The Scarlet Letter Important Quotes ch 1-12
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"Before this ugly edifice...was a grass plot, much overgrown with burdock, pigweed, apple peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison. But on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rosebush..." (46).
Chapter 1
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Surroundings of the prison
"...a wild rosebush...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" (46).
Chapter 1
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: The rosebush is a symbol of forgiveness
"It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow" (46).
Chapter 1
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Hester's tale
"At the very least, they should have put the brand of hot iron on Hester Prynne's forehead" (49).
Chapter 2
Speaker: A woman gossiping
Spoken to: Other women gossiping
Who/What is described: Hester
"It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy..." (50).
Chapter 2
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: The Scarlet Letter
"Her attire...express the attitude of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild and picturesque peculiarity" (51).
Chapter 2
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Hester's individuality
"...the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it" (52).
Chapter 2
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Sufferers
"Yet those same bleared optics had a strange, penetrating power, when it was their owner's purpose to read the human soul" (56).
Chapter 2
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Chillingworth
"Could it be true?...Yes!—these were her realities—all else had vanished" (56)!
Chapter 2
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Hester
"A writhing horror twisted itself across his features, like a snake gliding swiftly over them...His face darkened with some powerful emotion..." (58).
Chapter 3
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Chillingworth
"...it must gladden your heart, after your troubles and sojourn in the wilderness...to find yourself, at length, in a land where iniquity is searched out, and punished in the sight of rulers and people; as here in our godly New England" (59).
Chapter 3
Speaker: Townsman
Spoken to: Chillingworth
Who/What is described: Chillingworth
" - He will be known" (60)!
Chapter 3
Speaker: Chillingworth
Spoken to: Townsman
Who/What is described: Dimmesdale
"...it would not have been easy to select the same number of wise and virtuous persons who should be less capable of sitting in judgment on an erring woman's heart" (61).
Chapter 3
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Incompetence of the Puritan officials
"He was a person of very striking aspect with a white, lofty, and impending brow, large, brown, melancholy eyes, and a mouth which, unless when he forcibly compressed it, was apt to be tremulous, expressing both nervous sensibility and a vast power of self-restraint" (63).
Chapter 3
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Dimmesdale
"...there was an air about this young minister - as of a being who felt himself quite astray and at a loss in the pathway of human existence, and could only be at ease in some seclusion of his own" (63).
Chapter 3
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Dimmesdale
"I will not speak!...And my child must seek a heavenly Father; she shall never know an earthly one" (65)!
Chapter 3
Speaker: Hester
Spoken to: Mr. Wilson/Dimmesdale/Townspeople
Who/What is described: The father of Pearl
"Wondrous strength and generosity of a woman's heart! She will not speak" (65)!
Chapter 3
Speaker: Dimmesdale
Spoken to: Mr. Wilson/Townspeople
Who/What is described: Hester
"...the child, who drawing its sustenance from the maternal bosom, seemed to have drunk in with it all the turmoil, the anguish and despair, which pervaded the mother's system" (67).
Chapter 4
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Pearl
"Live, therefore and bear about thy doom with thee, in the eyes of men and women - in the eyes of him whom thou didst call thy husband - in the eyes of yonder child!" (70).
Chapter 4
Speaker: Chillingworth
Spoken to: Hester
Who/What is described: Hester
"Men call me wise. If sages were ever wise in their own behoof, I might have foreseen all this" (70-71).
Chapter 4
Speaker: Chillingworth
Spoken to: Hester
Who/What is described: Chillingworth
"We have wronged each other" (71).
Chapter 4
Speaker: Chillingworth
Spoken to: Hester
Who/What is described: Chillingworth/Hester
"Thou and thine, Hester Prynne, belong to me. My home is where thou art, and where he is. But betray me not!" (73).
Chapter 4
Speaker: Chillingworth
Spoken to: Hester
Who/What is described: Chillingworth/Hester
"Art thou like the Black Man that haunts the forest round about us? Hast thou enticed me into a bond that will prove the ruin of my soul?" (73).
Chapter 4
Speaker: Hester
Spoken to: Chillingworth
Who/What is described: Chillingworth
"Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion" (75).
Chapter 5
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Hester
"The chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling to her inmost soul, but could never be broken" (76).
Chapter 5
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Hester
"...she hid the secret from herself, and grew pale whenever it struggled out of her heart, like a serpent from its hole - it might be that another feeling kept her within the scene and pathway that had been so fatal" (76).
Chapter 5
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Hester
"What she compelled herself to believe - what, finally, she reasoned upon as her motive for continuing a resident of New England - was half a truth, and half a self-delusion" (76).
Chapter 5
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Hester's reason for staying
"Deep ruffs, painfully wrought bands and gorgeously embroidered gloves were all deemed necessary to the official state of men assuming the reins of power; and were readily allowed to individuals dignified by rank or wealth, even while sumptuary laws forbade these and similar extravagances to the plebian order" (78).
Chapter 5
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Hypocrisy of officials
"But sometimes, once in many days, or perchance in many months, she felt an eye - a human eye - upon the ignominious brand, that seemed to give a momentary relief, as if half of her agony were shared...for, in that brief interval, she had sinned anew. Had Hester sinned alone?" (81-82).
Chapter 5
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Hester/Dimmesdale
"But she named the infant 'Pearl,' as being of great price - purchased with all she had - her mother's only treasure!" (84).
Chapter 6
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Hester/Pearl
"The mother's impassioned state had been the medium through which were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of its mortal life; and however white and clear originally, they had taken the deep stains of crimson and gold, the fiery lustre, the black shadow, and the untempered light, of the intervening substance" (86).
Chapter 6
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Hester/Pearl
"It was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable, so perverse, sometimes so malicious, but generally accompanied by a wild flow of spirits, that Hester could not help questioning, at such moments, whether Pearl was a human child" (87).
Chapter 6
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Pearl
"It was a face, fiendlike, full of smiling malice, yet bearing the semblance of features that she had known full well, though seldom with a smile, and never with malice in them" (91).
Chapter 6
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Pearl
"I have no Heavenly Father!" (93).
Chapter 6
Speaker: Pearl
Spoken to: Hester
Who/What is described: Father of Pearl
"Hester Prynne went one day to the mansion of Governor Bellingham with a pair of gloves, which she had fringed and embroidered to his order..." (Hawthorne 94).
Chapter 7
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Hypocrisy of Governor Bellingham
"...and made her the very brightest little jet of flame that ever danced upon the earth" (Hawthorne 96).
Chapter 7
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Pearl
"The brilliancy might have befitted Aladdin's palace rather than the mansion of a grave old Puritan ruler" (Hawthorne 97).
Chapter 7
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Mansion of Governor Bellingham (Hypocrisy)
"Thou must gather thine own sunshine. I have none to give thee!" (Hawthorne 97).
Chapter 7
Speaker: Hester
Spoken to: Pearl
Who/What is described: Pearl/Hester
"In truth, she seemed absolutely hidden behind it" (Hawthorne 100).
Chapter 7
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Hester
"...this badge hath taught me - it daily teaches me - it is teaching me at this moment - lessons whereof my child may be the wiser and better, albeit they can profit nothing to myself" (Hawthorne 104-105).
Chapter 8
Speaker: Hester
Spoken to: Governor Bellingham
Who/What is described: Scarlet Letter
"...the child finally announced that she had not been made at all, but had been plucked by her mother off the bush of wild roses that grew by the prison door" (Hawthorne 105-106).
Chapter 8
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Pearl/Nature
"...what a change had come over his feature - how much uglier they were - how his dark complexion seemed to have grown duskier, and his figure more misshapen - since the days when she had familiarly known him" (Hawthorne 106).
Chapter 8
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Chillingworth
"Speak thou for me!...Thou wast my pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me better than these men can...Thou knowest - for thou hast sympathies which these men lack" (Hawthorne 107).
Chapter 8
Speaker: Hester
Spoken to: Dimmesdale
Who/What is described: Hester begs Dimmesdale to help her because he understands
"The young minister, on ceasing to speak, had withdrawn a few steps from the group and stood with his face partially concealed in the heavy folds of the window curtain, while the shadow of his figure, which the sunlight cast upon the floor, was tremulous with the vehemence of his appeal" (Hawthorne 109).
Chapter 8
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Dimmesdale
"Had they taken her from me, I would willingly have gone with thee into the forest, and signed my name in the Black Man's book too, and that with mine own blood!" (Hawthorne 110).
Chapter 8
Speaker: Hester
Spoken to: witch
Who/What is described: Hester is saved from Satan by Pearl
"We shall have thee there anon!" (Hawthorne 110).
Chapter 8
Speaker: Mistress Hibbins
Spoken to: Hester
Who/What is described: Witchcraft
"He resolved not to be pilloried beside her on the pedestal of shame" (111).
Chapter 9
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Chillingworth
"By those best acquainted with his habits, the paleness of the young minister's cheek was accounted for by his too earnest devotion to study, his scrupulous fulfillment of parochial duty, and, more than all, by the fasts and vigils of which he made a frequent practice,..." (113).
Chapter 9
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Dimmesdale
"I need no medicine" (114).
Chapter 9
Speaker: Dimmesdale
Spoken to: People worrying about his health
Who/What is described: Dimmesdale's health
"According to the vulgar idea, the fire in his laboratory had been brought from the lower regions, and was fed with infernal fuel; and so, as might be expected, his visage was getting sooty with the smoke" (120).
Chapter 9
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Chillingworth
"He now dug into the poor clergyman's heart like a miner searching for gold; or. Rather, like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man's bosom, but likely to find nothing save mortality and corruption" (121).
Chapter 10
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Chillingworth trying to find out Dimmesdale's secret
"Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared" (122).
Chapter 10
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Dimmesdale's enemy is Chillingworth, but he does not realize it
"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" (123).
Chapter 10
Speaker: Chillingworth
Spoken to: Dimmesdale
Who/What is described: Subtly, Chillingworth is trying to persuade Dimmesdale to reveal his secret
"Come away, Mother! Come away, or yonder old Black Man will catch you! He hath got hold of the minister already. Come away, Mother, or he will catch you! But he cannot catch little Pearl!" (126).
Chapter 10
Speaker: Pearl
Spoken to: Hester
Who/What is described: Pearl believes the "Black Man" has already caught Dimmesdale and will catch Hester too, but not her.
"Let him do with me as, in his justice and wisdom, he shall see good. But who art thou, that meddles in this matter? - that darest thrust himself between the sufferer and his God?" (128).
Chapter 10
Speaker: Dimmesdale
Spoken to: Chillingworth
Who/What is described: God decides for Dimmesdale; and Dimmesdale condemns Chillingworth
"His gestures, his gait his grizzled beard, his slightest and most indifferent acts, the very fashion of his garments, were odious in the clergyman's sight" (132).
Chapter 10
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Chillingworth
"All this was accomplished with a subtlety so perfect, that the minister, though he had constantly a dim perception of some evil influence watching over him, could never gain a knowledge of its actual nature" (132).
Chapter 11
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Chillingworth getting his revenge on Dimmesdale
"And, all this time, perchance, when poor Mr. Dimmesdale was thinking of his grave, he questioned whether the grass would ever grow on it, because an accursed thing must there be buried!" (134).
Chapter 11
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Dimmesdale's fate
"He had striven to put a cheat upon himself by making the avowal of a guilty conscience, but had gained only one other sin, and a self-acknowledged shame, without the momentary relief of being self-deceived" (136).
Chapter 11
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Dimmesdale's guilt
"He had spoken the very truth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood. And yet, by the constitution of his nature, he loved the truth and loathed the lie, as few men ever did. Therefore above all things else, he loathed his miserable self" (136)!
Chapter 11
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Dimmesdale's guilt and hypocrisy
"No eye could see him, save that ever-wakeful one which had seen him in his closet wielding the bloody scourge" (138-139).
Chapter 12
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Dimmesdale
"...there came what seemed a tumultuous rush of new life, other life than his own, pouring like a torrent into his heart and hurrying through all his veins, as if the mother and child were communicating their vital warmth to his half-torpid system. The three formed an electric chain" (143).
Chapter 12
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Dimmesdale's reaction to Pearl
"At the great judgment day...But the daylight of this world shall not see our meeting!" (144).
Chapter 12
Speaker: Dimmesdale
Spoken to: Pearl
Who/What is described: When Dimmesdale will reveal his sin and stand with Hester and Pearl
"So vivid was the expression, or so intense the minister's perception of it, that it seemed still to remain painted on the darkness after the meteor had vanished, with an effect as if the street and all things else were at once annihilated" (147).
Chapter 12
Speaker: Narrator
Spoken to: N/A
Who/What is described: Dimmesdale
"I hate him...Canst thou do nothing for me? I have a nameless horror of the man!" (147).
Chapter 12
Speaker: Dimmesdale
Spoken to: Hester
Who/What is described: Chillingworth
"Satan dropped it there, I take it, intending a scurrilous jest against your reverence. But, indeed, he was blind and foolish, as he ever and always is. A pure hand needs no glove to cover it!" (148).
Chapter 12
Speaker: Sexton
Spoken to: Dimmesdale
Who/What is described: Dimmesdale's black glove