Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter Flashcards
Hawthorne Birth and Death
1804-1864
Where/When Born
July 4th, Salem MA
What notable event was an ancestor present involved in?
Salem Witch Trials Judge
Where did he go to college?
Bowdoin, contemporary of Longfellow
Early Reviews
Debated Historical Accuracy
Major Characters
Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingworth, Arthur Dimmesdale, Pearl
When was “The Scarlet Letter” published?
1850
What is the frame narrative for “The Scarlet Letter”?
A Salem Custom House worker finds historical documents, including the Letter A, telling the story.
What Transcendentalist idea is explore in “The Scarlet Letter”?
That a personalized, direct relationship with the divine should take the place of organized religion.
When does “The Scarlet Letter” take place?
The 1640’s; it is set in the past and explores the Puritan society of early Massachusetts.
What is the difference between allegory and symbolism?
An allegory has a second level of meaning that could be represented through words, but instead is represented through an object/person/situation.
A symbol is subsumed by the meaning it stands for, generally something inexpressible
Who is the wearer of the Scarlet Letter?
Hester Prynne
Who is Hester’s husband?
Roger Chillingworth
Who is Pearl’s father?
Arthur Dimmesdale
What happens to Hester?
After Chillingworth and Dimmesdale’s death, Hester and Pearl leave for Europe and are not heard from again until Hester returns many years later. She takes up her quiet, charitable life again, sometimes hearing from Pearl, who has married a European aristocrat.
When she dies, she is buried next to Dimmesdale. The two share a letter “A” gravemarker,
Why does Hawthorne use so much allegory in his work?
Contemporaries like Poe notes Hawthorne’s penchant for allegory and symbolism, and today it remains one of his trademarks.
In “The Scarlet Letter,” the use of allegory was particularly appropriate because the work is about Puritan society, and Puritans saw the world through allegory. (A comet was a sign from God, etc.)
How does Hawthorne upend Puritan allegory in the Scarlet Letter?
Even though Puritan society saw the world through allegory, and Hawthorne uses allegory heavily throughout “The Scarlet Letter,” he inverts Puritan expectations for his characters.
Puritans would have seen a villain in Hester, a saint in Dimmesdale, and a victim in Chillingworth. Hawthorne, however, presents Hester as a resilient and steadfast woman, Dimmesdale as weak and hypocritical, and Chillingworth as downright evil.
Discuss allegory and Pearl.
Though all of the main characters have allegorical meanings, Pearl is almost all symbol and no character. She is the living embodiment of the Scarlet Letter, at times bringing her mother joy, others torment.
Pearl also stands for the artistic imagination, utterly foreign to Puritan society. Her frequent descriptions as fey or otherworldy underline this alienation from Puritan society.
She is another way in which Hawthorne emphasizes Transcendental ideas. When she is out in the forest, she feels free and at home, but in town she is wild and misunderstood.
What does “gules” mean?
It is the word for “red” in heraldic lingo.
How is the sign of the meteor interpreted by Dimmesdale and the community?
The meteor leaves a path in the shape of an “A.”
Dimmesdale sees it as a personal sign that he should make his sin known and live with the shame, as Hester does.
The community sees it as a positive sign about the passing of Governor Winthrop, the founder of their community, and surmise it stands for “Angel.”
In a similar way to “As I Lay Dying,” interpretation is what creates meaning; seeing is in the eye of the beholder.
What grows next to the prison door?
A rosebush
Why is Hester’s daughter given the name “Pearl”?
She was “purchased with all her mother had of value.”
Who is “the Black Man”?
Chillingworth
Who is the town witch? What happens to her?
Mistress Hibbens; Nothing really, in the story, but the narrator tells us shortly afterwards she will be executed as a witch.
