Today we will work our way through one or two of the remaining chapters of The Scarlet Letter, and we'll take some time to work on our final text review/prep questions. All of the questions on the test are directly related to the questions and quotations included on the test review/prep!
The Scarlet
Letter Test Review Questions (Test Review Quotations included below as well!)
Chapter
1 “The Prison Door”
1. What colony is the setting for the novel?
2. Where in the
colony does the opening chapter take place?
3. What 2
possible symbols does the rose have for the reader?
Chapter
2 “The Market-Place”
1. What is the
relationship between religion and law in Puritan New England?
2. What
punishments would the Puritan women have given Hester Prynne if it were left to
them?
3. What is
Hester’s sin? Punishment?
4. What is
astonishing about the “A” on her bodice?
5. Why is
Hester taken to the scaffold in the market-place?
6. What things
does Hester think about while she is on the scaffold?
7. How old is
her baby?
Chapter 3 “The Recognition”
1. Describer
the man who is standing on the outskirts of the crowd.
2. What gesture
does he make to Hester that suggests he knows her?
3. Who is the
father of Hester’s baby?
4. What are
Hester’s feelings toward the stranger?
5. Who is
Bellingham ? John Wilson?
6. Describe
Dimmesdale.
7. What is his
relationship to Hester? What does he ask
her to reveal?
8. Why won’t
Hester name the child’s father?
Chapter
4 “The Interview”
1. How does
Hester act when she returns to prison?
2. Why does the
jailer call a doctor?
3. What is the
doctor’s name?
4. Where did
the “doctor” learn his skill?
5. What is the relationship
between Chillingworth and Hester?
6. What does
Chillingworth vow to do?
7. What secret
does Chillingworth ask Hester to keep?
Chapter 5:
“Hester at Her Needle”
1.
Give at least 2 reasons why Hester does not leave the colony.
2.
What talent did Hester use to support herself and Pearl ?
3.
What garments is Hester not allowed to sew?
4.
Why type of dress did Hester wear? Pearl
?
5. What does Hester do that shows she has a
charitable nature?
6. How did the poor, the ladies of Boston , the
clergy, and the children treat Hester?
Chapter 6: “ Pearl ”
1. Why did
Hester name her child “ Pearl ” ?
2. Give at
least two reasons why Hester does not leave the colony.
3. Describe
Hester’s home.
4. What talent
did Hester use to support herself and Pearl ?
5. What does
the Scarlet Letter mean to Pearl ?
Chapter 7: “The Governor’s Hall”
1. Name 2
reasons Hester visits Governor Bellingham.
2. How are the
Scarlet Letter and Pearl alike?
Chapter 8: “The Elf and the Minister”
1. How has Chillingworth changed since Hester last saw him?
2. Why does John Wilson question Pearl ?
3.
How has Rev. Dimmesdale changed since Hester’s public humiliation?
4
Who pleads successfully for Hester to keep her child?
5. To which visitor does Pearl respond to lovingly?
Chapter 9: “The Leech”
1. What new
identity has Chillingworth assumed in Boston ?
Why is he successful?
2. To whom in
the colony does Chillingworth attach himself as a medical advisor?
3. Describe
Dimmesdale’s health. See p. 123-124.
4. What gesture
has become Dimmesdale’s habit?
5. What two opposing views do the townspeople
hold about Roger Chillingworth?
Chapter 10: “The Leech and His Patient”
1. What
“investigation” consumes Chillingworth?
2. Who is
Chillingworth’s main suspect and victim?
3. What is a
leech? What double meaning does the
world “leech” have?
4. Why would
Dimmesdale live with guilt and not confess his sin openly?
5. What
discovery does Chillingworth make when Dimmesdale “fell into a deep, deep
slumber”?
Chapter 11: “The Interior of a Heart”
1. What effect
does Reverend Dimmesdale’s guilt have upon his popularity in the colony?
2. What
practices does Dimmesdale begin as a result of his guilt?
Chapter 12: “The Minister’s Vigil”
1. What is a vigil?
2. Where does Dimmesdale hold his vigil?
3.
What promise does Dimmesdale refuse to make to Pearl ?
4.
What is miraculous about the meteor?
Chapter 13: “Another View of Hester”
1. How old is
Pearl in this chapter?
2. How has the
townspeople’s view changed toward Hester?
3. How has
Hester’s appearance changed?
4. What does
Hester resolve to do?
Chapter 14: “Hester and the Physician”
1. How has
Roger Chillingworth changed in the past
7 years?
2.
What does Hester want Chillingworth to do?
4. What
revelation is she going to make to Reverend Dimmesdale.
Chapter 15: “Hester and Pearl ”
1. What questions does Pearl ask her
mother? Why does this trouble Hester?
Chapter 16: “A Forest Walk”
1. Where does
Hester plan to meet Dimmesdale? Why?
2. Describe the
scene with Hester and Pearl in the sunlight.
What symbolic meaning could the sunlight have? Why does sunlight shine on Pearl and not on
Hester?
Chapter 17: “The Pastor and His Parishioner”
1. How has
Dimmesdale’s secret sin affected his life?
Use a quote to support your answers and cite the page number.
2.
Does Hester still love Dimmesdale? What is Dimmesdale’s reaction to the
truth?
3.
What future plans does Hester suggest to Dimmesdale as a way to escape
Chillingworth?
Chapter 18: “A Flood of Sunshine”
1.
What
is Dimmesdale’s decision in response to Hester’s plea that they leave the
colony?
2. Why is the chapter called, “A Flood of Sunshine” ?
3. What does
Hester do that symbolizes putting the past behind them?
Chapter 19: “The Child at the Brookside ”
1Why
is Pearl upset when her mother calls her?
2What
is Pearl ’s reaction to Dimmesdale
Chapter 20: “The Minister in a Maze”
1. Where have
Hester and Dimmesdale decided to go when they leave Boston ?
2. How does it happen that Hester is acquainted
with the captain of the ship now in the harbor?
Chapters 21 “The New England Holiday ,” and Chapter 22 “The Procession”
1. What have
the crowds of people gathered in the market-place to witness?
2. What piece of unwelcome news does the master
of the ship on which, she, Pearl , and Dimmesdale are to sail have for Hester?
3.
What is particularly noticeable about Dimmesdale’s manner as he walks in the
procession?
4.
Where does Hester stand during the procession and during Dimmesdale’s sermon in
the church?
Chapter 23 “The Revelation of the Scarlet Letter” and Chapter 24 “Conclusion”
1. How does
Dimmesdale appear as he leaves the church after his triumphant sermon?
2. How does
Pearl react when Dimmesdale calls Hester and herself to mount the scaffold with
him?
3. Where,
according to Chillingworth< is the one place where Dimmesdale could have
successfully escaped him?
4.
Explain why Chillingworth desperately tries to stop Dimmesdale from confessing
his sins on the scaffold?
8. What do you
think Dimmesdale means when he describes his and Hester’s sin as violating “our
reverence for each other’s soul” ?
The Scarlet Letter Test Quotations Review by Chapter:
Ch1
It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral
blossom...
Ch2
.At the very least they should have put the brand of a
hot iron on Hester Prynne’s forehead.”
Ch 3
A writhing horror twisted itself across his features,
like a snake gliding swiftly over them..
Therefore, so far as his duties would permit, he trod in
the shadlwy bypaths and thus kept himself simple and childlike... with a
freshness and fragrance, and dewy purity of thought...
Ch
5
He bears no letter of infamy
wrought into his garment, as thou dost; but I shall read it on his heart.
Ch
6
But there is a fatality, a feeling
so irresistible almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and
haunt, ghostlike, the spot where some great and marked event has given to color
to their lifetime
...her handiwork became what would
no be termed the fashion
The child's attire, on the other
hand, was distinguished by a fanciful, or might rather say, a fantastic
ingenuity
Ch
7
It was the scarlet letter in
another for; the sccarlet letter endowed with life
Pearl, seeing the rose-bushes,
began to cry for a red rose, and would not be pacified.
Ch
8
It was understood that this learned
man was the physician as well as friend of the young minister whose health had
suffered of late...
I can teach my little Pearl what I
have learned from this!
Thou wast wast my pastor and hadst
charge of my soul and knowest me better than these men can
...his large dark eyes had a world
of pain in their troubled...depth.
Ch 9
...he had gained
much knowledge of the properties of native herbs and roots.
Few secrets can escape an investigator who has the
opportunity and license to undertake such a quest, and skill to follow it up.
Ch 10
He now dug into the poor clergyman's heart, like a miner
searching for gold
I found them growing on a grave, which bore no
tombstone, nor other memorial of the dead man, save these ugly weeds...They
grew out of his heart...
The secrets that may be buried with the human heart.
...taking a handful of these, she arranged them along
the lines of the scarlet letter...
Come away mother, come away, or yonder Black Man will
catch you!
But who are thou, that meddlest in this matter?--that
dares thrust himself between the sufferer and his God?
Ch 11
The victim was forever on the rack
His intellectual gifts, his moral perceptions, his power
of experiencing and communicating emotion, were kept in a state of
preternatural activity by the prick and anguish of his daily life.
...he tortured but could not purify himself
12
The three formed an electric chain...
...the minister, looking upward to the zenith, beheld
there the appearance of an immense letter,---the letter A---marked out in lines
of dull red light.
Ch 13
It imparted to the wearer a kind of sacredness, which
enabled her to walk securely amid all peril.
She determined to redeem her error, so far as it might
yet be possilbe
Ch 14
39. “It lies not in the pleasure of the magistrates to
take off this badge,” calmly replied Hester. “Were I worthy to be quit of it,
it would fall away of its own nature, or be transformed into something that
should speak a different purport.”
40. The scarlet letter burned on Hester Prynne’s bosom.
Here was another ruin, the responsibility of which came partly home to her.
O, I could reveal a goodly secret! But enough! What art
can do, I have exhausted on him. That he now breathes, and creeps about on
earth, is owing all to me!”
“Better he had died at once!” said Hester Prynne.
And all, all, in the sight of his worst enemy! He has
been conscious of me. He has felt an influence dwelling always upon him like a
curse.
And what am I now?” demanded he, looking into her face,
and permitting the whole evil within him to be written on his features. “I have
already told thee what I am! A fiend! ”
"I must reveal the
secret," answered Hester, firmly. "He must discern thee in thy true character. What may
be the result, I know not. ...There is no path to guide us out of this dismal
maze!"
Ch 15
SO Roger Chillingworth—a deformed old figure, with a
face that haunted men’s memories longer than they liked—took leave of Hester
Prynne, and went stooping away along the earth.
And it seemed a fouler offence committed by Roger
Chillingworth, than any which had since been done him, that, in the time when
her heart knew no better, he had persuaded her to fancy herself happy by his
side.
“Yes, I hate him!” repeated Hester, more bitterly
than before. “He betrayed me! He has done me worse wrong than I did him!”
Ch16
. There would have been no scandal, indeed, nor peril to
the holy whiteness of the clergyman’s good fame, had she visited him in his own
study; where many a penitent, ere now, had confessed sins of perhaps as deep a
dye as the one betokened by the scarlet letter. But, partly that she dreaded
the secret or undisguised interference of old Roger Chillingworth, and partly
that her conscious heart imparted suspicion where none could have been felt,
and partly that both the minister and she would need the whole wide world to
breathe in, while they talked together,—for all these reasons, Hester never
thought of meeting him in any narrower privacy than beneath the open sky
“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. Now, see! There it is,
playing, a good way off. Stand you here, and let me run and catch it. I am but
a child. It will not flee from me; for I wear nothing on my bosom yet!”
Ch 17
.So strangely did they meet, in the dim wood, that it
was like the first encounter, in the world beyond the grave, of two spirits who
had been intimately connected in their former life, but now stood coldly
shuddering, in mutual dread; as not yet familiar with their state, nor wonted
to the companionship of disembodied beings.
Is there no reality in the penitence thus sealed and
witnessed by good works?
Of penance I have had enough! Of penitence there has
been none!
But a lie is never good, even though death threaten on
the other side!
We are not, Hester, the worst sinners in the world.
There is one worse than even the polluted priest! That old man’s revenge has
been blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a
human heart. Thou and I, Hester, never did so!”
“Never, never!”
whispered she. “What we did had a consecration of its own. We felt it so! We
said so to each other! Hast thou forgotten it?”
Lost as my own soul is, I would still do what I may for
other human souls! I dare not quit my post, though an unfaithful sentinel,
whose sure reward is death and dishonor, when his dreary watch shall come to an
end!”
Ch 18
The stigma gone, Hester heaved a long, deep sigh, in
which the burden of shame and anguish departed from her spirit. ... All at
once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a
very flood into the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the
yellow fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemn
trees.
Ch 19
Pearl stretched out her hand, with the small forefinger
extended, and pointing evidently towards her mother’s breast.
With these words, she advanced to the margin of the
brook, took up the scarlet letter, and fastened it again into her bosom. ...Hester
next gathered up the heavy tresses of her hair, and confined them beneath her
cap. As if there were a withering spell in the sad letter, her beauty, the
warmth and richness of her womanhood, departed, like fading sunshine; and a
gray shadow seemed to fall across her.
The minister—painfully embarrassed, but hoping that a
kiss might prove a talisman to admit him into the child’s kindlier regards—bent
forward, and impressed one on her brow. Hereupon, Pearl broke away from her
mother, and, running to the brook, stooped over it, and bathed her forehead,
until the unwelcome kiss was quite washed off, and diffused through a long
lapse of the gliding water. She then remained apart, silently watching Hester
and the clergyman;
Ch 20
No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face
to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as
to which may be the true.
“What is it that
haunts and tempts me thus?” cried the minister to himself, at length, pausing
in the street, and striking his hand against his forehead. “Am I mad? or am I
given over utterly to the fiend?
Ch 21
On this public holiday, as on all other occasions, for
seven years past, Hester was clad in a garment of coarse gray cloth. Not more
by its hue than by some indescribable peculiarity in its fashion, it had the
effect of making her fade personally out of sight and outline; while, again,
the scarlet letter brought her back from this twilight indistinctness, and
revealed her under the moral aspect of its own illumination. Her face, so long
familiar to the townspeople, showed the marble quietude which they were
accustomed to behold there. It was like a mask; or rather, like the frozen
calmness of a dead woman’s features; owing this dreary resemblance to the fact
that Hester was actually dead, in respect to any claim of sympathy, and had
departed out of the world with which she still seemed to mingle.
“What a strange,
sad man is he!” said the child, as if speaking partly to herself. “In the dark
night-time, he calls us to him, and holds thy hand and mine, as when we stood
with him on the scaffold yonder! And in the deep forest, where only the old
trees can hear, and the strip of sky see it, he talks with thee, sitting on a
heap of moss! And he kisses my forehead, too, so that the little brook would
hardly wash it off! But here in the sunny day, and among all the people, he
knows us not; nor must we know him! A strange, sad man is he, with his hand
always over his heart!”
Nothing further passed between the mariner and Hester
Prynne. But, at that instant, she beheld old Roger Chillingworth himself,
standing in the remotest corner of the market-place, and smiling on her; a
smile which—across the wide and bustling square, and through all the talk and
laughter, and various thoughts, moods, and interests of the crowd—conveyed
secret and fearful meaning.
Ch 22
Her spirit sank with the idea that all must have been a
delusion, and that, vividly as she had dreamed it, there could be no real bond
betwixt the clergyman and herself. And thus much of woman was there in Hester,
that she could scarcely forgive him,—least of all now, when the heavy footstep
of their approaching Fate might be heard, nearer, nearer, nearer!—for being
able so completely to withdraw himself from their mutual world; while she
groped darkly, and stretched forth her cold hands, and found him not.
“Fie, woman,
fie!” cried the old lady, shaking her finger at Hester. “Dost thou think I have
been to the forest so many times, and have yet no skill to judge who else has
been there?
The sainted minister in the church! The woman of the
scarlet letter in the market-place! What imagination would have been irreverent
enough to surmise that the same scorching stigma was on them both!
Ch 23
. Such was the position which the minister occupied, as
he bowed his head forward on the cushions of the pulpit at the close of his
Election Sermon. Meanwhile, Hester Prynne was standing beside the scaffold of
the pillory, with the scarlet letter still burning on her breast!
How feeble and pale he looked amid all his triumph!
“For thee and
Pearl, be it as God shall order,” said the minister; “and God is merciful! Let
me now do the will which he hath made plain before my sight. For, Hester, I am
a dying man. So let me make haste to take my shame upon me.”
Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great
scene of grief, in which the wild infant bore a part, had developed all her
sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father’s cheek, they were the pledge
that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor for ever do battle with
the world, but be a woman in it.
Ch 24
Most of the spectators testified to having seen, on the
breast of the unhappy minister, a SCARLET LETTER—the very semblance of that
worn by Hester Prynne—imprinted in the flesh may choose among these theories.
After exhausting life in his efforts for mankind’s
spiritual good, he had made the manner of his death a parable, in order to
impress on his admirers the mighty and mournful lesson, that, in the view of
Infinite Purity, we are sinners all alike.
At old Roger Chillingworth's decease (which took place
within the year), and by his last will and testament, of which Governor
Bellingham and the Reverend Mr. Wilson were executors, he bequeathed a very considerable amount of property, both
here and in England, to little Pearl, the daughter of Hester Prynne.
Hester comforted and counselled them, as best she might.
She assured them, too, of her firm belief, that, at some brighter period, when
the world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven’s own time, a new truth
would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and
woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness.
91. And, after many, many years, a new grave was delved,
near an old and sunken one, in that burial-ground beside which King’s Chapel
has since been built. It was near that old and sunken grave, yet with a space
between, as if the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle.
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