t see Dimmesdale for what he truly is

The Black Man (the Puritan name for the devil)

As much as this sounds like an adorable bromance, it’s because he sees something (the scarlet letter or at least some sort of Mark) on his chest, identifying him as pearl’s father

False (it’s the opposite of all of those)

The grave of a man who died with a sin/ secret on his conscience – this prompts a conversation between Chillingworth and Dimmesdale where they basically argue over whether or not or is better to confess a sin to clear your conscience or die with it still unspoken Dimmesdale comments that people may try to avoid confessing a secret in order to appear more holy since they are truly devoted to God, and Chillingworth points out that they’re just lying to themselves at that point (which upsets Dimmesdale for obvious reasons)

It is caused by something spiritual, not something physical

As even better than before – because he IS one, Dimmesdale seems to truly empathize with the sinner and he seems very connected with/on the same level as the people instead of loftily angelic

He HATES it, because he feels like a hypocrite and his secret is killing him

A bloody scourge which he basically uses to torture himself

The faces of his parents, Hester and Pearl

Governor Winthrop is dying, but Dimmesdale is worried that everyone has heard him scream

Hester and Pearl

Chillingworth

She hates him for s hypocrisy – when she asked him to stand with her and her mother in daylight, Dimmesdale gave her an evasive answer about how they will be judged together at the end of time and it kind of upsets Pearl

It was a sign that Winthrop, the dead governor, had gone to heaven/was now an angel

Tell him the truth about Chillingworth, since she’s realized that he’s absolutely miserable and she was wrong if she thought that keeping the secret would protect Dimmesdale

A self ordained Sister of Mercy

That it is a sign of her goodness/able nature instead of a sign of sin

She is less beautiful and considers herself closed off to the ideas of love/affection

She refuses, saying that it is not in their power to do so

Dimmesdale, although he also brings up the idea that it was his fate to be like this just as it was Hester’s fate to wear the scarlet letter

False – Hester in fact hates Chillingworth entirely, saying that his sin in seeking revenge is almost worse that her and Dimmesdale’s sin was in the first place and she entirely regrets marrying him at all

1) What does the scarlet letter mean?
2) Why does the minister always keep his hand over his heart?

She realizes that Pearl has such a strong personality that if she grows up to be a bad person, she’s going to be a VERY bad person

She lies about it, saying that she only wears it because of the pretty gold thread

Hester has been trying to find Dimmesdale so she can warn him about Chillingworth, and so she and Pearl go into the woods to catch him on his way back from visiting Eliot, a missionary to the Indians.

It seems to be avoiding her mother (or, more specifically, the scarlet letter)

The Black Man, who Pearl has heard about from Mistress Hibbins

The devil’s

It is seen both as a symbol of wild sadness and as a division between two radically different worlds (either between sin and goodness or between Puritanism and romanticism) – it is compared a couple of times to Pearl herself, both by means of contrast and similarity

Ghosts

Dimmesdale is understandably upset, and Hester basically hugs him until he forgives her, which he does

Leave the colony and go somewhere else. When Dimmesdale says that he lacks the strength to go alone, she says he won’t have to because she and Pearl will come with him

He feels that he is doomed already, and so he may as well live his life free from the guilt he feels here

The sun comes out and nature in general seems to be happy; Hester herself looks young, beautiful and in love again

That Pearl, their daughter, won’t like him

Basically, to quote CKelly, she’s in “full Disney princess mode”, talking to animals and frolicking in the woods

Her mother isn’t wearing the scarlet letter or her bonnet, and Pearl might literally not recognize her – it only goes to show that the scarlet letter has basically become intrinsic to who Hester is – it is entirely part of her identity.

She kisses the scarlet letter

She washes it off in the brook and then refuses to talk to Dimmesdale or Hester while they plot their escape

It is only once they go into the woods, where they are in nature and separate from society, that Hester and Dimmesdale are truly themselves, free from guilt and admitting their love for one another

By being separate from society, Hester has come to look to herself and not to societal standards as her measure of goodness and moral truth (so we have both the idea of self reliance and the idea that society is bad)

1) Say blasphemous things while talking with an old Deacon
2) He forgets a biblical quote while talking to an old lady
3) He thinks about corrupting a young convert who has a crush on him
4) He considers teaching the good Puritan children swears
5) He wants to have a drink with a pirate (I think?)

Hester’s reputation as a “sister of mercy” can get them passage on a boat that is leaving for England in a couple of days, just after the Dimmesdale is going to give the election sermon to celebrate a new governor which is a HUGE deal for a minister

That she wasn’t real and that he has literally made a deal with the devil (some creepy talk from Mistress Hibbins just kind of reinforces this idea)

Because he himself has changed

Refuses medicine from Dimmesdale, throws away the draft he had been writing of the election sermon and pulls an all nighter to rewrite it

The setting/situation, with the town square, everyone gathered, Hester near the scaffold and Chillingworth sending out evil looks in the crowd, mimics the setting of the first few chapters

There is a holiday for the procession in honor of the new governor, which Hawthorne tells us is basically the only time when puritans have fun

It is revealed that Chillingworth is coming with them on the boat

Being in a maze

Really really well – Dimmesdale is just insanely eloquent, and everyone talks about the fact that he sounds like he’s either literally a prophet or is about to die

Dimmesdale, who’s looking a lot better by the way, doesn’t even acknowledge her

The fact that Dimmesdale was seen in the woods with the devil (which Hester denies, obviously)

As something more wild than themselves

That this confession is the only way that Dimmesdale could have ever escaped Chillingworth’s revenge

Pearl existed primarily as a symbol of Hester’s sin, designed to make Hester and Dimmesdale feel guilty until they did the right thing. This sort of supernatural weirdness is ended as Dimmesdale makes his confession, and Pearl becomes nothing more than a girl. There’s a quote about how she basically becomes a woman who is part of the world instead of a girl at war with it.

A mark like Hester’s scarlet letter

Probably not – God is merciful, sure, but they still committed a sin and will be judged accordingly

*Dimmesdale caused the mark himself in his torturing of himself
*the devil literally left a mark on Dimmesdale, or else it was a sign of his guilty heart trying to chew its way out of his body
*there was nothing there at all, and everyone is freaking out over nothing

Since he’s basically lost his entire purpose in life, he dies a year later and leaves everything to Pearl

She inherits all of Chillingworth’s property, making her the wealthiest heiress in the colonies. It is implied that she married a rich man from overseas and had children.

She and Pearl move away for awhile, but then Hester comes back alone. She continues to live in her cottage, wearing her grey robe and the scarlet letter, serves the poor and gives advice to the women of the village. In particular, she mentions that she believes that things will get better for women some day, but she is not the one to do it. When she dies, she is buried near (but not too near) Dimmesdale, and they share a headstone with a scarlet letter A.

“Be true, be true, be true” (it’s possible that this will be an essay)

No (I think this might be an essay choice though…)

Again, I’m thinking this might be an essay choice – basically, it boils down to the fact that nature approves of Hester and Dimmesdale being together but God does not (there’s a whole bunch of other little comparisons you can make too – Hester and Dimmesdale themselves serve this symbolic role as characters, the prison door and the rosebush can be seen as images of this, and you can bring up Hawthorne’s background if you want to)