Setting

=__The Environment__=

=New England= ====But the proprietor appeared already to have relinquished as hopeless the effort to perpetuate on this side of the Atlantic, in a hard soil and amid the close struggle for subsistence, the native English taste for ornamental gardening. (Chapter 7)====

=The House=

On the outskirts of town, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close vicinity to any other habitation, there was a small thatched cottage. It had been built by an earlier settler, and abandoned because the soil about it was too sterile for cultivation, while its comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that social activity which already marked the habits of the emigrants. It stood on the shore, looking across a basin of the sea at the forest-covered hills toward the west. (Chapter 5)

= Outskirts of Town = “… on the outskirts of town, within the verge of the peninsula.” “comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that social activity”(71)

= Church = “If she [Hester] entered a church, trusting to share the Sabbath smile of the Universal Father”(75)

=  Prison = “wooden jail was already marked with weather stains…rust on the ponderous iron work of its oaken door”(41)

=  Cemetery = “Even in the graveyard here at hand… a grave which bore no tombstone, nor other memorial of the dead man, save these ugly weeds.”(117)

=  Scaffold = “It was, in short, the platform of the pillory; above it rose the framework of that instrument of discipline, so fashioned as to confine human heat…hold it up to the public gate”(49) "The same platform or scaffold, black and weather-stained with the storm or sunshine or seven long years, and footworn, too, with the tread of many culprits..." (143)

= Forest= "All these giant trees and boulders of granite seemed intent on making a mystery of the course of this small brook; fearing, perhaps, that, with its never-ceasing loquacity, it should whisper tales out of the heart of the heart of the old forest whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on the smooth surface of the pool." (Chapter 16.23) = “Thus hemmed it in so narrowly and stood so black and dense on either side, and disclosed such imperfect glimpses of the sky above.”(166) =

====The dell was to be left a solitude among its dark, old trees, … And the melancholy brook would add this other tale to the mystery with which its little heart was already overburdened, and whereof it still kept up a murmuring babble, with not a whit more cheerfulness of tone than for ages heretofore. (209) ==== =  Sunshine = “All at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest.”(185)

=  Meteor = “…a light gleamed far and wide over all the muffled sky. It was doubtless caused by one of those meteors which the night watcher may so often observe burning out.”(138) =__The Puritans__=
 * ===The Culture:the puritans during the time of the scarlet letter (17th Century) had very few freedoms such as the freedoms of ** choice, expression, speech, and opinion ** and persecution was prctically a pastime ===
 * **Puritans also belived in a close relationship between goverment and religion **

Dimmesdale’s Personal Punishments = Fasts/Vigils = “He kept vigils, likewise, night after night, sometimes in utter darkness”(130)

= Scaffold = “The same platform or scaffold… obscure night of early may… the minister might stand there, if it so leased him, until morning.”(132)

= Admittance at Church = “More than once, Mr. Dimmesdale had gone into the pulpit… more than once, he had cleared his throat and drawn in the long, deep, and tremulous breath, which, when sent forth again, would come burdened with the black secret of his soul.”(129)