All 24 Uses of
Puritans
in
The Scarlet Letter
- Doubtless, however, either of these stern and black-browed Puritans would have thought it quite a sufficient retribution for his sins that, after so long a lapse of years, the old trunk of the family tree, with so much venerable moss upon it, should have borne, as its topmost bough, an idler like myself.
Chpt Intr.Puritans = Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries thought there were too many rituals in worship and who stressed hard work above pleasure
- But, in that early severity of the Puritan character, an inference of this kind could not so indubitably be drawn.
Chpt 2Puritan = related to English Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries thought there were too many rituals in worship and who stressed hard work above pleasure
- 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.
Chpt 2Puritans = Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries thought there were too many rituals in worship and who stressed hard work above pleasure
- 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.
Chpt 2Puritan = related to Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries thought there were too many rituals in worship and who stressed hard work above pleasure
- It may seem marvellous that, with the world before her—kept by no restrictive clause of her condemnation within the limits of the Puritan settlement, so remote and so obscure—free to return to her birth-place, or to any other European land, and there hide her character and identity under a new exterior, as completely as if emerging into another state of being—and having also the passes of the dark, inscrutable forest open to her, where the wildness of her nature might assimilate itself…
Chpt 5
- Continually, and in a thousand other ways, did she feel the innumerable throbs of anguish that had been so cunningly contrived for her by the undying, the ever-active sentence of the Puritan tribunal.
Chpt 5
- The truth was, that the little Puritans, being of the most intolerant brood that ever lived, had got a vague idea of something outlandish, unearthly, or at variance with ordinary fashions, in the mother and child, and therefore scorned them in their hearts, and not unfrequently reviled them with their tongues.
Chpt 6Puritans = Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries thought there were too many rituals in worship and who stressed hard work above pleasure
- The pine-trees, aged, black, and solemn, and flinging groans and other melancholy utterances on the breeze, needed little transformation to figure as Puritan elders; the ugliest weeds of the garden were their children, whom Pearl smote down and uprooted most unmercifully.
Chpt 6Puritan = related to Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries thought there were too many rituals in worship and who stressed hard work above pleasure
- Luther, according to the scandal of his monkish enemies, was a brat of that hellish breed; nor was Pearl the only child to whom this inauspicious origin was assigned among the New England Puritans.
Chpt 6Puritans = Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries thought there were too many rituals in worship and who stressed hard work above pleasure
- As the two wayfarers came within the precincts of the town, the children of the Puritans looked up from their play,—or what passed for play with those sombre little urchins—and spoke gravely one to another.
Chpt 7 *Puritans = Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries wanted more purity and less ritual in worship, and who stressed hard work above pleasure
- The brilliancy might have be fitted Aladdin's palace rather than the mansion of a grave old Puritan ruler.
Chpt 7Puritan = any of the English Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries thought there were too many rituals in worship and who stressed hard work above pleasure
- Hester caught hold of Pearl, and drew her forcibly into her arms, confronting the old Puritan magistrate with almost a fierce expression.
Chpt 8Puritan = related to Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries thought there were too many rituals in worship and who stressed hard work above pleasure
- In pursuance of this resolve, he took up his residence in the Puritan town as Roger Chillingworth, without other introduction than the learning and intelligence of which he possessed more than a common measure.
Chpt 9
- 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 that bitter laugh.
Chpt 11
- 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.
Chpt 11Puritans = Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries thought there were too many rituals in worship and who stressed hard work above pleasure
- She might, and not improbably would, have suffered death from the stern tribunals of the period, for attempting to undermine the foundations of the Puritan establishment.
Chpt 13Puritan = related to Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries thought there were too many rituals in worship and who stressed hard work above pleasure
- It was—we blush to tell it—it was to stop short in the road, and teach some very wicked words to a knot of little Puritan children who were playing there, and had but just begun to talk.
Chpt 20
- Into this festal season of the year—as it already was, and continued to be during the greater part of two centuries—the Puritans compressed whatever mirth and public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity; thereby so far dispelling the customary cloud, that, for the space of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely more grave than most other communities at a period of general affliction.
Chpt 21Puritans = Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries thought there were too many rituals in worship and who stressed hard work above pleasure
- Their immediate posterity, the generation next to the early emigrants, wore the blackest shade of Puritanism, and so darkened the national visage with it, that all the subsequent years have not sufficed to clear it up.
Chpt 21Puritanism = a religious movement of the 16th and 17th centuries to purify Protestant Christianity of rituals of the Catholic Church and which stressed hard work above pleasure
- A party of Indians—in their savage finery of curiously embroidered deerskin robes, wampum-belts, red and yellow ochre, and feathers, and armed with the bow and arrow and stone-headed spear—stood apart with countenances of inflexible gravity, beyond what even the Puritan aspect could attain.
Chpt 21Puritan = related to Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries thought there were too many rituals in worship and who stressed hard work above pleasure
- Thus the Puritan elders in their black cloaks, starched bands, and steeple-crowned hats, smiled not unbenignantly at the clamour and rude deportment of these jolly seafaring men; and it excited neither surprise nor animadversion when so reputable a citizen as old Roger Chillingworth, the physician, was seen to enter the market-place in close and familiar talk with the commander of the questionable vessel.
Chpt 21
- Ay, ay, you must have known it; for he tells me he is of your party, and a close friend to the gentleman you spoke of—he that is in peril from these sour old Puritan rulers.
Chpt 21
- The Puritans looked on, and, if they smiled, were none the less inclined to pronounce the child a demon offspring, from the indescribable charm of beauty and eccentricity that shone through her little figure, and sparkled with its activity.
Chpt 22Puritans = Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries thought there were too many rituals in worship and who stressed hard work above pleasure
- Not improbably this circumstance wrought a very material change in the public estimation; and had the mother and child remained here, little Pearl at a marriageable period of life might have mingled her wild blood with the lineage of the devoutest Puritan among them all.
Chpt 24Puritan = Protestant who in the 16th and 17th centuries thought there were too many rituals in worship and who stressed hard work above pleasure
Definition:
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(Puritans) English Protestants who in the 16th and 17th centuries wanted more purity and less ritual in worship, and who stressed hard work above pleasure
(a Protestant is any of the Western Christian religious denominations that broke off from the Catholic Church. In the US, the best known are Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Episcopalians.)