AP English Literature
Schroeder/Lewis
Fall 2015

Hester Prynne is forced to wear a scarlet
“A” that stands for “adultery”. Each of us has our own “sin” or “guilty pleasure”.
Pick one (that is school appropriate) and tell us the scarlet letter that would be emblazoned on your chest and why.
Quietly write this letter and your explanation on the nametag on your desk using the red marker provided.
We will go around and share. When it’s your turn, please share your name, your scarlet letter, and what that letter would stand for.

American Transcendentalism (philosophy meets nature)...
• The transcendentalists were a generation of well educated people who lived in the decades before the American Civil War and the national division that it both reflected and helped to create. These people, mostly New Englanders, were attempting to create a uniquely American body of literature. They were struggling to define spirituality and religion in a way that took into account the new understandings their age made available. They emphasized the individual’s ability to apprehend truths that lay higher or deeper than mere experience could garner.
• Hawthorne ran with the intellectual circle that included Ralph Waldo
Emerson and Margaret Fuller abandoned his customs post for the utopian experiment at Brook Farm, a commune designed to promote economic selfsufficiency and transcendentalist principles. He married a fellow transcendentalist, Sophia Peabody in 1842.
• Transcendentalism was a religious and philosophical movement that was dedicated to the belief that divinity manifests itself everywhere, particularly in the natural world. It also advocated a personalized, direct relationship with the divine in place of formalized, structured religion. This second transcendental idea is privileged in The Scarlet Letter.
• For more info you can go to: http://www.transcendentalists.com/what.htm

In the introduction our narrator tells us that he spends his days at the customhouse trying to amuse himself because few ships come to Salem anymore. One rainy day he discovers some documents in the building’s unoccupied second story. Looking through the pile, he notices a manuscript that is bundled with a scarlet, gold-embroidered piece of cloth in the shape of the letter “A.” The narrator examines the scarlet badge and holds it briefly to his chest, but he drops it because it seems to burn him. He then reads the manuscript. It is the work of one Jonathan Pue, who was a customs surveyor a hundred years earlier. An interest in local history led Pue to write an account of events taking place in the middle of the seventeenth century—a century before Pue’s time and two hundred years before the narrator’s.
The narrator has already mentioned his unease about attempting to make a career out of writing. He believes that his Puritan ancestors, whom he holds in high regard, would find it frivolous and “degenerate.” Nevertheless, he decides to write a fictional account of Hester Prynne’s experiences. It will not be factually precise, but he believes that it will be faithful to the spirit and general outline of the original. While working at the customhouse, surrounded by uninspiring men, the narrator finds himself unable to write. When a new president is elected, he loses his politically appointed job and, settling down before a dim fire in his parlor, begins to write his “romance,” which becomes the body of The Scarlet Letter.

• Knowing that Hawthorne did indeed work in the
Customshouse do you think that he actually found the Scarlet Letter and manuscript?
• Either way, why would he choose to write about it?
Discuss with your table partner...

• Readers of Hawthorne’s time were not completely comfortable with a strong work of pure fiction, though--so Hawthorne makes up a little story about finding the scarlet letter in an attic. He constructs some fake authenticity--in fact, all through the book the author plays with the difference between truth and illusion or fiction--he states opinions as a narrator firmly and then smudges the impression by pointing out that readers can have different interpretations. (If Hawthorne writes that the lighting is poor, that something is "glimmering" or "dusky," does that mean he is suggesting you look more carefully at it?) The introduction also sets a mood for beginning the book.
• Eldred, Eric. Notes to Introduction, The Scarlet Letter. 1999. 23 Sep.
1999.

• In the early 1600s, Italian scholar Giambattista della Porta, considered the father of physiognomy, was instrumental in spreading ideas about character and appearance in Europe. Della Porta made an analogy to the human essence, suggesting that one could deduce an individual’s character from empirical observation of his physical features. His widely disseminated book on the subject, De humana physiognomia, was instrumental in spreading physiognomy throughout Europe. Illustrations in the book depict human and animal heads side by side, implying that people who look like particular animals have those creatures’ traits.
• In the 18th and 19th centuries, physiognomy was recognized as a science.
• The phrases “high brow” and “low brow” stem from Physiognonmy.
• The influence of physiognomy can be seen throughout 18th- and 19th-century
European art. In the 18th century in particular, natural philosophers embraced the “ideal” features found in classical sculpture, which were mistakenly thought to represent how the ancients actually looked. The assumed cultural superiority of ancient Greece became attached to these features, which were adopted by European artists and depicted again and again. “Others”—such as
Asians and Africans—were less not only less beautiful, but less moral.

• Today, scholars are still studying the science of faces and how different traits, features, and expressions affect us. For example, it’s well established that faces with rounded contours attract us, because they signal childlikeness and evoke parental instincts. We even have a tendency to view “baby-faced” people as less likely to commit premeditated crimes. Unfortunately, if you’ve got an angular face, you’re probably a criminal.
• So even though the term “physiognomy” no longer resonates, the assumption of physical appearance as moral indicator lives on. Homer
Simpson must be ugly, because he is stupid. When Dorothy asks the good “white” witch in The Wizard of Oz why she’s so beautiful, she replies, “Why, only bad witches are ugly.” Though our consumer-driven world has increasingly substituted clothing and material possessions as signifiers of character, we continue to label our fellow humans as “thickheaded,” and people get stopped on the street because they “look suspicious.”
• See more at: http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/physiognomy-the-beautifulpseudoscience/#sthash.5RLU7isd.dpuf

Who is the villian in Scarlet Letter? How do they fit the physiognomy of the villian? Find a quote that supports this to share.

How is Hester
Prynne described?
Each table group will get a chapter and a quote from that chapter to share.

In your table pairs, find 3 quotes, one each from the beginning, middle, and end of the book describing
Dimmesdale.

What do we learn about Pearl based off of her appearance?
“By its perfect shape, its vigour, and its natural dexterity in the use of all its untried limbs, the infant was worthy to have been brought forth in Eden: worthy to have been left there to be the plaything of the angels after the world's first parents were driven out. The child had a native grace which does not invariably co-exist with faultless beauty.... So magnificent was the small figure when thus arrayed, and such was the splendour of Pearl's own proper beauty, shining through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a paler loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance around her on the darksome cottage floor” (88).
“She seemed rather an airy sprite, which, after playing its fantastic sports for a little while upon the cottage floor, would flit away with a mocking smile. Whenever that look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes, it invested her with a strange remoteness and intangibility: it was as if she were hovering in the air, and might vanish, like a glimmering light that comes we know not whence and goes we know not whither” ( 90).
“We have spoken of Pearl's rich and luxuriant beauty— a beauty that shone with deep and vivid tints, a bright complexion, eyes possessing intensity both of depth and glow, and hair already of a deep, glossy brown, and which, in after years, would be nearly akin to black. There was fire in her and throughout her: she seemed the unpremeditated offshoot of a passionate moment...and made her the very brightest little jet of flame that ever danced upon the earth” (99).

Symbol—something used for or regarded as representing something else; a material object representing something, often something immaterial; emblem, token, or sign.
• Prison door
• Pearl
• Scarlett letter/red mark
• Rose bush
• Embroidery
• Forest/wilderness

Symbol—something used for or regarded as representing something else; a material object representing something, often something immaterial; emblem, token, or sign.
Poster Assignment (Time Permitting)
Each group will be assigned one of the following symbols found in The Scarlet
Letter:
• Prison door
• Pearl
• Scarlett letter/red mark
• Rose bush
• Embroidery
• Forest/wilderness
Step 1—Find at least 3 examples of where your symbol is found in the novel. One each from the beginning, middle, and end.
Step 2—Analyze your quotations. What does the symbol represent?
Step 3—Analyze the evolution of that symbol. Is it static or dynamic? How does the evolution of that symbol link back to the theme/development of the novel?
Step 4—Create a short presentation that gives your quotations (with page numbers) and your individual analysis of each and then your collective analysis of that symbol as it is seen throughout the novel.

Ground Rules for Participants (inner circle):
• Respond to question and point to evidence in the text to support your answers, providing page numbers for easy reference.
• Listen to what others say and build on their comments and insights, offering additional evidence, etc., when appropriate.
• Ask questions to clarify and/or to “probe” another participant’s thoughts and ideas.
• Don't “step on” each other’s talk; be patient and stay focused on the conversation (i.e., don’t make raising your hand or
“getting called on” prevent you from listening actively)
• Be open to new ideas and interpretations, weighing them against your own initial understanding of the poem and your own assumptions.
• Watch your "air time" both in terms of how often you speak, and how much you say when you speak.

Ground Rules for Observers (outer circle):
• Follow the conversation as best you can and listen actively, referring to the text to help you understand the points that are being made. Remember that answers must be each a paragraph long. No short answers.
• Consider the following questions as the “focus” for your listening and take notes accordingly, as you will be asked to answer this question at the end of the discussion:
• How did listening to the conversation increase/reinforce/cause you to question or change your initial response to this inquiry question
• Identify a point or opinion with which you particularly agree or disagree.
What was it and why do you agree/disagree with it?
• Identify a point or opinion upon which you would like to build or extend.
Explain how/why you would do this.
• What question would you ask a participant or the group as a whole? Why would you ask this question and how would you answer it?
• Which of the questions asked (by participants) during the seminar would you like to answer and what would your answer be?

The Novel as a Whole
1.
Public humiliation deters “inappropriate” behavior and is a suitable form of punishment. Defend, challenge or qualify.
2.
Why is Hester the heroine of The Scarlet Letter? In what ways does she far eclipse any of the male characters?
3.
From whose perspectives are we being asked to make our judgments throughout the novel?
4.
How (in what specific ways) might the same story have differed if a woman had written the novel?
5.
Is The Scarlet Letter still relevant or is it tied to a specific time or place? In what ways is it specific to Puritan New England and irrelevant to our own time and place? In what ways is the story universal and not tied to any one time or place?
6.
What is Dimmesdale's reason for keeping silent for seven years? How valid is his reasoning? Is he a sympathetic character?
7.
To what extent has each of the major characters (Hester, Arthur, Roger,
Pearl) sinned against the others? To what extent is each culpable?

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

1.
The major symbols of the Scarlet Letter are:
• Prison door
• Pearl
• Scarlett letter/red mark
• Rose bush
• Embroidery
• Forest/wilderness
How do these major images in the story tie together the novel's plot and the themes?
2. To what extent are the characters' names symbolic?
3. What colors does Hawthorne use repeatedly?
How do these repetitions function in the novel?