the town, the wooden jail was already marked with weather-stains,... which gave a yet darker aspect to its beetle-browed and gloomy front. The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the New World.

In Chapter II as Hester Prynne,

tall, with a figure of perfect elegance on a large scale...lady-like, too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those days

stands on the scaffold, Hawthorne ironically states,

Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have seen in this beautiful woman, with the infant at her bosom, an object to remind him of the image of Divine Maternity...

This description is, of course, in sharp contrast to the reality of why Hester stands before the crowd of gray-clothed Puritans.  And, the harshest reality occurs as she with the "letter A, in scarlet, fantastically embroidered with gold thread, upon her bosom," recognizes the man, "clad in a strange disarray of civilized and savage costume."

And, in Chapter III, with another irony, Governor Bellingham addresses the Reverend Dimmesdale,

"...the responsibility of this woman's soul lies greatly with you.  It behooves you, therefore, to exhort her to repentance and to confession, as a proof and consequence thereof.

But, Hester refuses to speak, crying, "Never....I will not speak!" Then, in Chapter IV, as Hester is visited by the mysterious stranger who is her husband, she refuses him. Roger Chillingworth tells her,

"Believe me. Hester, there are few things,...few things hidden from the man who devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly to the solution of a mystery.....Sooner or later, he must needs be mine."

In Chapter V, Hawthorne explains why Hester does not leave the community:

 But there is a fatality....which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked event has given the colour to their lifetime; and still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. Her sin, her ignominy, were the roots which she had struck into the soil.

Yet, as she wears the "red infamy," Hester feels a loss of faith that "one of the saddest results of sin."  It is only her lovely child that sustains Hester,

the mother's impassioned state had been the medium through which were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of its moral life....(V)....this sole treasure to her her heart alive. (VI)

For Hester, Pearl is her scarlet letter.

As the exposition of Hawthorne's classic novel, the grey starkness of Puritan life and its sanctimonious cruelty and punishment of any who fail to comply with its stringent ideology is portrayed in the description of the prison, the oldest of all structures in the community:

A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments and grey steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and others barheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes....The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the New World.  Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era.

Incongruously, in front of this door is a rose bush, covered with delicate and fragant beauty:

But on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their 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.

This rose bush stands as a symbol of the power of nature to thrive in all situations.  It also represents the passion of the occupant behind the door, a passion incarnate in the body of little Pearl.

In Chapter I Nathaniel Hawthorne sets the tone for the "tale of human frailty and sorrow" which follows.  The rust and decay and ugliness of the prison and its door foreshadow the gloom of the narrative to follow.  The landmarks of Puritanism, the prison and the cemetery, suggest the themes of punishment and death, themes that meet in the climax of the novel.  The rose, in its beauty, is Hawthorne's invitation to find "some sweet moral blossom" in the tragic tale that follows.

The third chapter of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter focuses on the punishment of Hester Prynne, her refusal to reveal the name of her lover, and the arrival of her husband in disguise. Your chosen quotations should refer to those major themes and events.

When Hester catches sight of her husband in the crowd, she notices that "one of this man's shoulders rose higher than the other." When she sees this and looks at his face, she presses "her infant to her bosom with so convulsive a force that the poor babe uttered another cry of pain." Hester never expects to see her husband standing there, yet she knows him at once, even in his Indian clothing. This shows Hester's powers of observation and quick mind. Further, the only indication of emotion she shows is clutching the child. This is an automatic reaction, but it can also symbolize her fear that someone might try to take her child from her.

When Hester's husband sees her, "A writhing horror twisted itself across his features, like a snake gliding swiftly over them, and making one little pause, with all its wreathed intervolutions in open sight." He then controls himself. This is an interesting, vivid metaphor that reveals the emotional state of the man as he realizes that his own wife is standing before the crowd in shame.

Hester's husband asks a bystander what Hester's offense is, and the man explains, also noting that she refuses to name the father of the child. "Peradventure the guilty one stands looking on at this sad spectacle, unknown of man, and forgetting that God sees him," the man says. This quotation captures the irony inherent in the story. The father of Hester's baby is indeed looking on, but he certainly knows that God sees him.

In response to the bystander's explanation of Hester's punishment, her husband-in-disguise wishes that her partner in adultery was standing next to her on that scaffold. Then he exclaims, "But he will be known—he will be known!—he will be known!" Hester's husband is making a promise to himself here. He is determined that he will find the guilty man himself. This is quite a forceful statement indeed.

Finally, Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale's message to Hester is of great importance. He tells her to name the man who fathered her child. "Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him," he says, "for, believe me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so than to hide a guilty heart throughout life." And Mr. Dimmesdale knows exactly what he is talking about.

Here is one of my favorite quotations from the entire book because of it's symbolism:

But, on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rose-bush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their 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.

On the one hand, this quote describing the rose bush next to the prison is rich with luscious literary devices that tantalize the reader. The author figuratively describes the roses as of great value by calling them "gems". These roses' abilities to offer the sensory details of sight and smell through "fragile beauty" and "fragrance" make us know they are not ordinary but meant for someone special, maybe even a person of great value. The idea that the bush is couched next to the door of a prison cell presents great paradox because the good and evil just don't mix, except for the one feature of a rose that pricks us all, the thorn. Finally the personification of Nature, as if it could have the emotion of feeling sorry for a criminal or extending kindness gives the bush status of almost a character in the story. Tying all of these ideas together leads me to believe the rose bush is a symbol of something, but I might not know what until later.

On the other hand, it displays so much of the story to come that a reader must sit with a longing wonder as to what the story is going to be about. A reader wonders at the crime that one must commit to earn this punishment. A reader wonders why the room might be so close to the cemetery. A reader wonders if a person who enters this room might have the value of the rose bush or the ability to hurt like a rose proving that appearances are and can be deceiving.