I. The Prison-Door Practice Quiz — The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne — tap or click to flip
Practice Quiz: I. The Prison-Door
What is the setting of Chapter I of The Scarlet Letter?
The chapter is set in front of the wooden prison of Boston, Massachusetts, approximately fifteen to twenty years after the town was founded by Puritan colonists.
What two structures does Hawthorne say every new colony builds first?
A cemetery and a prison. He calls these among the earliest practical necessities of any new settlement.
How is the prison door physically described?
It is heavily timbered with oak and studded with iron spikes, with rust that looks more antique than anything else in the New World.
What grows in the grass-plot between the prison and the street?
Ugly weeds including burdock, pigweed, and apple-peru—unsightly vegetation that thrives in the soil near the prison.
What grows beside the prison door itself?
A wild rose-bush covered with delicate blossoms in the month of June.
What does the narrator do with the rose at the end of the chapter?
He plucks one of its flowers and presents it to the reader, hoping it will symbolize some sweet moral blossom in the dark tale ahead.
What historical figure is associated with the rose-bush?
Ann Hutchinson, the Puritan religious dissenter who was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Hawthorne suggests the bush may have sprung up under her footsteps.
Why does Hawthorne call Ann Hutchinson "sainted"?
The word conveys his sympathy for her as a dissenter punished by the Puritan establishment, and it foreshadows the novel’s treatment of Hester Prynne as a similarly persecuted woman.
How are the Puritan townspeople described in the opening sentence?
As bearded men in sad-colored garments and gray steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women in hoods or bareheaded—a somber, austere crowd.
What does the prison door symbolize?
It represents Puritan severity, unyielding moral judgment, and the inevitability of punishment in organized civilization.
What does the wild rose-bush symbolize?
It represents natural compassion, beauty, grace, and the possibility of redemption even in the harshest surroundings.
What central tension does Chapter I establish for the novel?
The tension between rigid Puritan law and punishment on one hand, and natural compassion and human kindness on the other.
What does Hawthorne mean by calling the prison the "black flower of civilized society"?
He suggests that the prison is an inevitable, dark outgrowth of any organized human community—civilization naturally produces systems of punishment.
What literary device is most prominent in this chapter?
Symbolism. The prison door, rose-bush, weeds, cemetery, and the crowd all carry symbolic meaning beyond their literal descriptions.
How does Hawthorne use juxtaposition in Chapter I?
He contrasts the ugly prison and weeds against the beautiful rose-bush, and the cemetery and prison against the hope represented by the flower—pairing severity with compassion throughout.
What narrative technique does Hawthorne use at the chapter’s close?
He breaks the fourth wall through direct address, plucking a rose and presenting it to the reader to create an intimate narrator-reader bond.
What is the function of the allusion to Ann Hutchinson?
It connects the novel’s fictional story to real Puritan history, foreshadowing Hester Prynne’s conflict with religious authority and lending historical weight to the themes.
What does "edifice" mean as used in the chapter?
A large, imposing building. Hawthorne uses it to describe the wooden prison, emphasizing its solid, intimidating presence.
What does "sepulchres" mean?
Burial places or tombs. Hawthorne uses the word when describing the cemetery that grew around Isaac Johnson’s grave.
What does "inauspicious" mean in the final paragraph?
Not conducive to success; unpromising or unlucky. Hawthorne calls the prison an "inauspicious portal" from which his narrative will emerge.
Complete the quote: "It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom..."
"...that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow."
What does Hawthorne say the rose-bush offers to the prisoner and the condemned criminal?
"Its fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him."