Get special student pricing before you graduate. And fast, free shipping.
The Scarlet Letter Women and Femininity Quotes Page 1
Citations follow this format: (Chapter.Paragraph)
| Quote #1 Children have always a sympathy in the agitations of those connected with them; always, especially, a sense of any trouble or impending revolution, of whatever kind, in domestic circumstances; and therefore Pearl, who was the gem on her mother's unquiet bosom, betrayed, by the very dance of her spirits, the emotions which none could detect in the marble passiveness of Hester's brow (21.4) |
Pearl is like litmus paper (hey, chemistry class), revealing the emotions and feelings that lie in her mother’s heart and that her mother tries so hard to suppress. Why does Hester act as passive as marble? Why does she not want to show her feelings?
| Quote #2 "Heaven hath granted thee an open ignominy, that thereby thou mayest work out an open triumph over the evil within thee, and the sorrow without. Take heed how thou deniest to him—who, perchance, hath not the courage to grasp it for himself—the bitter, but wholesome, cup that is now presented to thy lips!" (3.26) |
As a woman, Hester cannot keep her adultery a secret in the same way that her lover can, because her pregnancy becomes a visual sign of this "sin," a sign that everyone around her can clearly see. Because of this, Hester is punished while her lover roams free. Though we know Hester has good reasons for wanting to keep her lover’s identity a secret, it does strike us as a bit unfair that Hester has to endure such a hard punishment simply because she is a pregnant woman.
| Quote #3 Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast,—at her, the child of honorable parents,—at her, the mother of a babe, that would hereafter be a woman, —at her, who had once been innocent, —as the figure, the body, the reality of sin. And over her grave, the infamy that she must carry thither would be her only monument. (5.1) |
Hester becomes an example to all young women of what not to do. What does the narrator mean when he says that she loses her "individuality" as a result of being this example? Why does this happen, and do you agree that Hester loses her individuality?
