Introduction to The Scarlet Letter:The Puritans

RomanticismNathaniel Hawthorne Writing

StyleKey:Words in black must be copied.Words in blue fill in the blank.Words in green are difficult vocabulary. You can look up definitions for optional extension credit. Words in pink can be copied instead of the black or in addition to the black. They help clarify the information. It’s best to copy both.

I. Who were the Puritans?

• A. An English religious group in 16th and 17th centuries• B. Believed in God’s supremacy over mankind• C. Emphasized simplicity in all human affairs

II. What were the beliefs of the Puritans?

• A. Mankind inherently evil, except for a chosen few• B. Intense study of bible• C. Personal morality• D. Devil lies behind every evil

deed• E. Strong belief in the importance

of education. . .especially religious education• F. Strong work ethic

III. What was daily life like?

• A. Prayer• B. No singing, dancing, or

“fun” that did not result in a necessary accomplished task• C. Belief in symmetry

uniqueness breeds “roughness” in humanity1. judgmental2. hypocrisy

How were people punished for their wrongdoings?

1. Benefit of clergy - the convicted may plead benefit of clergy, in which case, if they can read a passage from the Bible without one mistake, their sentence will be reduced.

2. Stocks - the convicted will have his head and hands placed in a locked stockade for the remainder of the day, and the community will be invited to pelt him with food. The convicted must clean up anything he is pelted with.

3. Wearing a sign - a milder punishment than branding. The convicted must make their own sign to hang around their neck, which indicates their crime.

4. Branding - the convicted is marked with letters that stand for their crime - HT for hog thief, A for adulterer. The branding can be on the cheek, forehead, or more mildly on the hand or finger.

5. Ducking stool - for women only, usually used in the case of gossip. The woman shall be confined in a chair and dunked in water.

6. Whipping - for men only, a common punishment. A number of "lashes" is administered to the convicted's back. Lashes usually number from 5 to 20.

7. Public shaming - a milder form of punishment, the convicted is pulled on a rope through the town, while the community is invited to point fingers at him, tell him he is naughty, and pelt him with small objects.

What is Romanticism? Romanticism is a literary

movement and time period that was “a reaction against neoclassicism. This early 19th-century movement elevated the individual, the passions, and the inner life. It stressed strong emotion, imagination, freedom from classical correctness in art forms, and rebellion against social conventions” (VanSpanckeren).MLA Citation:

VanSpanckeren, Kathryn. “Glossary: Romanticism.” From Revolution to Reconstruction: An Outline of American Literature.

University of Groningen. 2006. Web. 18 Feb. 2010.

Setting VERSUS Literary Period

• The Scarlet Letter is ___ in the mid-1600’s in Puritan Boston, Massachusetts.• However, it was _______ during

the American Romantic period in the 1850’s.• Therefore, the ideals and ______

of ___________ (as opposed to Puritanism) are reflected in the novel.

set

written

valuesRomanticism

Characteristics of the Romantic Period/Romanticism

A. The literature focused on the power of the individual.

- It celebrated the individual.

-Unique characters confronted unique conflicts.

B. Extraordinary characters were placed in unusual circumstances.

-Nature was seen as a place of refuge and freedom.

C. There was a focus on the power and spirituality of nature.

D. The literature exalted the wild and scorned the artificial.Paraphrase:

-Romantics often (not always) set the literature in the past.

E. The literature was often set in distant, historic, and/or exotic past.

-Individual thought is just as important as the beliefs of an entire society.

F. Importance was placed on the imagination and intuition.

T: The Scarlet LetterA: Nathaniel HawthorneG: Romantic novel

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Writing Style• *Symbolism*• Personification of

Nature• Ornate language• Sophisticated

language• Complex sentences• Elements of

Romanticism• Hypocrisy of

Puritanism

Close Reading - Strategies• Circle phrases you like, reveal repetitive themes or images, and/or reveal other literary

techniques.• Circle words you need to define.• Underline sentences that stand out or make a point.• Make brackets around important sections of the text.• Connect important ideas, words, or phrases with arrows. • In the margins:

– Note any significant patterns or repetitive language.– Identify points or arguments.– Note any points the paragraph makes you think about.

• Even though you cannot write in the school books, you can use post-its or take notes in your notebooks. You could even purchase your own copy of the book so you can write in it!

Handout

Chapter 1The Prison-Door

A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.

In accordance with this rule, it may safely be assumed that the forefathers of Boston had built the first prison-house, somewhere in the vicinity of Cornhill, almost as seasonably as they marked out the first burial-ground, on Isaac Johnson's lot, and round about his grave, which subsequently became the nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres in the old church-yard of King's Chapel.

Certain it is, that, some fifteen or twenty years after the settlement of the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains and other indications of age, which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the new world. Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era.

Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison. But, 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.

This rose-bush, by a strange chance, has been kept alive in history; but whether it had merely survived out of the stern old wilderness, so long after the fall of the gigantic pines and oaks that originally overshadowed it,--or whether, as there is fair authority for believing, it had sprung up under the footsteps of the sainted Ann Hutchinson, as she entered the prison-door,--we shall not take upon us to determine. Finding it so directly on the threshold of our narrative, which is now about to issue from that inauspicious portal, we could hardly do otherwise than pluck one of its flowers and present it to the reader. 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.