“In giving her existence, a great law had been broken; and the result was a being, whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder; or with an order peculiar to themselves, amidst which the point of variety and arrangement was difficult or impossible to be discovered.” IndividualityAutismBipolar DisorderScarlet Letter Book:The Scarlet Letter Source: The Scarlet Letter
“Lady Shaded G by Stewart Stafford This thorned rose is a perfumed pox, Rumours dog her as contagion itself; Breeding cherubs with batons sinister, Her trail leads to noblest chambers. Mothers warn sons not to mount, This mare of the rampant night, With dead eyes of a dark frontier, Her black dress does smother all. Fair Tiffany's skin flashes with iron, Once seen, wantonness shadows, Shady whispers inflame her temerity, A rock for purple ships a-crashing. © Stewart Stafford, 2023. All rights reserved.” PassionSexReputationScandalRumorRumoursRumorsScandalsRumourScarlet Letter Author:Stewart Stafford
“She felt just like that girl in that book with the letter A on her chest. Only her A signified Alone. She was an outcast, cast out by her own choices, an outsider with a pretty face. Like a rose, she may have been beautiful to look at, but almost everyone only knew the thorny side.” LonelinessAloneOutcastScarlet Letter Book:Their Friend Scarlet Source: Their Friend Scarlet
“Throughout them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast-- at her, the child of honorable parents--at her, who had once been innocent---as the figure, the body, the reality of sin.” SinShameInnocenceAdulteryScarlet Letter Book:The Scarlet Letter Source: The Scarlet Letter
“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. Clergymen paused in the street to address words of exhortation, that brought a crowd, with its mingled grin and frown, around the poor, sinful woman. If she entered a church, trusting to share the Sabbath smile of the Universal Father, it was often her mishap to find herself the text of the discourse.” SinPunishmentScarlet Letter Book:The Scarlet Letter Source: The Scarlet Letter