- Utopia ....sl01.html#g02
- Imaginary place where everything is good, from Sir Thomas
More's book (1515) of the same name. (Puritan Boston was meant
to be a "city on the hill" or a good society in contrast
to England--but of course More was Catholic and so the Puritans
would have appreciated neither the book nor the reference to it.)
In some ways this book is similar to More's book--both authors
use fiction to lament a world that was being lost, a warning
against politics and modern life overwhelming the values of
traditional society and individual rights. The authors also share a
considerable sense of irony, of wit, of being marginalized, and of
the importance of good writing. Hawthorne had lived at Brook Farm,
meant to be a sort of Utopian community.
- among their earliest practical
necessities ....sl01.html#g02
- this phrase about the prison and the cemetery has been widely
quoted, but was not historically exact about Boston--the jail was
not built until 1632, two years after the town's founding
(1630), though maybe that might still count loosely as "among
their earliest", or, with Hawthorne's usual cautious
tempering, "almost as seasonably".
- Boston locations ....sl01.html#g02
- Most of these 1642
locations no longer are recognizable, though a visitor to downtown
Boston of today can stand on their sites. Picture an area of a few
blocks, with dirt streets and unpainted wood buildings (looking old
after only a dozen years) of at most two stories. The scaffold has
been replaced by a giant steaming tea-kettle, but it would be in
the middle, and all the other locations within a short walk,
usually downhill. (The center would be today the intersection of
State Street and Tremont, with the coastline just beyond the Old
State House to the east, and today's King's Chapel two
blocks south along Tremont.) Cornhill was an northern
extension of Washington Street (well, for some reason that street
did not have that name, it was Orange) across King's Street
(State Street). Cornhill is now bricked over as part of City Hall
Plaza, but was once the home of several booksellers. Isaac
Johnson (1601-1630) was a settler who left land to the town--he
died shortly after the Puritan group arrived from England--his lot
would be just north of King's Chapel, which was not
built until after this period (in 1688), but which absorbed the old
burying-ground there.
- rose-bush ....sl01.html#g02 and g03
- The rose bush is an obvious symbol which many critics discuss
[Cola72]. Again, note the
author's ambiguity and irony-- Anne Hutchinson was a saint in the eyes of
neither the Puritans nor Hawthorne. There is a hint
here--don't
forget to look for the moral in the last chapter. The narrator
steps forward to deliver a misleading comment or what in a play is
called an "aside" here--look for similar shifts in the
narration as the story progresses. By the way, a
"hawthorn" bush is something like a rose bush, although
it is never called that. Hawthorne has Pearl remember this
rose-bush in Chapter
8 since she and Hester passed that way to the Hall of
Governor Bellingham.
- a tale of human frailty and sorrow
....sl01.html#g03
- --this is how the author characterizes his own story --not as a
tale of immorality, a tale of man's cruelty to his fellows, a
tale of failed rebellion, a tale of hypocrisy, or whatever others
might think.
Summary -- The setting: A group of people are standing
around outside the prison door, which is pretty ugly. It is Puritan
Boston, about June, 1642. It seems that
every new town needs both a prison and a cemetery. There are weeds,
but also a rose bush. Perhaps the rose is left over from the
wilderness, or perhaps it stems from Anne Hutchinson (a woman rebel a few years
earlier). Anyway, the author suggests the reader take it to help
brighten this sad story.
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Eldred, Eric. <cite>Notes to Ch. 1, The Scarlet
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1999. 23 Sep. 1999. <br />
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Eldred, Eric. Notes to Ch. 1, The Scarlet
Letter. 1999. 23 Sep. 1999.
<http://eldred.ne.mediaone.net/nh/sl01-n.html>
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