The Scarlet Letter Notes 6

Chapter 15: Hester and Pearl

• P. 120—tone?
• Why does Hester hate Chillingworth so much? What are her feelings for Dimmesdale?
• On Chillingworth “He betrayed me! He has done me worse wrong than I did him!” 121
• Do you agree?
• Pearl makes the A out of seaweed
• Why doesn’t Hester tell her what it stands for?
• What does Pearl think it stands for? (Connection to Dimmesdale) Is she right?
• “Why dost thou wear it on thy bosom? –and why does the minister keep his hand over his heart?” 123
• “In all the seven bygone years, Hester Prynne had never before been false to the symbol on her bosom.” 124

Chapter 16: A Forest Walk

• 126: The sunlight “will not flee from me; for I ewar nothing on my bosom yet!” “Will it not come of its own accord, when I am a woman grown?”
• what is Pearl’s understanding of the letter A?
• Pearl absorbs sunlight and emanates it—126. What does this suggest?
• Connection between the scarlet letter and the Black Man
• “Once in my life I met the Black Man . . . This scarlet letter is his mark!” 127—reflect
• 128: sad brook and connection to Pearl
• “But the brook, in the course of its little lifetime among the forest-trees, had gone through so solemn an experience that it could not help talking about it, and seemed to have nothing else to say. Pearl resembled the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from a well-spring as mysterious, and had flowed through scenes shadowed as heavily with gloom. But unlike the little stream, she danced and sparkled, and prattled airily along her course.”
• 128 “And, mother, he has his hand over his heart! Is it because, when the minister wrote his name in the book, the Black Man set his mark in that place? But why does he not wear it outside his bosom, as thou dost, mother?”