Quotes & Sayings About The Symbol Of The Scarlet Letter

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 honourable 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. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The vulgar, who, in those dreary old times, were always contributing a grotesque horror to what interested their imaginations, had a story about the scarlet letter which we might readily work up into a terrific legend. They averred, that the symbol was not mere scarlet cloth, tinged in an earthly dye-pot, but was red-hot with infernal fire, and could be seen glowing all alight, whenever Hester Prynne walked abroad in the night-time. And we must needs say, it seared Hester's bosom so deeply, that perhaps there was more truth in the rumor than our modern incredulity may be inclined to admit. — Nathaniel Hawthorne