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Hawthorne's Biography and more...

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Growing Up Born July 4, 1804, Nathaniel Hathorne was the only son of Captain Nathaniel Hathorne and Elizabeth Clarke Manning Hathorne. (Hawthorne added the "w"

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here is Bloom's Taxonomy for you to understand whatreal Learning Is

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Questions

3) The market place was crowded because it was going to take place at an execution gallows. The place was crowded with matrons, magistrates, Reverend Master Dimmsdale and  a crowd of eager and curious schoolboys.

5)Hester brought with herself the baby, with a blush to the tooth and yet a haughty smile. The letter A on her chest was surrounded by a gold embroidery. She had dark and abundant hair and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes.

7) The letter A stands for adultery. This forces her to have no type of relationship with the inhabitants of the town.

8) The magistrates and matrons impose Hester to wear the letter A, symbol of shame and pity.

9) The word Puritan was first coined in the 1560s as a derisive term for those who advocated more purity in worship and doctrine. The Puritans were a widespread and diverse group of people who took a stand for religious purity in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries in Europe.

10) Throughout their history, the Puritans were viewed and treated in a variety of ways by both civil and ecclesiastical authorities. Often, they were grudgingly tolerated, and at other times they were severely persecuted. Charles I of England made efforts to purge all Puritan influences from England, which resulted in the Great Migration to Europe and the American Colonies.
11) According to our point of view, adultery affects not only a person, but the whole society. because the people are gossiping

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ALESSIA LIOTTA

MARTINA ODDO

1.  Where is taken Hester as soon as she is released from Prison? why ?

Hester is brought  to the gallows because he has to be judged.

2. what was it meant for?

Hesher was taken to the gallows to be humiliated before the people. The purpose of the judges is to hear the name of the lover.

3.  Why was the market place so crowded ?

4.  The narrator tells us that the distance from the prison door to the scaffold was quite short but it was  experienced as a journey of some length and her heart was tremendously suffering ? Can you quote these lines?

" It was no great distance, in those days, from the prison door to the market-place. Measured by the prisoner's experience, however, it might be reckoned a journey of some length; for haughty as her demeanour was, she perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung into the street for them all to spurn and trample upon. In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvellous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it. With almost a serene deportment, therefore, Hester Prynne passed through this portion of her ordeal, and came to a sort of scaffold, at the western extremity of the market-place. It stood nearly beneath the eaves of Boston's earliest church, and appeared to be a fixture there."

5.  Look for in the text and quote the lines where  Hester’s physical appearance is described  while on the scaffold . What’s she like

The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam; and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes. She was ladylike, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those days; characterised by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace which is now recognised as its indication. And never had Hester Prynne appeared more ladylike, in the antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the prison. 6.  What do the fifty year old Goodwives  and matrons  envy to Hester?
The Goodwives were envious at the age HESTER. 7.  Why is the letter “ A” an inappropriate way of punishment? what the “ A” letter like? The woman had to bring in the chest as a symbol of adultery. 8.  Who thinks that  obbliging Hester to wear that Letter as a symbol of her shame and sin  is a soft form of punishment? Hesher is subjected to wear the letter A on her chest as punishment for his behavior
9. who were the Puritans?
The Puritans is religious rigorous movement trend arisen inside Anglicanism, with the intent to reform the Church of England according to the model Calvinist. Considering themselves invested directly by God to the implementation of a plan of salvation of England and the whole world, especially the Puritans preached the need to release the Church from the political power and rejected the hierarchical structure implicit in the organization episcopal, contrasting them a system type Presbyterian, which had the ultimate authority in the group of "elders" directly elected by the faithful.
10. why were they persecuted?

Puritans were persecuted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, and then by King Charles I and forced to emigrate to the Netherlands and in New England, where they formed one of the nuclei of the future Member States.

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MAria Rizza

Test on the video about 21st century competences

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Homework to be done :

1.  Where is taken Hester as soon as she is released from Prison? why ? 2. what was it meant for?

3.  Why was the market place so crowded ?

4.  The narrator tells us that the distance from the prison door to the scaffold was quite short but it was  experienced as a journey of some length and her heart was tremendously suffering ? Can you quote these lines?

5.  Look for in the text and quote the lines where  Hester’s physical appearance is described  while on the scaffold . What’s she like?

6.  What do the fifty year old Goodwives  and matrons  envy to Hester?

7.  Why is the letter “ A” an inappropriate way of punishment? what the “ A” letter like?

8.  Who thinks that  obbliging Hester to wear that Letter as a symbol of her shame and sin  is a soft form of punishment?
9. who were the Puritans?

10. why were they persecuted?

11. Hawthorn says that even if adultery was considered a sin, it would be a sin of the heart, whose punishment is already shame. According to your moral, adultery can be considered a betrayal that only affects those involved or that somehow it also affects society? Explain your answer.

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Dear Students PLEASE Open the tool you see in the picture and write down what are you going to say / discuss in our final work: it is going to be a documentary programme? , a discussion on the topics I listed on the paper for you.

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1) How people consider Hester Prynne ?

2) What impelled Hester to keep silent?

3) What attitude assumes Hester before the accusations of the people?
4) As ending "the scarlet letter"? Hester able to live with the man she loves and her daughter grow up with the love of both parents?

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Dear Students xoxo Pay attention to what the Puritans believe : )

God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established.

2. Although God...........yet hath he not decreed anything because he foresaw it as future, o................]

3. By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life; and others foreordained to everlasting death.

4. These angels and men, thus predestinated, and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed, and their number so certain and definite, that it cannot be either increased or died.

5. Those of mankind that are predestinated unto life, God, before the foundation of the world was laid, according to his eternal and immutable purpose, and the secret counsel and good pleasure of his will, hath chosen, in Christo, unto everlasting glory, out of his mere free grace and love........................<3

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What is Puritanism and what did the Puritans believe?

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What is Puritanism and what did the Puritans believe? What was the origin of the Puritan movement?

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The grass-plot before the jail, in Prison Lane, on a certain summer morning, not less than two centuries ago, was occupied by a pretty large number of the inhabitants of Boston, all with their eyes intently fastened on the iron-clamped oaken door. Amongst any other population, or at a later period in the history of New England, the grim rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these good people would have augured some awful business in hand. It could have betokened nothing short of the anticipated execution of some rioted culprit, on whom the sentence of a legal tribunal had but confirmed the verdict of public sentiment. But, in that early severity of the Puritan character, an inference of this kind could not so indubitably be drawn. It might be that a sluggish bond-servant, or an undutiful child, whom his parents had given over to the civil authority, was to be corrected at the whipping-post. It might be that an Antinomian, a Quaker, or other heterodox religionist, was to be scourged out of the town, or an idle or vagrant Indian, whom the white man's firewater had made riotous about the streets, was to be driven with stripes into the shadow of the forest. It might be, too, that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the bitter-tempered widow of the magistrate, was to die upon the gallows. In either case, there was very much the same solemnity of demeanour on the part of the spectators, as befitted a people among whom religion and law were almost identical, and in whose character both were so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest and severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerable and awful. Meagre, indeed, and cold, was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from such bystanders, at the scaffold. On the other hand, a penalty which, in our days, would infer a degree of mocking infamy and ridicule, might then be invested with almost as stern a dignity as the punishment of death itself.

1. -Who was at the jail? And why they were there?

2.  -What was the people’s bahaviour?

3. -Who was punished by the people?

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The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow-creature, before society shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering at it. The witnesses of Hester Prynne's disgrace had not yet passed beyond their simplicity. They were stern enough to look upon her death, had that been the sentence, without a murmur at its severity, but had none of the heartlessness of another social state, which would find only a theme for jest in an exhibition like the present. Even had there been a disposition to turn the matter into ridicule, it must have been repressed and overpowered by the solemn presence of men no less dignified than the governor, and several of his counsellors, a judge, a general, and the ministers of the town, all of whom sat or stood in a balcony of the meeting-house, looking down upon the platform. When such personages could constitute a part of the spectacle, without risking the majesty, or reverence of rank and office, it was safely to be inferred that the infliction of a legal sentence would have an earnest and effectual meaning. Accordingly, the crowd was sombre and grave. The unhappy culprit sustained herself as best a woman might, under the heavy weight of a thousand unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her, and concentrated at her bosom. It was almost intolerable to be borne. Of an impulsive and passionate nature, she had fortified herself to encounter the stings and venomous stabs of public contumely, wreaking itself in every variety of insult; but there was a quality so much more terrible in the solemn mood of the popular mind, that she longed rather to behold all those rigid countenances contorted with scornful merriment, and herself the object. Had a roar of laughter burst from the multitude--each man, each woman, each little shrill-voiced child, contributing their individual parts--Hester Prynne might have repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful smile. But, under the leaden infliction which it was her doom to endure, she felt, at moments, as if she must needs shriek out with the full power of her lungs, and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the ground, or else go mad at once.

QUESTIONS:

1-In addition to the governor who was present to convict Hester Prynne?

2-As Hester react in front f the crowd?

3-How was the crowd?

4-Although strong and impulsive character,sometimes what Heste wanted to do?

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"Goodwives," said a hard-featured dame of fifty,
"I'll tell ye a piece of my mind. It would be greatly for the public
behoof if we women, being of mature age and church-members in good repute,
should have the handling of such malefactresses as this Hester Prynne. What
think ye, gossips? If the hussy stood up for judgment before us five, that are
now here in a knot together, would she come off with such a sentence as the
worshipful magistrates have awarded? Marry, I trow not"

"People say," said another, "that the
Reverend Master Dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart
that such a scandal should have come upon his congregation."

"The magistrates are God-fearing gentlemen, but
merciful overmuch--that is a truth," added a third autumnal matron.
"At the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester
Prynne's forehead. Madame Hester would have winced at that, I warrant me. But
she--the naughty baggage -- little will she care what they put upon the bodice
of her gown Why, look you, she may cover it with a brooch, or such like.
heathenish adornment, and so walk the streets as brave as ever"

"Ah, but," interposed, more softly, a young wife,
holding a child by the hand, "let her cover the mark as she will, the pang
of it will be always in her heart. "

"What do we talk of marks and brands, whether on the
bodice of her gown or the flesh of her forehead?" cried another female,
the ugliest as well as the most pitiless of these self-constituted judges.
"This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die; Is there not
law for it? Truly there is, both in the Scripture and the statute-book. Then
let the magistrates, who have made it of no effect, thank themselves if their
own wives and daughters go astray"

Questions:

1. Ladies believe that the penalty of Esther is sufficiently correct for what she has
done?

2. Why do some matron think it is necessary to charge
a greater punishment on Esther?

3. Why other matron think it isn’t necessary?

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When the young woman--the mother of this child--stood fully revealed before the crowd, it seemed to be her first impulse to clasp the infant closely to her bosom; not so much by an impulse of motherly affection, as that she might thereby conceal a certain token, which was wrought or fastened into her dress. In a moment, however, wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby on her arm, and with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be abashed, looked around at her townspeople and neighbours. On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore, and which was of a splendour in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony.

The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam; and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes. She was ladylike, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those days; characterised by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace which is now recognised as its indication. And never had Hester Prynne appeared more ladylike, in the antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the prison. Those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped. It may be true that, to a sensitive observer, there was some thing exquisitely painful in it. Her attire, which indeed, she had wrought for the occasion in prison, and had modelled much after her own fancy, seemed to express the attitude of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild and picturesque peculiarity. But the point which drew all eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearer--so that both men and women who had been familiarly acquainted with Hester Prynne were now impressed as if they beheld her for the first time--was that SCARLET LETTER, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.
QUESTIONS:
1) What is the Hester’s attitude before swowing the scarlat letter?

2) How is the behavior of the woman by the narrator?

3)The narrator is omniscient or objective?

4) The dress she had worn in prison seems to show his attitude and his mood: what?

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"She hath good skill at her needle, that's certain," remarked one of her female spectators; "but did ever a woman, before this brazen hussy, contrive such a way of showing it? Why, gossips, what is it but to laugh in the faces of our godly magistrates, and make a pride out of what they, worthy gentlemen, meant for a punishment?"

"It were well," muttered the most iron-visaged of the old dames, "if we stripped Madame Hester's rich gown off her dainty shoulders; and as for the red letter which she hath stitched so curiously, I'll bestow a rag of mine own rheumatic flannel to make a fitter one!"

"Oh, peace, neighbours--peace!" whispered their youngest companion; "do not let her hear you! Not a stitch in that embroidered letter but she has felt it in her heart. "

The grim beadle now made a gesture with his staff. "Make way, good people--make way, in the King's name!" cried he. "Open a passage; and I promise ye, Mistress Prynne shall be set where man, woman, and child may have a fair sight of her brave apparel from this time till an hour past meridian. A blessing on the righteous colony of the Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine! Come along, Madame Hester, and show your scarlet letter in the market-place!"

A lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of spectators. Preceded by the beadle, and attended by an irregular procession of stern-browed men and unkindly visaged women, Hester Prynne set forth towards the place appointed for her punishment. A crowd of eager and curious schoolboys, understanding little of the matter in hand, except that it gave them a half-holiday, ran before her progress, turning their heads continually to stare into her face and at the winking baby in her arms, and at the ignominious letter on her breast. It was no great distance, in those days, from the prison door to the market-place. Measured by the prisoner's experience, however, it might be reckoned a journey of some length; for haughty as her demeanour was, she perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung into the street for them all to spurn and trample upon. In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvellous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it. With almost a serene deportment, therefore, Hester Prynne passed through this portion of her ordeal, and came to a sort of scaffold, at the western extremity of the market-place. It stood nearly beneath the eaves of Boston's earliest church, and appeared to be a fixture there.
Questions:
1) How people consider Hester Prynne ?

2) What impelled Hester to keep silent?

3) What attitude assumes Hester before the accusations of the people?

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Maria Rizza The Scarlet Letter Adultery and Punishment.

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Maria Rizza The Scarlet Letter Adultery and Punishment.

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Here is a link with a critical approach to the novel. read it and comment.

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For a modern reader, Hester's punishment for adultery, being forced to wear a scarlet letter as a mark of shame upon her breast for life, may seem harsh and unusual. But the punishment is extraordinarily lenient in comparison to the Biblical and legal punishments that were available at the time. Famously, the Bible used by the Puritans states, "Thou shalt not commit adultery" (Exodus 20:14). Furthermore, Leviticus 20:10 states, "If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall be put to death." Jesus made adultery encompass adulteries of the heart in addition to the adulterous acts themselves: "You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.' But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Matthew 5:27-28).

Thus, regardless of Chillingworth's desires, Hester and Dimmesdale deserve to be killed in accordance with community vengeance. In Puritan society, adultery was not seen merely as a matter between the two parties but as a breach of contract between those individuals and the community. Even if a husband wanted his adulterous wife to be saved, she could be sentenced to die as a result of the community's obligations to its moral and legal statutes.

A 1641 Boston law provided for death as punishment (the scaffold then was used only for executions, not the pillory), and in 1644, Mary Latham and James Britton were reported in John Winthrop's journal to have been put to death for adultery. But corporal punishment, or whipping, was the usual punishment in Puritan Massachusetts for adultery, signaling that the ultimate possible punishment offered by the Bible and the law was too harsh. Hawthorne's ancestor, Major John Hathorne, was magistrate in Salem in 1688, and he ordered a woman named Hester Craford to be severely whipped in public after she gave birth to an illegitimate child.

Later, even these punishments subsided. A Plymouth law of 1694 called for the display of an A on the dress. Hawthorne recorded this case in his journal, and it became the subject of his story, "Endicott and the Red Cross," in which a Salem woman, required to wear the red letter A, added wonderful embroidery to it. The admonitions of Jesus not to judge others (Matthew 7:1) were still trumped by the society's desire to punish what seemed to be obvious transgressions against society.

Now, however, it seemed that the Puritan communities had found themselves in the difficult place of punishing adultery too leniently, because many found the embroidery of the A too light a sentence, but whipping and execution too harsh. The Scarlet Letter offers a way of looking at adultery that would let people suffer appropriately for their own sins without forcing the society to worry about which punishment was proper, that is, redefining it as a private matter in which the society had no compelling interest to get involved. This view was already palatable to many in Hawthorne's generation, although for many others, sexual sins of all kinds remained matters of public interest. Again, the admonition of Jesus in the case of an adulteress, "Let him who is without sin cast the first stone," had not become a guiding principle in the law pertaining to sexual acts. But Hawthorne was moving minds to agree that if adultery was a crime, it was a crime of the heart that need not be punished by society, since it had its own consequences in the guilt, shame, and suffering accompanied by personal indiscretion.

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The Scarlet Letter Adultery and Punishment

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For a modern reader, Hester's punishment for adultery, being forced to wear a scarlet letter as a mark of shame upon her breast for life, may seem harsh and unusual. But the punishment is extraordinarily lenient in comparison to the Biblical and legal punishments that were available at the time.

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Concetta Girlando

Why developing learners competence is so important?

The education systems are moving away from traditional approaches and focusing more on developing competencies.

Education today is intended to promote: -Personal growth -Citizenship -Preparation for the world of work

Literacy and numeracy are just as important today as they were in the past but the skills needed in today's society are more transversal such as: -collaborative problem solving because this helps people to be able to take part in them life.

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Computing Course | Teachers' Views on Important Concepts and Skills

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The meaning of Competences: listen and understand , we will work on its content later.

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The importance and definition of competences

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The Scarlat Letter is a film direct by Roland Joffè (1995). The story is taken by Nathaniel Hawthorme's book .

The film tells a story about Hester Prinn, an english woman, who comes to Boston (1667)

There, she meets Arthur Dimmesdale, the reverend of local church and they fall in love.

Hester is pregnant of Arthur, but appears her husband, who she belives dead.

Accordingly Hester is called "adulteress" and thus she must wear the letter "A" on her clothes.

The film ends with public proof of love between Hester and Harturh and their child.

1) What happens on the summer morning when the story begins?

the women there were several in the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in whatever penal infliction might be expected to ensue

2) What want observe the woman?

the wearers of petticoat and farthingale from stepping forth into the public ways, and wedging their not unsubstantial persons, if occasion were, into the throng nearest to the scaffold at an executionThe women who were now standing about the prison-door stood within less than half a century of the period when the man-like Elizabeth had been the not altogether unsuitable representative of the sex.

3) How were educated the woman? They were her countrywomen: and the beef and ale of their native land, with a moral diet not a whit more refined, entered largely into their composition. The bright morning sun, therefore, shone on broad shoulders and well-developed busts, and on round and ruddy cheeks, that had ripened in the far-off island, and had hardly yet grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere of New England. There was, moreover, a boldness and rotundity of speech among these matrons, as most of them seemed to be, that would startle us at the present day, whether in respect to its purport or its volume of tone.

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THE SCARLAT LETTER
In 1667, Hester Prynne, the wife of a settler party in a war against the Indians, arrives in Massachusetts. There he met the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, and the two find that they love each other, but decide to dismiss their feelings. When Hester's husband, Roger, is presumed dead in a battle against the Indians, and his body has never been found because of the high tide, Hester and Arthur confess their love and become lovers.

Later, Hester becomes pregnant and Roger returns; It is therefore tried to tell her who is his father's name, but she refuses to say, then being first imprisoned and then stamped on clothes with the infamous letter A for adultery. Following that is mocked by his fellow villagers with a guy who follows her every step with his drum playing it in its wake.
Determined to find his revenge, Roger decides to look for his wife's lover, and was therefore aware of the relationship between Hester and Arthur. One evening Hester is visited by a settler who, aware of the affair of the woman, tries to rape her. Hester, however, make him flee setting fire to the eye and, pointing a gun. Outside the front door, the settler is killed by Roger, who mistakes him for Arthur, convinced he had finally found his revenge. The next day, Roger realizes he killed the wrong man and, conscience stricken, he commits suicide by hanging himself.
Because of the murder committed by Roger, the settlers declare war on the Indians, just at the moment when Arthur was about to be hanged after revealing that he was the father of Pearl, the child of Hester. This and Arthur manage to escape from the chaos of the war and save. After the battle, Hester buries Roger. Now you can finally be with Arthur, so you remove the scarlet letter and lets Massachusetts, along with Arthur and Pearl, to go to Carolina, where the three can finally live in peace and be a family.

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The scarlet letter

In 1667, Hester Prynne, the wife of a settler party in a war against the Indians, arrives in Massachusetts. There he met the Rev. Arthur and the two find that they love each other. When Hester's husband, Roger, is presumed dead in a battle against the Indians, and his body has not been found, Hester and Arthur confess their love and become lovers. Hester becomes pregnant and is processed to tell her who is his father's name, but she refuses and is imprisoned and then stamped with the letter A on the clothes of adultery. Roger returns and is determined to get his revenge and to seek his wife's lover, being aware of the relationship with Arthur. Roger decides to assassinate Arthur swapping it with another settler. The next day, Roger realizes he killed the wrong man and, conscience stricken, he commits suicide by hanging himself. Because of the murder committed by Roger, the settlers declare war on the Indians, just at the moment when Arthur was about to be hanged after revealing that he was the father of Pearl, the child of Hester. Hester and Arthur manage to escape from the chaos of the war and save. Now you can finally be with Arthur, so you remove the scarlet letter and leaves the Massachusetts along with Arthur and Pearl, to live in peace and be a family. Arthur will die only when Pearl will have 13 years.

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1)She is taken to the scaffold in a market place. First she is plubicly insulted by the local inhabitans when she is shown on the pillory, then she is condemned to
wear the scarlat letter which represents adultery.

Because she is pregnant outside the marriage.

2)She has committed adultery and she is judged by the puritans.

3)The market place was so crowded because there were a large number of the inhabitans of Boston because they were going to take place at an execution gallows. For example there were the womens who were speaking about Hester Prynne and they want to judge her instead of the magistrates.

4)Throw open the prison door appeared the town beadle symbolized in appearance and represented all the severity of the law code puritanical. He laid his hand on the shoulder of Hester, who rejected him and he advanced outdoor. When the young, found herself in front of the crowd, her first impulse seemed to shake the baby to the breast. "The door.. clothes”

5)The Young woman was tall and elegant. She had dark hair, so glossy that  it
threw off the sunshine with a gleam; and a beautiful face and deep
black  eyes.

6) Goodwives gossip about the Hester’s  case and also they wanted to
give a  judgment instead of magistrates  because for them
the magistrates was gentlemen but so merciful.

7)The letter  “A” is the simbol of the adultery and also a mark of the
shame. Taking her out  of the ordinary relations with the other people. It is a
dishonour.

8)The women spectatos think  that  obbliging Hester to wear that
Letter as a symbol of her shame  is a soft form of punishment.

9) The Puritans  were a group of English Reformed Protestants who want to purify the Church of England from all Roman  Catholic
practices. Historically, the word was used by Anglicans with a
negativemeaning, to characterize the Protestant extremist groups. Throughout their history, the Puritans were viewed and treated in a variety of ways by both civil and ecclesiastical authorities. Sometimes they were tolerated, but other times they were severely persecuted.
Because it is consiered an heresy.

10)In Puritan society, adultery was not  seen as a matter between the two
parties but as a breach of contract between  those individuals and
the community. Even if a husband wanted his adulterous  wife to be
saved, she could be sentenced to die as a result of the  community's
obligations to its moral and legal statutes. Scarlet Letter offers a way of
looking at  adultery that would let people suffer appropriately for
their own sins  without forcing the society to worry about which
punishment was proper, that is,  redefining it as a private matter
in which the society had no compelling  interest to get involved.
This view was already considered by Hawthorne’s  generation,
although for many others, sexual sins of all kinds remained  matters
of public interest. Today. the society isn’t involved in case of
adultery and couldn’t be sentenced to die by the community.

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Valentina monello, Erika vella,  Vesna puzzo, Simona celeste.

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Valentina monello, Erika vella,  Vesna puzzo, Simona celeste.

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In 1667, Hester
Prynne , one of the settlers'wife in Massachuttes colony, arrives in

Massachusetts on her own; There she meets the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale , and the two realize that they love each other, but they dismiss their feelings because ----When Hester's husband Roger , who is presumed dead in a battle against the Indians and whose
body has never been found because of the high tide , Hester and Arthur confess
their love and become lovers.
[but when Hester and Arthur learn about Roger 's death ,they confess their love and becomes lovers.]

Later , Hester becomes pregnant and Roger returns ; therefore, she is tried because she is asked to tell the judges who is the name of baby's father , but she refuses to say . Because of her refusal , first she is imprisoned and then she is condemned to wear stamped on clothes with the infamous letter A for adultery . Following
that is mocked by his fellow villagers with a guy who follows her every step with
his drum playing it in its wake.

Determined to
find his revenge , Roger decides to look for his wife's lover , and was
therefore aware of the relationship between Hester and Arthur . One evening
Hester is visited by a settler who , aware of the affair of the woman , tries
to rape her . Hester , however, make him flee setting fire to the eye and ,
pointing a gun . Outside the front door , the settler is killed by Roger , who
mistakes him for Arthur , convinced he had finally found his revenge . The next
day , Roger realizes he killed the wrong man and , conscience stricken, he
commits suicide by hanging himself .

Because of the
murder committed by Roger , the settlers declare war on the Indians , just at
the moment when Arthur was about to be hanged after revealing that he was the
father of Pearl , the child of Hester . This and Arthur manage to escape from
the chaos of the war and save . After the battle , Hester buries Roger . Now
you can finally be with Arthur , so you remove the scarlet letter and lets Massachusetts
, along with Arthur and Pearl , to go to Carolina , where the three can finally
live in peace and be a family .

# data[].attributes.headline
Stephanie Garofalo , Chiara Corte , Alicia Brafa.

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Stephanie Garofalo , Chiara Corte , Alicia Brafa.

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The novel begins in 17th-century Boston, Massachusetts, in a Puritan settlement. The characters of this story are : a woman , a priest and a community of Puritans .The young woman already married to the doctor , falls in love with a priest , and with him she will have a child. The young woman Hester Prynne, is led from the town prison to the scaffold pillory with her infant daughter, Pearl, in her arms and the scarlet letter “A” on her bosom. The scarlet letter "A" represents the act of adultery that she has committed and it is to be a symbol of her sin, a badge of shame, for all to see. A woman in the crowd tells an elderly onlooker that Hester is being punished for adultery. Hester's husband, who is much older than she is, sent her ahead to America, but he never arrived in Boston. The consensus is that he has been lost at sea. While waiting for her husband, Hester has apparently had an affair, as she has given birth to a child. She will not reveal her lover’s identity, however, and the scarlet letter, along with her public shaming, is her punishment for her sin and her secrecy. On this day Hester is led to the town scaffold and harangued by the town fathers, but she again refuses to identify her child’s father . The priest will reveal all to be the girl’s father of Hester . The priest and Hester will run together and they will be living away from boston.

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THE SCARLAT LETTER:

The Scarlet Letter is a 1995 movie directed
by Roland Joffe. 7 Hester Prynne, the wife of a settler party in a war against
the Indians, arrives in Massachusetts. There he met the Reverend Arthur
Dimmesdale, and the two find that they love each other, but decide to dismiss
their feelings. When Hester's husband, Roger, is presumed dead in a battle
against the Indians, and his body has never been found because of the high
tide, Hester and Arthur confess their love and become lovers.

Later, Hester becomes pregnant Reverend and this is discovered by the
regents of the colony. Hester no longer having a husband is accused of
ADULTERY, only if will name the father of the unborn child will be left free is
the man will be killed but Hester refuses to tell the name of the beloved and
is locked up in prison until the time of delivery . Arthur goes to see her
every day even if the guards did not allow him to come and see his woman.
Hester finally is ready to give birth and from birth to little Perl. Arthur
finally can see Hester and baptizes his daughter. Meanwhile the Indians release
Roger and the woman is subjected again to say the name of the man with whom she
betrayed her husband. Hester again decides not to pronounce the name of Arthur
and is subjected to walk the streets wearing the A's adulterous. Following that
is mocked by his fellow villagers with a guy who follows her every step with
his drum playing it to his passaggio.Deciso find his revenge, Roger decides to
look for his wife's lover, and was therefore aware of the report between Hester
and Arthur. One evening Hester is visited by a settler who, aware of the affair
of the woman, tries to rape her. Hester, however, make him flee setting fire to
the eye and, pointing a gun. Outside the front door, the settler is killed by
Roger, who mistakes him for Arthur, convinced he had finally found his revenge.
The next day, Roger realizes he killed the wrong man and, conscience stricken,
he commits suicide by hanging himself.

Determined to find his revenge, Roger decides to look for his wife's lover, and
was therefore aware of the relationship between Hester and Arthur. One evening
Hester is visited by a settler who, aware of the affair of the woman, tries to
rape her. Hester, however, make him flee setting fire to the eye and, pointing
a gun. Outside the front door, the settler is killed by Roger, who mistakes him
for Arthur, convinced he had finally found his revenge. The next day, Roger
realizes he killed the wrong man and, conscience stricken, he commits suicide
by hanging himself.

# data[].attributes.body
In 1667, Hester Prynne, the wife of a settler party in a war against the Indians, arrives in Massachusetts. There he met the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, and the two find that they love each other, but decide to dismiss their feelings. When Hester's husband, Roger, is presumed dead in a battle against the
Indians, and his body has never been found because of the high tide,
Hester and Arthur confess their love and become lovers.Later, Hester becomes pregnant and Roger returns; It
is therefore tried to tell her who is his father's name, but she
refuses to say, then being first imprisoned and then stamped on clothes
with the infamous letter A for adultery. Following that is mocked by his fellow villagers with a guy who follows her every step with his drum playing it in its wake.Determined
to find his revenge, Roger decides to look for his wife's lover, and
was therefore aware of the relationship between Hester and Arthur. One evening Hester is visited by a settler who, aware of the affair of the woman, tries to rape her. Hester, however, make him flee setting fire to the eye and, pointing a gun. Outside
the front door, the settler is killed by Roger, who mistakes him for
Arthur, convinced he had finally found his revenge. The next day, Roger realizes he killed the wrong man and, conscience stricken, he commits suicide by hanging himself.Because
of the murder committed by Roger, the settlers declare war on the
Indians, just at the moment when Arthur was about to be hanged after
revealing that he was the father of Pearl, the child of Hester. This and Arthur manage to escape from the chaos of the war and save. After the battle, Hester buries Roger. Now
you can finally be with Arthur, so you remove the scarlet letter and
lets Massachusetts, along with Arthur and Pearl, to go to Carolina,
where the three can finally live in peace and be a family.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Subscribe for ad free access & additional features for teachers.Authors: 267, Books: 3,607, Poems & Short Stories: 4,435, Forum Members: 71,154, Forum Posts: 1,238,602, Quizzes: 344

CHAPTER II. THE MARKET-PLACE
The grass-plot before the jail, in Prison Lane, on a certain summer morning, not less than two centuries ago, was occupied by a pretty large number of the inhabitants of Boston, all with their eyes intently fastened on the iron-clamped oaken door. Amongst any other population, or at a later period in the history of New England, the grim rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these good people would have augured some awful business in hand. It could have betokened nothing short of the anticipated execution of some rioted culprit, on whom the sentence of a legal tribunal had but confirmed the verdict of public sentiment. But, in that early severity of the Puritan character, an inference of this kind could not so indubitably be drawn. It might be that a sluggish bond-servant, or an undutiful child, whom his parents had given over to the civil authority, was to be corrected at the whipping-post. It might be that an Antinomian, a Quaker, or other heterodox religionist, was to be scourged out of the town, or an idle or vagrant Indian, whom the white man's firewater had made riotous about the streets, was to be driven with stripes into the shadow of the forest. It might be, too, that a witch, like old Mistress Hibbins, the bitter-tempered widow of the magistrate, was to die upon the gallows. In either case, there was very much the same solemnity of demeanour on the part of the spectators, as befitted a people among whom religion and law were almost identical, and in whose character both were so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest and severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerable and awful. Meagre, indeed, and cold, was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from such bystanders, at the scaffold. On the other hand, a penalty which, in our days, would infer a degree of mocking infamy and ridicule, might then be invested with almost as stern a dignity as the punishment of death itself.

It was a circumstance to he noted on the summer morning when our story begins its course, that the women, of whom there were several in the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in whatever penal infliction might be expected to ensue. The age had not so much refinement, that any sense of impropriety restrained the wearers of petticoat and farthingale from stepping forth into the public ways, and wedging their not unsubstantial persons, if occasion were, into the throng nearest to the scaffold at an execution. Morally, as well as materially, there was a coarser fibre in those wives and maidens of old English birth and breeding than in their fair descendants, separated from them by a series of six or seven generations; for, throughout that chain of ancestry, every successive mother had transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a more delicate and briefer beauty, and a slighter physical frame, if not character of less force and solidity than her own. The women who were now standing about the prison-door stood within less than half a century of the period when the man-like Elizabeth had been the not altogether unsuitable representative of the sex. They were her countrywomen: and the beef and ale of their native land, with a moral diet not a whit more refined, entered largely into their composition. The bright morning sun, therefore, shone on broad shoulders and well-developed busts, and on round and ruddy cheeks, that had ripened in the far-off island, and had hardly yet grown paler or thinner in the atmosphere of New England. There was, moreover, a boldness and rotundity of speech among these matrons, as most of them seemed to be, that would startle us at the present day, whether in respect to its purport or its volume of tone.

"Goodwives," said a hard-featured dame of fifty, "I'll tell ye a piece of my mind. It would be greatly for the public behoof if we women, being of mature age and church-members in good repute, should have the handling of such malefactresses as this Hester Prynne. What think ye, gossips? If the hussy stood up for judgment before us five, that are now here in a knot together, would she come off with such a sentence as the worshipful magistrates have awarded? Marry, I trow not"

"People say," said another, "that the Reverend Master Dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart that such a scandal should have come upon his congregation."

"The magistrates are God-fearing gentlemen, but merciful overmuch--that is a truth," added a third autumnal matron. "At the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne's forehead. Madame Hester would have winced at that, I warrant me. But she--the naughty baggage -- little will she care what they put upon the bodice of her gown Why, look you, she may cover it with a brooch, or such like. heathenish adornment, and so walk the streets as brave as ever"

"Ah, but," interposed, more softly, a young wife, holding a child by the hand, "let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart. "

"What do we talk of marks and brands, whether on the bodice of her gown or the flesh of her forehead?" cried another female, the ugliest as well as the most pitiless of these self-constituted judges. "This woman has brought shame upon us all, and ought to die; Is there not law for it? Truly there is, both in the Scripture and the statute-book. Then let the magistrates, who have made it of no effect, thank themselves if their own wives and daughters go astray"

"Mercy on us, goodwife" exclaimed a man in the crowd, "is there no virtue in woman, save what springs from a wholesome fear of the gallows? That is the hardest word yet Hush now, gossips for the lock is turning in the prison-door, and here comes Mistress Prynne herself. "

The door of the jail being flung open from within there appeared, in the first place, like a black shadow emerging into sunshine, the grim and gristly presence of the town-beadle, with a sword by his side, and his staff of office in his hand. This personage prefigured and represented in his aspect the whole dismal severity of the Puritanic code of law, which it was his business to administer in its final and closest application to the offender. Stretching forth the official staff in his left hand, he laid his right upon the shoulder of a young woman, whom he thus drew forward, until, on the threshold of the prison-door, she repelled him, by an action marked with natural dignity and force of character, and stepped into the open air as if by her own free will. She bore in her arms a child, a baby of some three months old, who winked and turned aside its little face from the too vivid light of day; because its existence, heretofore, had brought it acquaintance only with the grey twilight of a dungeon, or other darksome apartment of the prison.

When the young woman--the mother of this child--stood fully revealed before the crowd, it seemed to be her first impulse to clasp the infant closely to her bosom; not so much by an impulse of motherly affection, as that she might thereby conceal a certain token, which was wrought or fastened into her dress. In a moment, however, wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby on her arm, and with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be abashed, looked around at her townspeople and neighbours. On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore, and which was of a splendour in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony.

The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam; and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of feature and richness of complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes. She was ladylike, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those days; characterised by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace which is now recognised as its indication. And never had Hester Prynne appeared more ladylike, in the antique interpretation of the term, than as she issued from the prison. Those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped. It may be true that, to a sensitive observer, there was some thing exquisitely painful in it. Her attire, which indeed, she had wrought for the occasion in prison, and had modelled much after her own fancy, seemed to express the attitude of her spirit, the desperate recklessness of her mood, by its wild and picturesque peculiarity. But the point which drew all eyes, and, as it were, transfigured the wearer--so that both men and women who had been familiarly acquainted with Hester Prynne were now impressed as if they beheld her for the first time--was that SCARLET LETTER, so fantastically embroidered and illuminated upon her bosom. It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.

"She hath good skill at her needle, that's certain," remarked one of her female spectators; "but did ever a woman, before this brazen hussy, contrive such a way of showing it? Why, gossips, what is it but to laugh in the faces of our godly magistrates, and make a pride out of what they, worthy gentlemen, meant for a punishment?"

"It were well," muttered the most iron-visaged of the old dames, "if we stripped Madame Hester's rich gown off her dainty shoulders; and as for the red letter which she hath stitched so curiously, I'll bestow a rag of mine own rheumatic flannel to make a fitter one!"

"Oh, peace, neighbours--peace!" whispered their youngest companion; "do not let her hear you! Not a stitch in that embroidered letter but she has felt it in her heart. "

The grim beadle now made a gesture with his staff. "Make way, good people--make way, in the King's name!" cried he. "Open a passage; and I promise ye, Mistress Prynne shall be set where man, woman, and child may have a fair sight of her brave apparel from this time till an hour past meridian. A blessing on the righteous colony of the Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine! Come along, Madame Hester, and show your scarlet letter in the market-place!"

A lane was forthwith opened through the crowd of spectators. Preceded by the beadle, and attended by an irregular procession of stern-browed men and unkindly visaged women, Hester Prynne set forth towards the place appointed for her punishment. A crowd of eager and curious schoolboys, understanding little of the matter in hand, except that it gave them a half-holiday, ran before her progress, turning their heads continually to stare into her face and at the winking baby in her arms, and at the ignominious letter on her breast. It was no great distance, in those days, from the prison door to the market-place. Measured by the prisoner's experience, however, it might be reckoned a journey of some length; for haughty as her demeanour was, she perchance underwent an agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung into the street for them all to spurn and trample upon. In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvellous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it. With almost a serene deportment, therefore, Hester Prynne passed through this portion of her ordeal, and came to a sort of scaffold, at the western extremity of the market-place. It stood nearly beneath the eaves of Boston's earliest church, and appeared to be a fixture there.

In fact, this scaffold constituted a portion of a penal machine, which now, for two or three generations past, has been merely historical and traditionary among us, but was held, in the old time, to be as effectual an agent, in the promotion of good citizenship, as ever was the guillotine among the terrorists of France. It was, in short, the platform of the pillory; and above it rose the framework of that instrument of discipline, so fashioned as to confine the human head in its tight grasp, and thus hold it up to the public gaze. The very ideal of ignominy was embodied and made manifest in this contrivance of wood and iron. There can be no outrage, methinks, against our common nature--whatever be the delinquencies of the individual--no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame; as it was the essence of this punishment to do. In Hester Prynne's instance, however, as not unfrequently in other cases, her sentence bore that she should stand a certain time upon the platform, but without undergoing that gripe about the neck and confinement of the head, the proneness to which was the most devilish characteristic of this ugly engine. Knowing well her part, she ascended a flight of wooden steps, and was thus displayed to the surrounding multitude, at about the height of a man's shoulders above the street.

Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have seen in this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire and mien, and with the infant at her bosom, an object to remind him of the image of Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied with one another to represent; something which should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the world. Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life, working such effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more lost for the infant that she had borne.

The scene was not without a mixture of awe, such as must always invest the spectacle of guilt and shame in a fellow-creature, before society shall have grown corrupt enough to smile, instead of shuddering at it. The witnesses of Hester Prynne's disgrace had not yet passed beyond their simplicity. They were stern enough to look upon her death, had that been the sentence, without a murmur at its severity, but had none of the heartlessness of another social state, which would find only a theme for jest in an exhibition like the present. Even had there been a disposition to turn the matter into ridicule, it must have been repressed and overpowered by the solemn presence of men no less dignified than the governor, and several of his counsellors, a judge, a general, and the ministers of the town, all of whom sat or stood in a balcony of the meeting-house, looking down upon the platform. When such personages could constitute a part of the spectacle, without risking the majesty, or reverence of rank and office, it was safely to be inferred that the infliction of a legal sentence would have an earnest and effectual meaning. Accordingly, the crowd was sombre and grave. The unhappy culprit sustained herself as best a woman might, under the heavy weight of a thousand unrelenting eyes, all fastened upon her, and concentrated at her bosom. It was almost intolerable to be borne. Of an impulsive and passionate nature, she had fortified herself to encounter the stings and venomous stabs of public contumely, wreaking itself in every variety of insult; but there was a quality so much more terrible in the solemn mood of the popular mind, that she longed rather to behold all those rigid countenances contorted with scornful merriment, and herself the object. Had a roar of laughter burst from the multitude--each man, each woman, each little shrill-voiced child, contributing their individual parts--Hester Prynne might have repaid them all with a bitter and disdainful smile. But, under the leaden infliction which it was her doom to endure, she felt, at moments, as if she must needs shriek out with the full power of her lungs, and cast herself from the scaffold down upon the ground, or else go mad at once.

Yet there were intervals when the whole scene, in which she was the most conspicuous object, seemed to vanish from her eyes, or, at least, glimmered indistinctly before them, like a mass of imperfectly shaped and spectral images. Her mind, and especially her memory, was preternaturally active, and kept bringing up other scenes than this roughly hewn street of a little town, on the edge of the western wilderness: other faces than were lowering upon her from beneath the brims of those steeple-crowned hats. Reminiscences, the most trifling and immaterial, passages of infancy and school-days, sports, childish quarrels, and the little domestic traits of her maiden years, came swarming back upon her, intermingled with recollections of whatever was gravest in her subsequent life; one picture precisely as vivid as another; as if all were of similar importance, or all alike a play. Possibly, it was an instinctive device of her spirit to relieve itself by the exhibition of these phantasmagoric forms, from the cruel weight and hardness of the reality.

Be that as it might, the scaffold of the pillory was a point of view that revealed to Hester Prynne the entire track along which she had been treading, since her happy infancy. Standing on that miserable eminence, she saw again her native village, in Old England, and her paternal home: a decayed house of grey stone, with a poverty-stricken aspect, but retaining a half obliterated shield of arms over the portal, in token of antique gentility. She saw her father's face, with its bold brow, and reverend white beard that flowed over the old-fashioned Elizabethan ruff; her mother's, too, with the look of heedful and anxious love which it always wore in her remembrance, and which, even since her death, had so often laid the impediment of a gentle remonstrance in her daughter's pathway. She saw her own face, glowing with girlish beauty, and illuminating all the interior of the dusky mirror in which she had been wont to gaze at it. There she beheld another countenance, of a man well stricken in years, a pale, thin, scholar-like visage, with eyes dim and bleared by the lamp-light that had served them to pore over many ponderous books. Yet those same bleared optics had a strange, penetrating power, when it was their owner's purpose to read the human soul. This figure of tile study and the cloister, as Hester Prynne's womanly fancy failed not to recall, was slightly deformed, with the left shoulder a trifle higher than the right. Next rose before her in memory's picture-gallery, the intricate and narrow thoroughfares, the tall, grey houses, the huge cathedrals, and the public edifices, ancient in date and quaint in architecture, of a continental city; where new life had awaited her, still in connexion with the misshapen scholar: a new life, but feeding itself on time-worn materials, like a tuft of green moss on a crumbling
wall. Lastly, in lieu of these shifting scenes, came back the rude market-place of the Puritan, settlement, with all the townspeople assembled, and levelling their stern regards at Hester Prynne--yes, at herself--who stood on the scaffold of the pillory, an infant on her arm, and the letter A, in scarlet, fantastically embroidered with gold thread, upon her bosom.

Could it be true? She clutched the child so fiercely to her breast that it sent forth a cry; she turned her eyes downward at the scarlet letter, and even touched it with her finger, to assure herself that the infant and the shame were real. Yes these were her realities--all else had vanished!

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Subscribe for ad free access & additional features for teachers.Authors: 267, Books: 3,607, Poems & Short Stories: 4,435, Forum Members: 71,154, Forum Posts: 1,238,602, Quizzes: 344 CHAPTER II. THE MARKET-PLACEThe grass-plot before the jail, in Prison Lane, on a certain summer morning, not less than two centuries ago, was occupied by a pretty large number of the inhabitants of Boston, all with their eyes intently fastened on the iron-clamped oaken door.