Important Quotations Explained
1. “A
writer of story-books! What kind of a business in life,—what mode
of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and
generation,—may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well
have been a fiddler!” Such are the compliments bandied between my
great-grandsires and myself, across the gulf of time! And yet, let
them scorn me as they will, strong traits of their nature have intertwined themselves
with mine.
2. “Mother,”
said little Pearl, “the sunshine does not love you. It runs away
and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom.
. . . 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. . . . “Will it not
come of its own accord, when I am a woman grown?”
3. 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.
4. “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.”
5. 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.
