Symbols
The Prison
● “Whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project …
practical necessities to allot a portion of virgin soil…as the site of a prison”
● “The black flower of civilised society”
● “Looked more antique than anything else in the new world”
● “Much overgrown with burdock, pigweed, apple-peru and such unsightly vegetation”
The Wild Rose Bush
● “Whether it had merely survived out of the stern old wilderness…sprung up under the
footsteps of the sainted Ann Hutchinson”
● “It may serve…to my symbolize some sweet moral blossom”
The Scarlet Letter
● “An elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread”
● “The effect of a spell…inclosing her in a sphere by herself”
● “The scarlet letter was represented in exaggerated and giant proportions… she
seemed absolutely hidden behind it”
● “The scarlet letter had not done its office”
● “Were I worthy to be quit of it, it would fall away on its own nature”
● “The truth of red-hot iron”
● “Had seven long years, under the torture of the scarlet letter, inflicted so much of
misery, and wrought out no repentance?”
● “As if there were a withering spell in the sad letter, her beauty, the warmth and
richness of her womanhood, departed, like fading sunshine”
The Scaffold
● “Blessing on the righteous Colony of Massachusetts where iniquity is dragged out
into the sunshine”
● “Beneath the eaves of Boston’s earliest Church”
● “A portion of a penal machine”
The Forest
● “Inscrutable forest…the wilderness of her (Hester’s) nature might assimilate itself”
● “This small brook…should whisper tales out of the heart of the old forest… like the
voice of a young child that was spending its infancy without playfulness”
The Governor’s Mansion
● “Glittered and sparkled as if diamonds had been flung against it…The brilliancy might
have benefited Aladdin’s palace”
● “Harsh and intolerant criticism at the pursuits and enjoyments of living men”
● “As if to warn theGovernor that this great lump of vegetable gold was as rich an
ornament as New England earth would offer”
● “An error to suppose that our great forefathers…made it a matter of conscience to
reject such means of comfort”
The Meteor
● “Thoroughly illuminated…as if it were the light that is to reveal all secrets”
, Characters
Hester Prynne
● “Tall, with a figure of perfect elegance…dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it
threw off the sunshine with a gleam”
● “Lady-like”
● “Her beauty shone out and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she
was enveloped”
○ “The ugliest as well as the most pitiless of these self-constituted judges”
(contrast)
● “The image of Divine Maternity…by contrast of that sacred image of sinless
motherhood”
● “Sick and morbid heart”
● “A feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which compels
human beings to linger…and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and
marked event has given the colour of their lifetime”
● “Her sin, her ignominy, were the roots which she had struck into the soil”
● “The forest-land…in congenial to every other pilgrim…Hester Prynne’s wild and
dreary, but lifelong, home”
○ “Chain that bound her here was of iron links”
● “More saint-like, because the result of her martyrdom”
● “Being herself in a dismal labyrinth of doubt”
● “Ready…to give of her little substance to every demand of poverty”
● “Crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself”
● “Was existence worth accepting, even to the happiest among them?” (Women)
● “Heart had lost its regular and healthy throb”
● “Without a clew in the dark labyrinth of mind”
● “There was wild and ghastly scenery all around her, and a home and comfort
nowhere”
● “Having cast off all duty towards other human beings, there remained a duty towards
him”
● “The talisman of a stern and severe, but yet a guardian spirit, who now forsook her…
in spite of his strict watch over her heart, some new evil had crept into it”
● “The sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of
something on your bosom”
● “But a lie is never good, even though death threaten on the other side!”
● “Thou shalt forgive me!…Let God punish! Thou shalt forgive!”
● “She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness”
● “Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places”
● “Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers…and they had made her
strong, but taught her much amiss”
● “The stigma (letter) gone…the burden of shame and anguish departed from her
spirit…She had not known the weight, until she felt the freedom!”
● “Hester stood in that magic circle of ignominy”
