Guilt in The Scarlet Letter

Pearl, pg 103

Chillingworth, Page 86

"...that little creature, whose innocent life had sprung, by the inscrutable decree of Providence, a lovely and immortal flower, out of the rank luxuriance of a guilty passion." This shows how Pearl was created out of passion between Dimmesdale and Hester, and Pearl is a symbol of Hester's guilt. Pearl reminds Hester of her guilt for loving Dimmesdale.

"Mine was the first wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into false and unnatural relation with my decay." This quote occurs when Chillingworth and Hester are talking for the first time when Hester is in jail. Chillingworth feels betrayed by Hester, but also acknowledges that he messed up and feels guilty for putting her into a relationship when she was young and beautiful and he was old and 'decaying'.

Guilt in The

Scarlet Letter

Hester, pg 104

GUILT

-Feeling responsibility for a crime

-A bad feeling caused by knowing or thinking that you have done something bad or wrong

"Day after day, she looked fearfully into the child's expanding nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity, that should correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being." Hester worries that something will be wrong with Pearl because she was made from a crime that causes her guilt. Pearl's existence causes Hester guilt and she worries that this will show in Pearl's character.

Hester, page 86

"'I have greatly wronged thee,' murmured Hester."

This quote occurred when Hester is talking to Chillingworth for the first time when she is in jail. This shows Hester feels guilt for betraying her husband by committing adultery.

Dimmesdale, pg 160

Hester, pg 94

"But still, methinks, it must needs be better for the sufferer to be free to show his pain, as this poor woman Hester is, than to cover it all up in his heart." Dimmesdale hints in this quote that he would rather suffer openly for his crime than cover up his pain in his heart. This shows that he has great guilt for committing adultery and he feels it covered up in his heart.

"Here, she said to herself, had been the scene of her earthly punishment; and so perchance the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul..." One of Hester's reasons for not leaving Boston is that she feels so guilty for committing adultery that she must stay in Boston to receive her punishment. The shame she feels daily by living in the colony is a punishment for her guilt. She feels the need to receive this punishment because of how guilty she is.

Guilt in The

Scarlet Letter

Dimmesdale pg 185

Dimmesdale, pg 171

"Not but the meteor may have shown itself at that point, burning duskily through a veil of cloud; but with no such shape as his guilty imagination gave it; or, at least, with so little definiteless, that another's guilt might have seen another symbol in it."

When Dimmesdale sees the letter A in the sky,

"In Mr. Dimmesdale's secret closet, under lock and key, there was a bloody scourge. Oftentimes, this Protestant and Puritan divine had plied it on his own shoulders; laughing bitterly at himself the while, and smiting so much the more pitilessly because of the bitter laugh. It was his custom, too, as it has been that of many other pious Puritans, to fast -- not, however, like them, in order to purify the body and render it the fitter medium of celestial illumination, but rigorously, and until his knees trembled beneath him, as an act of penance."

This quote tells about how Dimmesdale's guilt drives him to punish himself by whipping himself and holding fasts until he becomes very weak. This shows how he has intense guilt because of what he did and it drove him to do harsh punishments.