The Scarlet Letter Chapter One-Four

1. The Scarlet Letter Chapter One-Four Setting the Tone for the Entire Novel

2. Diction A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments, and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with ironspikes.

3. somber dreary sober laden dismal rigid stern Connotation

4. steeple-crowned hats hoods bareheaded edifice wooden door timbered studded iron spikes Concrete Diction

5. Recalls Hawthorne’s ancestors • this grave, bearded, sable-cloaked, and steeple-crowned progenitor--who came so early, with his Bible and his sword, and trode the unworn street with such a stately port, and made so large a figure, • Doubtless, however, either of these stern and black-browed Puritans would have thought it

6. Concrete Diction • emphasizes the rigidity of the Puritan community. • reinforces the burden the community carries as they live by such a restrictive code of behavior. • alludes to the severity of the punishment meted out to those who do not conform. He has already provided examples of this harsh system in “The Custom House”.

7. Imagery • wooden edifice • heavily timbered with oak • studded with iron spikes

8. Biblical Allusion • The imagery alludes to the crucifixion of Christ—the price paid for human sin. • heavy, wooden, oak cross • spikes in Christ’s hands

9. Redemption from Sin • In the first paragraph of the novel, Hawthorne presents the imagery of redemption, a motif that runs the course of the entire novel. • Hawthorne believes that sin carries its own price that must be paid, not only by the sinner, but also, the community.

10. Utopia human virtue happiness practical necessities virgin soil cemetery prison Diction, Paragraph 2

11. Contrasting images Ideal—”impracticable schemes of dreamy brethren” • Utopia—Garden of Eden • human—Adam and Eve • virtue—before the fall • happiness—without sin • virgin soil—without sin Reality • practical—survival • necessities—survival • cemetery—death • prison—human sin

12. Contrasting biblical allusions to Paradise and sin • The Garden of Eden was an ideal earthly place without sin, full of promise and hope, and the daily, visible presence of God. • In contrast, the cemetery reflects the sentence of death and separation from God as a result of the sins of Adam and Eve in the Garden. • The prison is the earthly recognition of and punishment for sin.

13. Connotations Certain it is, that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the new world. Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era.

14. corrosion deterioration burden infestation depression In Contrast new world—hope, promise youthful era—hope, promise, full of life Connotations

15. MotifThe prevalence of sin Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pigweed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison.

16. Motif The prevalence of sin “ [A]nd such unsightly vegetation” correlates with the third paragraph of “The Custom House”, “In my native town of Salem…the track of many languid years is seen in a border of unthrifty grass….”

17. burdock • A biennial or perennial 3 to 8 feet in height, with many flowered heads. Leaves are large, broad, and rounded-like those on rhubarb. the tube-shaped flowers are pale pink, deep purple, or white. Big brown, round, bristly burrs are a common characteristic of the plant. • The United States Dispensatory no longer lists this herb as medicinally valuable, but in the past it was quite popular for treating many ailments. In Spain and France it has been used to purify the blood and to cure skin blemishes and minor wounds. In 18th Century America it was prescribed as a cure for gonorrhea and syphilis. In Appalachia, a tea of roots or seeds is used to treat rheumatism and to purify the blood. Great Burdock Crushed leaves were applied to cool bruises, burns and swellings. Seeds, or the juice from the leaves, taken with honey, were considered a diuretic. (scienceviews.com)

18. apple-peru (devil’s trumpet) • An ill-scented annual weed that grows 1 to 5 feet in height. Leaves are 4 to 6 inches long, broad, unevenly and largely toothed. Flowers are long, tubular, pale blue in leaf axils or stem forks. Plant produces large prickly capsules as fruit. • This extremely poisonous plant is used as an antispasmodic, antiasthmatic, and anodyne sedative. The dried leaves are frequently mixed with saltpeter and burned in a treatment for asthma. In Appalachia, a poultice made from blossoms is used to treat wounds and to kill pain; also, dried leaves are smoked in a pipe to relieve asthma. In the Southwest, the plant is used by Zuni Indians as a hallucinogenic. In Europe, where the plant has been known for centuries, it is used to treat pulmonary disease, nervous afflictions, and nymphomania. And legend has it that the Delphic Oracle inhaled smoke from burning Datura leaves to induce visions. (scienceviews.com)

19. pigweed • An annual 1 to 6 feet in height, erect, branched above. Leaves are alternate, petioled, 3 to 6 inches long, dull green, rough, hairy, ovate or rhombic, with wavy margins. Flowers are small, with greenish or red terminal panicles. Taproot is long, fleshy, red or pink • Because of its astringent quality, this plant has been used in treating dysentery, ulcers, hemorrhage of the bowel.

20. (Motif) SymbolismWeeds • Throughout the novel, weeds are a symbol of sin. • Weeds are particularly associated with Roger Chillingworth who has a knowledge of healing herbs and who some believe is aligned with the Devil.

21. (Motif) SymbolismWeeds • Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilised society, a prison.

22. SymbolismSoil The sentiment is probably assignable to the deep and aged roots which my family has stuck into the soil. It is now nearly two centuries and a quarter since the original Briton, the earliest emigrant of my name, made his appearance in the wild and forest-bordered settlement which has since become a city. And here his descendants have been born and died, and have mingled their earthly substance with the soil, until no small portion of it must necessarily be akin to the mortal frame wherewith, for a little while, I walk the streets. In part, therefore, the attachment which I speak of is the mere sensuous sympathy of dust for dust. (“The Custom House”) Paragraph 7

23. SymbolismSoil Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and re-planted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birth-places, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth. (Paragraph 10, “The Custom House”)

24. (Motif) SymbolismWeeds and Soil • The “black flower of civilized society” is his metaphor for the prison. • The prison is the earthly recognition of and response to sin. • The image furthers the motif of how sin is perpetuated in a community. • The weed and soil symbolism is still related to the roots and soil imagery in “The Custom House”.

25. (Motif) SymbolismWeeds and Soil • Roger Chillingworth is most closely aligned with the weed symbolism and motif. • He identifies himself as an alchemist which, among the Puritans, would immediately raise suspicions of his alliance to Satan.

26. (Motif) SymbolismWeeds [Chillingworth] was now known to be a man of skill; it was observed that he gathered herbs and the blossoms of wild-flowers, and dug up roots and plucked off twigs from the forest-trees like one acquainted with hidden virtues in what was valueless to common eyes. (“The Leech”, par. 4)

27. (Motif) SymbolismWeeds For the sake of the minister's health, and to enable the leech to gather plants with healing balm in them, they took long walks on the sea-shore, or in the forest; mingling various walks with the splash and murmur of the waves, and the solemn wind-anthem among the tree-tops. (“The Leech” par. 12)

28. (Motif) SymbolismWeeds [Dimmesdale] therefore still kept up a familiar intercourse with him, daily receiving the old physician in his study, or visiting the laboratory, and, for recreation's sake, watching the processes by which weeds were converted into drugs of potency. (“The Leech and his Patient” par. 5)

29. (Motif) SymbolismWeeds Two or three individuals hinted, that the man of skill, during his Indian captivity, had enlarged his medical attainments by joining in the incantations of the savage priests; who were universally acknowledged to be powerful enchanters, often performing seemingly miraculous cures by their skill in the black art. (“The Leech,” par. 17)

30. (Motif) SymbolismWeeds "They are new to me. I found them growing on a grave, which bore no tombstone, no other memorial of the dead man, save these ugly weeds, that have taken upon themselves to keep him in remembrance. They grew out of his heart, and typify, it may be, some hideous secret that was buried with him, and which he had done better to confess during his lifetime.“ (“The Leech and His Patient” par. 8)

31. (Motif) SymbolismWeeds All his strength and energy--all his vital and intellectual force--seemed at once to desert him, insomuch that he positively withered up, shriveled away and almost vanished from mortal sight, like an uprooted weed that lies wilting in the sun. (“Conclusion,” par.5)

32. (Motif) SymbolismWeeds • Pearl pretends that the “ugliest weeds of the garden” are the Puritan children whom Hawthorne refers to as “the most intolerant brood that ever lived.” (Chapter 6). • The children taunt Pearl and her mother incessantly, and Hawthorne regards this behavior, passed down from their elders, as one of the gravest sins of the community.

33. (Motif) SymbolismWeeds and Soil • The weeds, roots, and soil literally and figuratively tie Hawthorne and his family to the events of the novel.

34. (Motif) Symbolism—Weeds and Soil • Through the symbolism of the weed and soil which becomes a motif of sin and guilt throughout the novel, Hawthorne demonstrates the presence of sin and the collective responsibility for it.

35. (Motif) Symbolism—Weeds and Soil And here his descendants have been born and died, and have mingled their earthly substance with the soil, until no small portion of it must necessarily be akin to the mortal frame wherewith, for a little while, I walk the streets. (“The Custom House”)

36. SymbolismThe Wild Rose-Bush But on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him.

37. SymbolismThe Wild Rose-Bush • The wild rose-bush stands in sharp moral contrast to the Puritan weeds. • The rose-bush is offered as mercy—not punishment—to the prisoner. • The passage could be read as the roses offering “their fragrance and fragile beauty to [Hester] as [she] went in, and to the condemned criminal as [Hester] came forth to [her] doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to [her].

38. Anne Hutchinson and Hester Prynne This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in history; but whether it had merely survived out of the stern old wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks that originally overshadowed it, or whether, as there is fair authority for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Ann Hutchinson as she entered the prison-door, we shall not take upon us to determine.

39. Anne Hutchinson and Hester Prynne • Hawthorne intends for the reader to see Hester Prynne as parallel to Anne Hutchinson. • Anne Hutchinson was particularly celebrated in the nineteenth century as a spiritual heroine. Thus, Hester should be regarded in a similar light.

40. SymbolismFlower (Rose) as Sweet Moral Blossom Finding it so directly on the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from that inauspicious portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers, and present it to the reader. It may serve, let us hope, to symbolise some sweet moral blossom that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.

41. Rose Symbolism • romantic love • blood of Christ • redemption

42. The Market-Place The grass-plot before the jail, in Prison Lane, on a certain summer morning, not less than two centuries ago, was occupied by a pretty large number of the inhabitants of Boston, all with their eyes intently fastened on the iron-clamped oaken door. Amongst any other population, or at a later period in the history of New England, the grim rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these good people would have augured some awful business in hand.

43. Early severity of the Puritan character It could have betokened nothing short of the anticipated execution of some noted culprit, on whom the sentence of a legal tribunal had but confirmed the verdict of public sentiment. But, in that early severity of the Puritan character, an inference of this kind could not so indubitably be drawn.

44. Under Puritan law, a parent could hand over a disobedient child to the authorities to have them administer public punishment on the child. It might be that a sluggish bond-servant, or an undutiful child, whom his parents had given over to the civil authority, was to be corrected at the whipping-post.

45. Linking William Hathorne with Anne Coleman and Anne Hutchinson It might be that an Antinomian, a Quaker, or other heterodox religionist, was to be scourged out of the town, or an idle or vagrant Indian, whom the white man's firewater had made riotous about the streets, was to be driven with stripes into the shadow of the forest.

46. The Salem Witch Trials It might be, too, that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the bitter-tempered widow of the magistrate, was to die upon the gallows.

47. A people among whom religion and law were almost identical In either case, there was very much the same solemnity of demeanor on the part of the spectators, as befitted a people among whom religion and law were almost identical, and in whose character both were so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest and severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerable and awful.

48. Difference between the 17th century and 19th century Meagre, indeed, and cold, was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from such bystanders, at the scaffold. On the other hand, a penalty which, in our days, would infer a degree of mocking infamy and ridicule, might then be invested with almost as sterna dignity as the punishment of death itself.

49. The difference between Elizabethan women and 19th century women It was a circumstance to be noted on the summer morning when our story begins its course, that the women, of whom there were several in the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in whatever penal infliction might be expected to ensue. The age had not so much refinement, that any sense of impropriety restrained the wearers of petticoat and farthingale from stepping forth into the public ways, and wedging their not unsubstantial persons, if occasion were, into the throng nearest to the scaffold at an execution.

50. The difference between Elizabethan women and 19th century women Morally, as well as materially, there was a coarser fibre in those wives and maidens of old English birth and breeding than in their fair descendants, separated from them by a series of six or seven generations; for, throughout that chain of ancestry, every successive mother had transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate and briefer beauty, and a slighter physical frame, if not character of less force and solidity than her own.