Passage From the Text
" Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-peru, and such unsightly vegetation which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison. 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." (54)
Response to the Text
1) The imagery in this part of the novel reveals the nature of the Puritan's utopia as well as the role of nature in the novel. Being the first chapter of the story, the imagery foreshadows the attitudes and actions of the general Puritan population of Boston at this time. The unsightly weeds that have grown near the prison are not a foreboding omen of the prison, but of the people and the society that created the prison. The prison is the "black flower" of the area, but the Puritan society is responsible for planting the black flower and allowing it to bloom to show their true colors. Likewise, the rose bush outside of the prison doors is meant to represent Hester and Pearl. The beauty of the rose bush is a characteristic that is shared among both Pearl and Hester, and the red roses are similar to Hester's scarlet letter. The most important characteristic of the rosebush is that it is a "token (from) the deep heart of Nature". Pearl in particular proves to be so closely linked to nature that she herself seems to be a child of nature just as much as the rosebush is. Her spontaneity, bright dress, and wild dialogue make her very distinctly different from the Puritans in Boston. Nature being capitalized in the text also leads to it being viewed as less of a phenomenon and more of a deity that is always present.