American Gothic Literature

Gothic Undercurrents

What was haunting the American nation in the 1850s? The three writers treated in this program — Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson — use poetry and prose to explore the dark side of nineteenth-century America.

Unit Overview: Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:

1. define what "gothic" means;


2. understand which American hopes, fears, and anxieties are explored and critiqued by writers in the gothic mode;


3. recognize the centrality of gothic literature to nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature and culture;


4. evaluate the generally skeptical, pessimistic, or critical positions adopted by gothic writers;


5. discuss the role of gender and race in shaping the forms and themes of the American gothic tradition.

Gothic Literature:

Think of gothic literature as that which plunges its characters into mystery, torment, and fear in order to pose disturbing questions to our familiar and comfortable ideas of humanity, society, and the cosmos.

 These writers urge us to ask: What is an American? What are our ideals, and to what extent does it seem within our power to realize them? What power, if any, rules us? How much are we in control of ourselves? How well do we even know ourselves? To what extent can we ever be sure of anything?

Preview

• Preview the video: Alongside the optimism of writers like Emerson, the nineteenth century produced a body of writing meant to question Americans' essential goodness. Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Emily Dickinson wrote narratives and poems in which they asked difficult questions about God, truth, and humanity. They rarely provided hopeful answers.

• What to think about while watching: How do these writers expect their work to be received by the reader? How dothey express the social and personal anxieties of their time? What assumptions or beliefs do they challenge? Why do they remain compelling today? What do they hope to achieve through their writing? 

• Tying the video to the unit content: These writers are only three of the most important practitioners of the gothic mode in the nineteenth century. Many others also explored the disturbing or repressed aspects of American life, asking questions like: What are we afraid of? What is the worst we are capable of? What do we have a right to believe in? To what extent can our will and reason evade the lures of habit, prejudice, ignorance, and desire?

Watch the Video and be prepared to discuss in class: DUE - OCT. 1

http://www.learner.org/amerpass/unit06/usingvideo.html

About the authors covered in this video: http://www.learner.org/amerpass/unit06/authors.html

This timeline places literary publications (in black) in their historical contexts (in red).:
http://www.learner.org/amerpass/unit06/timeline.html

Unit Overview: Glossary

ambiguity - Doubtfulness or uncertainness of interpretation. Much gothic literature is considered ambiguous insofar as it rarely presents a clear moral or message; it seems intended to be open to multiple meanings. 

American Renaissance - Standard if limiting description of the flowering of American art and thought in the mid-nineteenth century. The restricted "canonical" version is usually thought to include Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Poe, and Dickinson.

gothic - In the eighteenth century and following, generally used for "of the Middle Ages." Then, through negative association with the medieval--often seen as the "Dark Ages" following the intellectual and social flowering of Rome--the term "gothic" shifts to literature, art, or architecture which attempts to disturb or unsettle the orderly, "civilized" course of society. Gothic works probe the dark side of humanity or unveil socio-cultural anxiety.

Manifest Destiny - Prevalent in America from its early days through the nineteenth century, the belief that divine providence mandated America to expand throughout the continent and to stand as a social model for the rest of the world.

original sin - The Calvinist belief that, because of the fall of Adam and Eve, all humans are born inherently sinful. Only God's free grace can save us from hell.

Romanticism - European American late-eighteenth-century and early-nineteenth-century intellectual movement that stressed human creativity, sensation, subjectivity, emotion, and fulfillment. Often associated with nature as an inspiring force, Romanticism emphasized the radically innovative individual, as opposed to the Enlightenment focus on the rationally ordered society. Gothicism is sometimes called "dark Romanticism." 

spiritualism - A more comforting and optimistic idea of the afterlife than that offered by Calvinism: the belief that the human personality or soul continues to exist after death and can be contacted through the aid of a medium. Many in the mid-nineteenth century were hopeful that science would eventually prove the existence of spirits.

Unit Vocabulary- Memorize terms and definitions: DUE OCT. 8

Print out and/or view vocabulary flashcards here: http://quizlet.com/23974376/flashcards

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

CLICK HERE TO READ: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow   READ and be prepared to discuss in class: DUE OCTOBER 1

Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)

Born to the teenage actors Elizabeth Arnold and David Poe Jr. (in a time when acting was a highly disreputable career), Edgar Allan Poe was raised by a Richmond, Virginia, merchant named John Allan after both his parents died. Allan sent Poe to the University of Virginia, but Poe left after quarrelling with Allan in 1827. Allan had no patience for Poe’s literary pretensions, and Poe found Allan cheap and cruel. Poe then sought out his father’s relatives in Baltimore, where he published his first volume of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems, and later secretly married his thirteen-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm. He moved with his wife and her mother to Richmond, Philadelphia (where he wrote several of his most famous works, including “Ligeia,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”), and then to New York City. Throughout these relocations, he worked editing magazines and newspapers, but found it difficult to hold onto any one job for very long. Poe’s horror tales and detective stories (a genre he created) were written to capture the fancy of the popular reading pub- lic, but he earned his national reputation through a large number of critical essays and sketches. With the publication of “The Raven”(1845), Poe secured his fame, but he was not succeeding as well in his personal life. His wife died in 1847, and Poe was increasingly ill and drinking uncontrollably. He died on a trip to Baltimore, four days after being found intoxicated near a polling booth on Election Day.

Poe was influenced by the fantastic romances of Charles Brockden Brown, Washington Irving, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. However, unlike most of his famous contemporaries, Poe rarely described American life in any direct way in his writings. Often set in exotic, vaguely medieval, or indeterminately distant locations, Poe’s work seems more interested in altered states of consciousness than history or culture: his characters often swirl within madness, dreams, or intoxication, and may or may not encounter the supernatural. His literary reputation has been uneven, with some critics finding his extrav- agant prose and wild situations off-putting or absurd (and his poetry pedestrian and repetitive). Poe’s defenders, however (including many nineteenth- and twentieth-century French intellectuals), see him as a brilliant allegorist of the convolutions of human consciousness. For example, there are many “doubles” in Poe: characters who mirror each other in profound but nonrealistic ways, suggesting not so much the subtleties of actual social relationships as the splits and fractures with- in a single psyche trying to relate to itself. 

Assignment Due Oct. 8 Read "Ligeia" http://poestories.com/read/ligeia

"In our endeavors to recall to memory something long forgotten, we often find ourselvesupon the very verge of remembrance, without being able, in the end, to remember."

- from "Ligeia"

Due Oct. 8-Answer Reading Response Questions:

1.  Does “Ligeia” represent supernatural events? What difference does your answer make to our understanding of the story?

2.  Poe works very well for the study of spatial analysis and analyses of setting— that is, for considering the importance of the stories’ spaces (e.g., houses, prisons) and the locations (e.g., “exotic” or medieval places and times). In preparation for class discussion, draw a picture (or write a detailed description) of the setting of one of Poe’s stories and annotate it with what each aspect of the setting symbolizes.

3.  How does the setting of “Ligeia” affect your under- standing of the story?

4.  The narrator is unsure about many things in “Ligeia,” including when and where he met Ligeia, her last name, and whether he is mad. In fact, it is possible to say that the story is about uncertainty: “Not the more could I define that sentiment, or analyze, or even steadily view it,” says the narrator at one point. How does Poe explore the dilemma of ambiguity in “Ligeia”? What does he seem to be saying about the mind’s attempt to establish certainty?

Read and Listen to "Fall of the House of Usher" here:

http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/147/the-works-of-edgar-allan-poe/5312/the-fall-of-the-house-of-usher/

Style and Imagery

Word Choice

Poe carefully makes every word, every phrase, every sentence in the story contribute to the overall effect, horror, accompanied by oppressing morbidity and anxious anticipation of terrifying events. Notice, for example, the tenor of the words in the opening sentence of the story. I have underlined those that help establish the mood and atmosphere.

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. 

Rhythm

But besides painting a gloomy picture, the words in the paragraph also beat out a funereal rhythm—at first through the alliteration of during, dull, dark, and day, and then through the rhyming suffixes of oppressively, singularly, and melancholy. 

Alliteration

Alliteration occurs frequently in the rest of the story, in such phrases as the following:

iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart 
cadaverousness of complexion 
feeble and futile struggles 
certain superstitious impressions [the s in impressions does not alliterate because it has a z sound]
sensation of stupor 
partially cataleptical character 
wild air of the last waltz 
fervid facility of his impromptus
impetuous fury of the entering gust nearly lifted us from our feet 
and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and silently over the fragments of the "House of Usher."

Anaphora

As in his other short stories, Poe frequently uses anaphora in "The Fall of the House of Usher." Anaphora is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of a clause or another group of words. Anaphora imparts emphasis and balance. Here are boldfaced examples from "The Fall of the House of Usher":

I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon thebleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees 

While the objects around me—while the carvings of the ceilings, the sombre tapestries of the walls, the ebon blackness of the floors, and the phantasmagoric armorial trophies which rattled as I strode, were but matters to which, or to such as which, I had been accustomed from my infancy—while I hesitated not to acknowledge how familiar was all this—I still wondered to find how unfamiliar were the fancies which ordinary images were stirring up.

Many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it 

Main Theme

The central theme of "The Fall of the House of Usher" is terror that arises from the complexity and multiplicity of forces that shape human destiny. Dreadful, horrifying events result not from a single, uncomplicated circumstance but from a collision and intermingling of manifold, complex circumstances. In Poe’s story, the House of Usher falls to ruin for the reasons listed under "Other Themes" (below).

Other Themes

Evil

Evil has been at work in the House of Usher for generations, befouling the residents of the mansion. Roderick Usher's illness is "a constitutional and family evil . . . one for which he despaired to find a remedy," the narrator reports. Usher himself later refers to this evil in Stanza V of "The Haunted Palace," a ballad he sings to the accompaniment of his guitar music. The palace in the ballad represents the House of Usher and its master, Roderick, whose mind has been degenerating. The first two lines of Stanza V are as follows:

But evil things, in robes of sorrow,
Assailed the monarch's high estate.

Neither of these references identifies the exact nature of the evil. However, clues in the story suggest that the evil infecting the House of Usher is incest. Early in the story, the narrator implies there has been marriage between relatives:

I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain. 

Later, the narrator describes Madeline Usher as her brother’s “tenderly beloved sister—his sole companion for long years.” He also notes that Roderick Usher's illness "displayed itself in a host of unnatural sensations." 

Isolation

Roderick and Madeline Usher seal themselves inside their mansion, cutting themselves off from friends, ideas, progress. They have become musty and mildewed, sick unto their souls for lack of contact with the outside world.

Failure to Adapt

The Usher family has become obsolete because it failed to throw off the vestiges of outmoded tradition, a failing reflected by the mansion itself, a symbol of the family. The interior continues to display coats-of-arms and other paraphernalia from the age of kings and castles. As to the outside, “Its principal feature seemed to be that of an excessive antiquity. The discoloration of ages had been great. Minute fungi overspread the whole exterior, hanging in a fine tangled web-work from the eaves."

Madness

Roger and Madeline suffer from mental illness characterized by anxiety, depression, and other symptoms. Catalepsy, a symptom of Madeline’s illness, is a condition that causes muscle rigidity and temporary loss of consciousness and feeling for several minutes, several hours, and, in some cases, more than a day. Generally, it is not an illness in itself but a symptom of an illness, such as schizophrenia, epilepsy, hysteria, alcoholism or a brain tumor. Certain drugs, too, can trigger a cataleptic episode. The victim does not respond to external stimuli, even painful stimuli such as a pinch on the skin. In the past, a victim of catalepsy was sometimes pronounced dead by a doctor unfamiliar with the condition. Apparently, Madeline is not dead when her brother and the narrator entomb her; instead, she is in a state of catalepsy. When she awakens from her trance, she breaks free of her confines, enters her brother's chamber, and falls on him. She and her brother then die together. Besides Roger and Madeline, the narrator himself may suffer from mental instability, given his reaction to the depressing scene he describes in the opening paragraphs. If he is insane, all of the events he describes could be viewed as manifestations of his sick mind—illusions, dreams, hallucinations.

Mystery

From the very beginning, the narrator realizes that he is entering a world of mystery when he crosses the tarn bridge. He observes, "What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher ?  It was a mystery all insoluble."

Strange Phenomena

The narrator describes the mansion as having a “pestilent and mystic” vapor enveloping it. He also says Roderick Usher “was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted.”
.

Symbolism

The Fungus-Ridden Mansion: Decline of the Usher family. 
The Collapsing Mansion: Fall of the Usher family.
The “Vacant eye-like” Windows of the Mansion: (1) Hollow, cadaverous eyes of Roderick Usher; (2) Madeline Usher’s cataleptic gaze; (3) the vacuity of life in the Usher mansion. 
The Tarn, a Small Lake Encircling the Mansion and Reflecting Its Image: (1) Madeline as the twin of Roderick, reflecting his image and personality; (2) the  image of reality which Roderick and the narrator perceive; though the water of the tarn reflects details exactly, the image is upside down, leaving open the possibility that Roderick and the narrator see a false reality; (3) the desire of the Ushers to isolate themselves from the outside world.
The Bridge Over the Tarn: The narrator as Roderick Usher’s only link to the outside world. 
The name Usher: An usher is a doorkeeper. In this sense, Roderick Usher opens the door to a frightening world for the narrator.
The Storm: The turbulent emotions experienced by the characters.

Foreshadowing

The narrator's reference to catalepsy—describing Madeline Usher as having “affections of a partially cataleptical character”—foreshadows her burial while she is still alive. 

Reading Response Question for "Fall of the House of Usher" DUE OCT.22

1.  What mood is set in stanzas I-IV of “The Haunted Palace”?  In stanzas V-VI?  (p. 218-219)

 2. What kinds of books did the narrator and Roderick read?  (p. 219)

3.  When Madeline dies, what does Roderick plan to do with the body?  Why?  (p. 219-220)

 4.  Describe the vault in which the narrator and Roderick place Madeline’s coffin.  (p. 220)

 5.  As they gaze on Madeline, the narrator commented on her resemblance to Roderick.  What does he tell the narrator?  (p. 220)

6.  After Madeline’s death, how did Roderick change?  (p. 220)

 7.  On the 7^th or 8^th night after Madeline’s death, why couldn’t the narrator sleep?  (p. 221)

8.  Roderick is up roaming the house and goes to the narrator’s room.  What does he ask the narrator?  (p. 221)

 9.  To pass the time and take their minds off the storm, the narrator begins to read to Roderick.  What is he reading?  

 10.  In the story that the narrator is reading, Ethelred beats open a wooden door.  What does the narrator hear in the house?  (p. 222)

 11.  In the story that the narrator is reading, the dragon shrieks when Ethelred kills him.  What does the narrator hear in the house?  (p. 222-223)

 12.  How does Roderick react to these sounds?  (p. 223)

 13.  What does Roderick say is causing the sounds in the house?  (p. 223)

 14.  How does Roderick die?  (p. 224)

 15.  The narrator flees from the house out into the storm.  A wild light appears behind him so he turns to see what caused it.  What does he witness?  (p. 224)

The Scarlet Letter: Reading Response Questions

Assignment Due: Sept. 24

On a Pages/Word document, answer each of the following questions as thoroughly as necessary. Some need only a minimal amount of writing while others will require deeper examination and response. Number your answers.

1. What role does shame play in the punishment of criminals? Is it as common today as it was in the time period of The Scarlet Letter? Do you think it should be? Do you think shaming criminals would lessen crime in America? What role does shame play in this novel?
   
2. What is Hester Prynne’s punishment? What are the Puritans hoping to accomplish with this sentence?
   
3. How do you feel about Hester’s punishment?
   
4. Whom does Hester recognize in the crowd as she stands on the scaffold? Why does
   this discovery both confuse and frighten her?
   
5. How does Hester live after she is released from prison? What keeps her from leaving
   Boston?
   
6. How do religious beliefs and colonial laws intermingle in this story? To what extent
   do religion and law mix in modern American society?
   
7. What effect can guilt have on a person’s life?
   
8. How does Roger Chillingworth’s appearance change? How does Hester interpret the
   changes she sees in Chillingworth?
   
9. How does Dimmesdale feel about his role as the much-respected minister in the
   community? Why doesn’t he thrive amidst these people who so admire him?
   
10. What causes Hester to decide to speak to Chillingworth after so many years? What
    does she hope to accomplish?
    
11. Hester has learned to live with the scarlet letter. Dimmesdale seems to hardly be
    able to cope. Do you agree that Dimmesdale would have been better off if Hester had
    named him as Pearl’s father seven years earlier?
    
12. Why does Hester plan to speak to Dimmesdale? What is the result of the meeting?
    
13. As a young woman, Hester did not meet her society’s expectations. How do the
    Puritan societal expectations compare and contrast with our modern day society’s
    expectations?
    
14. What happens to Chillingworth after Dimmesdale dies? Why does this happen?
    
15. The wearing of the scarlet letter was intended to isolate Hester Prynne from society
    and to call attention to her sin. Given the way in which Hester’s life ends, do you think that the scarlet letter accomplished what the magistrates intended?

Welcome to English 11/12: American Literature

Unit 1:  The Scarlet Letter

Introduction to Puritanism

Assignment:  Find one interesting fact of life about daily living in a Puritan colony and share that fact in a polished paragraph. Due Sept. 10 


You might come up with information on topics such as:
- daily routine
- dress
- diet
- important historical events
- background on the Puritan belief system
- social order
- political order
- position of women
- attitudes and superstitions
- important Puritan personages

Assignment Read the following article and be prepared to discuss in class: Due Sept. 10

"Do present-day Americans still exhibit, in their attitudes and behavior, traces of those austere English Protestants who started arriving in the country in the early 17th century?" A report on research that suggests we do.

Still Puritan After All These Years

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/05/opinion/sunday/are-americans-still-puritan.html?_r=0

Vocabulary

Assignment: Study and memorize the following vocabulary words. Test next week. Due Sept. 10

Click on any of the vocabulary words below to hear them pronounced and used in a sentence.    hypocrisy  Definition:A feigning to be what one is not or to believe what one does not, especially the false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion. Context: The Scarlet Letteris a slow, tortuous dance of guilt, hypocrisy, and vengeance that ends in tragedy.    illegitimate  Definition:Not recognized as lawful offspring; born of parents not married to each other. Context:Hester�s illegitimate child, Pearl, grows into a lively, perceptive child.    imp  Definition:A small demon; a mischievous child. Context:Pearl is defined throughout the novel as sort of an imp who behaves rather badly.    retribution  Definition:Something given or exacted in recompense; punishment. Context:It was meant for retribution, too, a torture to be felt, a constant reminder in the midst of a troubled joy.    scaffold  Definition:A platform on which a criminal is executed or punished. Context:After Hester�s appearance on the scaffold, she and Pearl are taken to prison.

The Novel Begins

Understanding point of view of a narrator and an author

Learning Objectives

To recognize the difference between a narrator and an author

In fiction, the first-person narrator is usually distinct from the author. Understanding the differences, subtle or pronounced, between an author and the narrator he or she creates is essential to understanding a work of fiction.

Assignment: Due Sept. 10 Choose One of the following topics:

• Write a short description of the narrator of The Scarlet Letter, drawing evidence from the introductory chapter and elsewhere in the book. 
• Another way to understand narrative perspective is to think about how "The Scarlet Letter" would be different if one of the other characters, such as Hester, Dimmsdale, or Pearl, were the narrator. Write a passage from the story from the perspective of one of these other characters.
• http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/hawthorne-author-and-narrator

Upon Completion of the Book

Symbolism

Learning Objectives

To recognize and understand symbolism in a text

Definition of Symbolism

Symbolism is the use of symbols to signify ideas and qualities by giving them symbolic meanings that are different from their literal sense.

Symbolism can take different forms. Generally, it is an object representing another to give it an entirely different meaning much deeper and more significant. 

Symbols do shift their meanings depending on the context they are used in. “A chain”, for example, may stand for “union” as well as “imprisonment”. Thus, symbolic meanings of an object or an action are understood by when, where and how they are used. 

Common Examples of Symbolism in Everyday Life

In our daily life, we can easily identify objects, which are treated as symbols. Let us have a look at some common examples:

• Dove is a symbol of peace.
• Red rose or red color stands for love or romance.
• Black color is a symbol that represents evil or death.
• A ladder may stand as a symbol for a connection between the heaven and the earth.
• A broken mirror may symbolize separation

Assignment:  Due Sept. 17

Bio Poem Assignment

The novel The Scarlet Letter is filled with symbolism: the letter, a rose, weeds, and a pearl just to name a few. Write a bio-poem about one of the main characters: Hester, Pearl, Dimmesdale, or Chillingworth, and attach it to a symbol that is appropriate to his/her character.

In at least one of the lines refer to some symbol in the book that helps describe the personality, emotions, or actions of the character featured in your poem.   

Include 11 lines and follow this pattern:

Line 1: Your character’s first name

Line 2: Four words that describe your character

Line 3: Brother or sister of...

Line 4: Lover of...(three ideas or people)

Line 5: Who feels...(three ideas)

Line 6: Who needs...(three ideas)

Line 7: Who gives...(three ideas)

Line 8: Who fears...(three ideas)

Line 9: Who would like to see...

Line 10: Resident of

Line 11: His or her last name

http://www.studyguide.org/bio_poem.htm

Assignment:  Due Sept. 17

Symbolism Collage

On an 8 1⁄2 by 11 inch piece of white paper, create a collage that visually demonstrates a symbol (e.g. the Scarlet A, the rose, the weeds, etc.) from the novel.

• Write your symbol at the top of the paper. 
• Fill the paper with images that you feel capture your symbol. 
• The page should be completely filled with images. The paper should not show through at all except for where you wrote your symbol. 
• BE CREATIVE!! 
• On the back of your collage, please include a 50-75 word explanation for your collage. This explanation should defend/ explain the images you chose. These explanations should be thorough and polished. 

Important QUOTES from THe Scarlet Letter

Chapter 1 Quotes On one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, 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. Chapter 2 Quotes On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold-thread, appeared the letter A. It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it ... was of a splendor in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony. Chapter 3 Quotes When he found the eyes of Hester Prynne fastened on his own, and saw that she appeared to recognize him, he slowly and calmly raised his finger, made a gesture with it in the air, and laid it on his lips. Chapter 8 Quotes After putting her finger in her mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer good Mr. Wilson's questions, 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. Chapter 16 Quotes “'Mother,' said litter Pearl, 'the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom.... I am but a child. It will not flee from me, for I wear nothing on my bosom yet!' 'Nor ever will, my child, I hope,' said Hester. 'And why not, mother?' asked Pearl, stopping short, just at the beginning of her race. 'Will not it come of its own accord, when I am a woman grown?' Chapter 18 Quotes But Hester Prynne, with a mind of native courage and activity, and for so long a period not merely estranged, but outlawed, from society, had habituated herself to such latitude of speculation as was altogether foreign to the clergyman. She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness.... The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers,—stern and wild ones,—and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss. Chapter 22 Quotes “Mother," said [Pearl], “was that the same minister that kissed me by the brook?" “Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl!" whispered her mother. “We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest. Chapter 24 Quotes But there was a more real life for Hester Prynne here, in New England, than in that unknown region where Pearl had found a home. Here had been her sin; here, her sorrow; and here was yet to be her penitence. She had returned, therefore, and resumed,—of her own free will, for not the sternest magistrate of that iron period would have imposed it,—resumed the symbol of which we have related so dark a tale. Never afterwards did it quit her bosom. But ... the scarlet letter ceased to be a stigma which attracted the world's scorn and bitterness, and became a type of something to be sorrowed over, and looked upon with awe, and yet with reverence, too.