The Scarlet Letter

Front 1

Hester

Back 1

-One token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another "

-Let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart."

- she had wondered,without rule or guidance,into a moral wilderness

-The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread

Front 2

Dimmesdale

Back 2

-the Reverend Master Dimmesdale, her godly pastor

- , this pious Mr. Dimmesdale, in the hot passion of his heart!"

- "Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart!"

-one face to himself and another to the multitude

-"he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist."

Front 3

Suffering

Back 3

- the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it."

-Dimmesdale put forth his hand, chill as death, and touched the chill hand of Hester Prynne

-There was a listlessness in his gait, as if he saw no reason for taking one step further

Front 4

Chillingworth

Back 4

- he slowly and calmly raised his finger, made a gesture with it in the air, and laid it on his lips

-Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil

-physician's eyes, burning blue and ominous, like the reflection of a furnace, or, let us say, like one of those gleams of ghastly fire that darted from Bunyan's awful doorway

Front 5

Pearl

Back 5

- she named the infant 'Pearl,' as being of great price- purchased with all she had- her mother's only pleasure

-"we must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest"

Front 6

Shame

Back 6

- "A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.

- Shame,despair,solitude!"

Front 7

Hester as hero

Back 7

-These had been her teacherd-stern and wild ones- and they had made her strong

"But this was a sin of passion,not of principle,not even purpose"

-"here had been her sin;here,her sorrow; and here was yet to be her repentance"

-If she be all tenderness, she will die

Front 8

Context of Novel

Back 8

-written in Salem,Massachusetts; late 1840s

-first published 1850

-Set in Boston in the 17th century

Front 9

Love

Back 9

- "must always create sunshine" - Hester has never been truelly loved

-"the three formed an electric chain"

-hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom

- Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility.

Front 10

Isolation

Back 10

-"In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it... "

Front 11

The scarlet letter

Back 11

- "a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom"

-It [the scarlet letter] had the effect of a spell

Front 12

Hester as a mother

Back 12

-"sob out her love for her mother, in broken words, and seem intent on proving that she had a heart, by breaking it."

Front 13

Puritans

Back 13

-the Puritans compressed whatever mirth and public joy they deemed allowable

-“Art thou a Christian child?"

Front 14

Witchcraft

Back 14

-"the scarlet letter threw a lurid gleam along the dark passageway of the interior"

-john Goodwin's daughters

Front 15

Puritans

Back 15