"Children, too young to comprehend wherefore this woman should be shut out from the sphere of human charities, would creep nigh enough to behold her plying her needle at the cottage-window, or standing in the door-way, or laboring in her little garden, or coming forth along the pathway that led townward; and, discerning the scarlet letter on her breast, would scamper off, with a strange, contagious fear" (56).
"[Hester] grew to have a dread of children; for they had imbibed from their parents a vague idea of something horrible in this dreary woman" (58).
These passages from chapter five are direct examples of how children learn to hate what they don't even understand from a very early age. In this Puritan city, none of the children are born hating adulteresses, but they are taught by their parents to be afraid and disgusted with them. Children copy their parents' actions which in turn results in them mirroring any of their discriminatory actions. Without even possessing a real understanding of what it means to commit adultery, the children look down on Hester Prynne nonetheless. Hawthorne is dissecting the American flaw of passing on hatred and intolerance to our children, which in turn causes a cycle of ignorance from generation to generation.
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