1 The discipline of the family in those days was of a far more rigid kind than now.
2 Day by day, nevertheless, their sour and rigid wrinkles were relaxing into something which, in the due course of years, might grow to be an expression of almost benevolence.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In XIII. ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER 3 All such professors of the several branches of jocularity would have been sternly repressed, not only by the rigid discipline of law, but by the general sentiment which give law its vitality.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In XXI. THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY 4 It had reached her ears that there was a design on the part of some of the leading inhabitants, cherishing the more rigid order of principles in religion and government, to deprive her of her child.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In VII. THE GOVERNOR'S HALL 5 Amongst any other population, or at a later period in the history of New England, the grim rigidity that petrified the bearded physiognomies of these good people would have augured some awful business in hand.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In II. THE MARKET-PLACE 6 The impression made by his aspect, so rigid and severe, and frost-bitten with more than autumnal age, was hardly in keeping with the appliances of worldly enjoyment wherewith he had evidently done his utmost to surround himself.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In VIII. THE ELF-CHILD AND THE MINISTER 7 It remarkably characterised the incomplete morality of the age, rigid as we call it, that a licence was allowed the seafaring class, not merely for their freaks on shore, but for far more desperate deeds on their proper element.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In XXI. THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY 8 But, out of the whole human family, it would not have been easy to select the same number of wise and virtuous persons, who should be less capable of sitting in judgment on an erring woman's heart, and disentangling its mesh of good and evil, than the sages of rigid aspect towards whom Hester Prynne now turned her face.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In III. THE RECOGNITION 9 Now, if never before, it answered a good purpose by enabling Hester and the seaman to speak together without risk of being overheard; and so changed was Hester Prynne's repute before the public, that the matron in town, most eminent for rigid morality, could not have held such intercourse with less result of scandal than herself.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In XXI. THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY 10 Of an impulsive and passionate nature, she had fortified herself to encounter the stings and venomous stabs of public contumely, wreaking itself in every variety of insult; but there was a quality so much more terrible in the solemn mood of the popular mind, that she longed rather to behold all those rigid countenances contorted with scornful merriment, and herself the object.
The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel HawthorneContextHighlight In II. THE MARKET-PLACE