Throughout the Inferno, Dante is scolded by his guide Virgil. Similarly, in Purgatorio, Dante is scolded like a mother to a child by his lover, Beatrice. Dante is scolded by two of the most important people to him. In canto 30 of the Inferno, Dante is watching Sinon and Master agrue and go back and forth. Virgil comes and hits Dante in the back of his head and tells him to stop watching this shameful argument. In lines 130-136:

I was all intent to listen to them, when my master

said to me: “Now keep looking, for I am not far from

quarreling with you!”

When I heard him speak to me angrily, I turned

toward him with such shamethat it dizzies me in

memory.

Dante hangs his head in shame and Virgil after seeing this takes him under his arm and forgives him. Just as a mother scolds her child and the child is ashamed; the mother feels bad and shows affection to her child. In canto 30 of the Purgatorio, the moment everyone has been waiting for: the appearance of Dante’s beloved Beatrice. When she first appears, Dante is taken back by her beauty and like a scared child turns to Virgil for answers. Virgil was gone. Dante starts panicking wondering where Virgil could’ve gone and as he is about to cry Beatrice scolds him. Beatrice foreshadows that Dante will encounter another terrible wound so he should save his tears. Without mercy, she scolds him for crying in the earthly paradise; the place where men are supposed to be happy. Dante hangs his head in shame and then sees his shameful reflection in the stream. Beatrice is compared to scolding Dante as her child. As shown in lines 73-81:

“Look at us well! Truly I am, truly am

Beatrice. How have you designed to approach thee

mountain? Did you not know that here mankind is

happy?”

My eyes fell down to the clear spring, but,

seeing myself there, I turned them to the grass,

such shameweighed down my brow:

so as a mother seems severe to her son as she

seemed to me, for bitter is the flavor of

compassion still unripe.