What does the prison represent in The Scarlet Letter?
The prison door in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘The Scarlet Letter’ is so much more than a weather-beaten slab of wood. It represents the struggles and follies of a new society, and the constraints against which its inhabitants were forced to strive.
Where is the prison in The Scarlet Letter?
Boston
A crowd of somber, dreary-looking people has gathered outside the door of a prison in seventeenth-century Boston. The building’s heavy oak door is studded with iron spikes, and the prison appears to have been constructed to hold dangerous criminals.
Did Hester go to jail in The Scarlet Letter?
In prison, Hester has a conversation with her estranged husband, who has taken an assumed name. Again, she refuses to name her lover but she agrees not to reveal Roger Chillingworth’s true identity. After the whole prison debacle, Hester sews for a living.
What was the punishment in The Scarlet Letter?
In the novel, a woman Hester Prynne commits adultery and so is punished harshly by the Puritan law. She wears a scarlet letter on her chest which marks her as a sinner and casts her out of society to live with desperation and solitude.
What purpose does Chapter 1 the prison door serve?
It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom, that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.
Which event described in chapter 2 of The Scarlet Letter occurs after Hester leaves the jail?
Which event described in chapter 2 of The Scarlet Letter occurs after Hester leaves the jail? Hester voices her discomfort on the long walk to the scaffold. A military procession organizes the crowd and proceeds to the scaffold.
What was the punishment to which Hester was sentenced?
The stranger tells him that Hester refuses to reveal her fellow sinner. As punishment, she has been sentenced to three hours on the scaffold and a lifetime of wearing the scarlet letter on her chest.
Where do Hester and Pearl go after Dimmesdale’s death?
After Dimmesdale’s death, and the subsequent death of Roger Chillingworth, Pearl and Hester leave Boston and go abroad. After many years, Hester returns alone and lives quietly in the same cottage she had previously occupied.
What are Hester’s 3 punishments?
She receives three punishments from the townspeople, who claim they will free her from her sin. The community orders Hester to go to jail, wear a scarlet letter on her chest, and stand on the town scaffold for hours.
Who suffered more in the scarlet letter?
Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale
Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale suffered more than Hester because, unlike Hester, he had nothing to live for and because of the guilt he had to keep hidden. Suffering can be eased by many different ways. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale suffered greatly through his conscience and had nothing to ease it.