Today is National Take Your Parent to
Lunch Day!
Tuesday, October 16th
1. Hand in your quiz from last night. Make sure your name is on
it!
2. Today’s sentence: (there are five commas)
Maps charts paintings and photographs covered the
walls and in my opinion gave the classroom an
interesting appearance.
Chapter 13: Another View of Hester
 Change in Dimmesdale: nerve absolutely
destroyed but intellectual faculties are
extremely strong
 Reason & Intellect vs. Morals & Emotions
 Age of Enlightenment vs. Romanticism
 The links that unite Hester to the rest of
human kind have been broken
 The only link that remains is the one that
binds her to Dimmesdale
 It is an “iron link of mutual crime” (190)
The Change in Hester’s position . . .
 General regard for her
 Neither irritation or irksomeness
 Blameless purity
 Does not ask to share in life’s privileges
 Devoted
 Gives what she has to those who are
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impoverished
She is found in homes that are suffering—
helps those in need
Warm, rich, human tenderness
“Sister of Mercy”
Helpfulness
A is now seen as “Able”
The Rulers’ View of Hester
 Took them longer to acknowledge Hester’s good deeds/change
 “The prejudices which they shared in common with the latter
were fortified in themselves by an iron framework of
reasoning, that made it a far tougher labor to expel them” (193)
Puritan world view, bound to expectations & tradition, only
see what they want to see—what they believe they should see
 “Sour and rigid wrinkles were relaxing” into “benevolence”
(193)
 “Our Hester”
 A = cross on a nun’s bosom
Dark and Light and Hester
 She was “a rightful inmate, into the household that was
darkened by trouble; as if its gloomy twilight were a medium
in which she was entitled to hold intercourse with her
fellow-creatures” (191)
 It was only the “darkened house that could contain her” (192)
 “When sunshine came again, she was not there” (192)
Hester: Identity
 “All the light and graceful foliage of her character had been
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withered up” (194)
No Love, Passion, or Affection  essential to womanhood
When going through a difficult time a woman who is all
tenderness will die—but the one who survives will have the
tenderness crushed out of her—needs the “magic touch” to
transfigure (change) her
Alone
Home and comfort nowhere
 Has turned from passion and feeling (Romanticism) to
thought (Age of Enlightenment)
 “Marble coldness” (195)
 “The world’s law was not for her mind. It was an age in
which the human intellect, newly emancipated, had taken a
more active and a wider range than for many centuries
before” (195)
 So reason is now at the forefront
 But it is not for Hester—she is a dreamer (speculates) and has
an active imagination
 Would have been OK in Europe, but according to the Puritans,
this imagination is a sin greater than the scarlet letter
 May have acted on her thoughts before, but now thoughts are
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enough
Turns her full attention to educating Pearl whose own nature has
something wrong with it; was it for bad or good that Pearl was
born?
“Was existence worth accepting, even to the happiest among them?”
(196)  is LIFE WORTH LIVING?! Suicidal thoughts here
SO . . . The scarlet letter has failed to do its job—Hester has not
become warm, humble, and caring because of it—it has robbed her
of all warmth and womanliness
To make matters worse, remember the Puritan idea of predestination—no matter what you do on Earth, it doesn’t matter!
Hester resolves to
 Confront Chillingworth regarding Dimmesdale
 Feels better equipped to deal with Chillingworth
 She has climbed to a higher point—he to a lower
 Wants to rescue Dimmesdale from Chillingworth’s grip
Chapter 14: Hester and the Physician
 Meets with Chillingworth on the beach—he is gathering
herbs; she sends Pearl off to play
 He tries to begin with small talk—says he pled on her behalf
to have the scarlet letter taken off of her
 She retorts with “were I worth to be quit of it, it would fall
away of its own nature” (202).
A Change in Chillingworth
 Not so much that he’s grown
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older
Aged well, wiry vigor and
alertness
Used to be calm and quiet—now
eager, searching, almost fierce
Glare of red light out of his
eyes—as if the “soul were on fire”
Evidence of “man’s faculty of
transforming himself into a devil,
if he will only, for a reasonable
space of time, undertake a devil’s
office” (203).
Derived “enjoyment” from his
tortures
 Hester rethinks the pact of secrecy
 She also believes Dimmesdale would probably be better off
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dead than to suffer at the hands of Chillingworth
Chillingworth agrees, “Never did mortal suffer what this man
has suffered” (205).
Chillingworth then had his “moral aspect faithfully revealed
to his mind’s eye. Not improbably, he had never before
viewed himself as he did now” (206).
Hester implores him to stop—says she must reveal the secret
Chillingworth notes, “It is our fate. Let the black flower
blossom as it may!” (208)
Chapter 15: Hester and Pearl
 Pearl constructs her own A out of
seaweed—”freshly green instead of scarlet”
(212).
 Think about the meaning of green—how
Pearl’s letter is described in opposition to
Hester’s
 Hester does not tell Pearl the true
meaning of the scarlet letter because she
does not want to gain Pearl’s trust and
“sympathy” by exposing her to the ugliness
of the sin
 Pearl connects the minister always having
his hand over his heart to her mother’s A
Chapter 16: A Forest Walk
 More light/dark imagery here—Hester in the dark
 “Overhead was a gray expanse of cloud, slightly stirred, however, by a
breeze; so that a gleam of flickering sunshine might now and then be seen
at its solitary play along the path. This flitting cheerfulness was always at
the farther extremity of some long vista through the forest. The sportive
sunlight--feebly sportive, at best, in the predominant pensiveness of the
day and scene--withdrew itself as they came nigh, and left the spots
where it had danced the drearier, because they had hoped to find them
bright” (220).
 “Mother,” said little Pearl, “the sunshine does not love you. It runs away
and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom. . . . It
will not flee from me; for I wear nothing on my bosom yet!” (220).
 Seems that Pearl is in the light
 So . . . Pearl wants everyone to be open and forthright about the letter and
the bosom clutching (light, truth)
 Hester/Dimmesdale want the secret to be hidden (dark, lies)
 Pearl does not have the disease of
sadness—but perhaps that in itself is a
disease (according to Hester)—reflex
of wild energy
 Hester wants Pearl to experience some
grief that would humanize her
daughter—give her sympathy
 Hester tells Pearl that the “Black Man”
gave her the scarlet letter
 Dimmesdale appears
 Chapters 15/16—in the forest,
romance, enchantment, imagination as
seen through Pearl