The Scarlet Letter

NOTHER VIEW OF HESTER.

In her late singular interview with Mr. Dimmesdale, Hester Prynne was
shocked at the condition to which she found the clergyman reduced. His
nerve seemed absolutely destroyed. His moral force was abased into
more than childish weakness. It grovelled helpless on the ground, even
while his intellectual faculties retained their pristine strength, or
had perhaps acquired a morbid energy, which disease only could have
given them. With her knowledge of a train of circumstances hidden from
all others, she could readily infer that, besides the legitimate
action of his own conscience, a terrible machinery had been brought to
bear, and was still operating, on Mr. Dimmesdale’s well-being and
repose. Knowing what this poor, fallen man had once been, her whole
soul was moved by the shuddering terror with which he had appealed to
her,—the outcast woman,—for support against his instinctively
discovered enemy. She decided, moreover, that he had a right to her
utmost aid. Little accustomed, in her long seclusion from society, to
measure her ideas of right and wrong by any standard external to
herself, Hester saw—or seemed to see—that there lay a responsibility
upon her, in reference to the clergyman, which she owed to no other,
nor to the whole world besides. The links that united her to the rest
of human kind—links of flowers, or silk, or gold, or whatever the
material—had all been broken. Here was the iron link of mutual crime,
which neither he nor she could break. Like all other ties, it brought
along with it its obligations.

Hester Prynne did not now occupy precisely the same position in which
we beheld her during the earlier periods of her ignominy. Years had
come and gone. Pearl was now seven years old. Her mother, with the
scarlet letter on her breast, glittering in its fantastic embroidery,
had long been a familiar object to the towns-people. As is apt to be
the case when a person stands out in any prominence before the
community, and, at the same time, interferes neither with public nor
individual interests and convenience, a species of general regard had
ultimately grown up in reference to Hester Prynne. It is to the credit
of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into
play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and
quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be
impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of
hostility. In this matter of Hester Prynne, there was neither
irritation nor irksomeness. She never battled with the public, but
submitted, uncomplainingly, to its worst usage; she made no claim upon
it, in requital for what she suffered; she did not weigh upon its
sympathies. Then, also, the blameless purity of her life during all
these years in which she had been set apart to infamy, was reckoned
largely in her favor. With nothing now to lose, in the sight of
mankind, and with no hope, and seemingly no wish, of gaining anything,
it could only be a genuine regard for virtue that had brought back the
poor wanderer to its paths.

[Illustration: Hester in the House of Mourning]

It was perceived, too, that while Hester never put forward even the
humblest title to share in the world’s privileges,—further than to
breathe the common air, and earn daily bread for little Pearl and
herself by the faithful labor of her hands,—she was quick to
acknowledge her sisterhood with the race of man, whenever benefits
were to be conferred. None so ready as she to give of her little
substance to every demand of poverty; even though the bitter-hearted
pauper threw back a gibe in requital of the food brought regularly to
his door, or the garments wrought for him by the fingers that could
have embroidered a monarch’s robe. None so self-devoted as Hester,
when pestilence stalked through the town. In all seasons of calamity,
indeed, whether general or of individuals, the outcast of society at
once found her place. She came, not as a guest, but as a rightful
inmate, into the household that was darkened by trouble; as if its
gloomy twilight were a medium in which she was entitled to hold
intercourse with her fellow-creatures. There glimmered the embroidered
letter, with comfort in its unearthly ray. Elsewhere the token of sin,
it was the taper of the sick-chamber. It had even thrown its gleam, in
the sufferer’s hard extremity, across the verge of time. It had shown
him where to set his foot, while the light of earth was fast becoming
dim, and ere the light of futurity could reach him. In such
emergencies, Hester’s nature showed itself warm and rich; a
well-spring of human tenderness, unfailing to every real demand, and
inexhaustible by the largest. Her breast, with its badge of shame, was
but the softer pillow for the head that needed one. She was
self-ordained a Sister of Mercy; or, we may rather say, the world’s
heavy hand had so ordained her, when neither the world nor she looked
forward to this result. The letter was the symbol of her calling. Such
helpfulness was found in her,—so much power to do, and power to
sympathize,—that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by
its original signification. They said that it meant Able; so strong
was Hester Prynne, with a woman’s strength.

It was only the darkened house that could contain her. When sunshine
came again, she was not there. Her shadow had faded across the
threshold. The helpful inmate had departed, without one backward
glance to gather up the meed of gratitude, if any were in the hearts
of those whom she had served so zealously. Meeting them in the
street, she never raised her head to receive their greeting. If they
were resolute to accost her, she laid her finger on the scarlet
letter, and passed on. This might be pride, but was so like humility,
that it produced all the softening influence of the latter quality on
the public mind. The public is despotic in its temper; it is capable
of denying common justice, when too strenuously demanded as a right;
but quite as frequently it awards more than justice, when the appeal
is made, as despots love to have it made, entirely to its generosity.
Interpreting Hester Prynne’s deportment as an appeal of this nature,
society was inclined to show its former victim a more benign
countenance than she cared to be favored with, or, perchance, than she
deserved.

The rulers, and the wise and learned men of the community, were longer
in acknowledging the influence of Hester’s good qualities than the
people. The prejudices which they shared in common with the latter
were fortified in themselves by an iron framework of reasoning, that
made it a far tougher labor to expel them. 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. Thus it was with the men of rank, on whom their eminent
position imposed the guardianship of the public morals. Individuals in
private life, meanwhile, had quite forgiven Hester Prynne for her
frailty; nay, more, they had begun to look upon the scarlet letter as
the token, not of that one sin, for which she had borne so long and
dreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since. “Do you see that
woman with the embroidered badge?” they would say to strangers. “It is
our Hester,—the town’s own Hester, who is so kind to the poor, so
helpful to the sick, so comfortable to the afflicted!” Then, it is
true, the propensity of human nature to tell the very worst of itself,
when embodied in the person of another, would constrain them to
whisper the black scandal of bygone years. It was none the less a
fact, however, that, in the eyes of the very men who spoke thus, the
scarlet letter had the effect of the cross on a nun’s bosom. It
imparted to the wearer a kind of sacredness, which enabled her to walk
securely amid all peril. Had she fallen among thieves, it would have
kept her safe. It was reported, and believed by many, that an Indian
had drawn his arrow against the badge, and that the missile struck it,
but fell harmless to the ground.

The effect of the symbol—or, rather, of the position in respect to
society that was indicated by it—on the mind of Hester Prynne
herself, was powerful and peculiar. All the light and graceful foliage
of her character had been withered up by this red-hot brand, and had
long ago fallen away, leaving a bare and harsh outline, which might
have been repulsive, had she possessed friends or companions to be
repelled by it. Even the attractiveness of her person had undergone a
similar change. It might be partly owing to the studied austerity of
her dress, and partly to the lack of demonstration in her manners. It
was a sad transformation, too, that her rich and luxuriant hair had
either been cut off, or was so completely hidden by a cap, that not a
shining lock of it ever once gushed into the sunshine. It was due in
part to all these causes, but still more to something else, that there
seemed to be no longer anything in Hester’s face for Love to dwell
upon; nothing in Hester’s form, though majestic and statue-like, that
Passion would ever dream of clasping in its embrace; nothing in
Hester’s bosom, to make it ever again the pillow of Affection. Some
attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been
essential to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate, and such
the stern development, of the feminine character and person, when the
woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar
severity. If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the
tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or—and the outward
semblance is the same—crushed so deeply into her heart that it can
never show itself more. The latter is perhaps the truest theory. She
who has once been woman, and ceased to be so, might at any moment
become a woman again if there were only the magic touch to effect the
transfiguration. We shall see whether Hester Prynne were ever
afterwards so touched, and so transfigured.

Much of the marble coldness of Hester’s impression was to be
attributed to the circumstance, that her life had turned, in a great
measure, from passion and feeling, to thought. Standing alone in the
world,—alone, as to any dependence on society, and with little Pearl
to be guided and protected,—alone, and hopeless of retrieving her
position, even had she not scorned to consider it desirable,—she cast
away the fragments of a broken chain. The world’s law was no law for
her mind. It was an age in which the human intellect, newly
emancipated, had taken a more active and a wider range than for many
centuries before. Men of the sword had overthrown nobles and kings.
Men bolder than these had overthrown and rearranged—not actually, but
within the sphere of theory, which was their most real abode—the
whole system of ancient prejudice, wherewith was linked much of
ancient principle. Hester Prynne imbibed this spirit. She assumed a
freedom of speculation, then common enough on the other side of the
Atlantic, but which our forefathers, had they known it, would have
held to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatized by the scarlet
letter. In her lonesome cottage, by the sea-shore, thoughts visited
her, such as dared to enter no other dwelling in New England; shadowy
guests, that would have been as perilous as demons to their
entertainer, could they have been seen so much as knocking at her
door.

It is remarkable, that persons who speculate the most boldly often
conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of
society. The thought suffices them, without investing itself in the
flesh and blood of action. So it seemed to be with Hester. Yet, had
little Pearl never come to her from the spiritual world, it might have
been far otherwise. Then, she might have come down to us in history,
hand in hand with Ann Hutchinson, as the foundress of a religious
sect. She might, in one of her phases, have been a prophetess. She
might, and not improbably would, have suffered death from the stern
tribunals of the period, for attempting to undermine the foundations
of the Puritan establishment. But, in the education of her child, the
mother’s enthusiasm of thought had something to wreak itself upon.
Providence, in the person of this little girl, had assigned to
Hester’s charge the germ and blossom of womanhood, to be cherished and
developed amid a host of difficulties. Everything was against her. The
world was hostile. The child’s own nature had something wrong in it,
which continually betokened that she had been born amiss,—the
effluence of her mother’s lawless passion,—and often impelled Hester
to ask, in bitterness of heart, whether it were for ill or good that
the poor little creature had been born at all.

Indeed, the same dark question often rose into her mind, with
reference to the whole race of womanhood. Was existence worth
accepting, even to the happiest among them? As concerned her own
individual existence, she had long ago decided in the negative, and
dismissed the point as settled. A tendency to speculation, though it
may keep woman quiet, as it does man, yet makes her sad. She discerns,
it may be, such a hopeless task before her. As a first step, the whole
system of society is to be torn down, and built up anew. Then, the
very nature of the opposite sex, or its long hereditary habit, which
has become like nature, is to be essentially modified, before woman
can be allowed to assume what seems a fair and suitable position.
Finally, all other difficulties being obviated, woman cannot take
advantage of these preliminary reforms, until she herself shall have
undergone a still mightier change; in which, perhaps, the ethereal
essence, wherein she has her truest life, will be found to have
evaporated. A woman never overcomes these problems by any exercise of
thought. They are not to be solved, or only in one way. If her heart
chance to come uppermost, they vanish. Thus, Hester Prynne, whose
heart had lost its regular and healthy throb, wandered without a clew
in the dark labyrinth of mind; now turned aside by an insurmountable
precipice; now starting back from a deep chasm. There was wild and
ghastly scenery all around her, and a home and comfort nowhere. At
times, a fearful doubt strove to possess her soul, whether it were not
better to send Pearl at once to heaven, and go herself to such
futurity as Eternal Justice should provide.

The scarlet letter had not done its office.

Now, however, her interview with the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the
night of his vigil, had given her a new theme of reflection, and held
up to her an object that appeared worthy of any exertion and sacrifice
for its attainment. She had witnessed the intense misery beneath
which the minister struggled, or, to speak more accurately, had ceased
to struggle. She saw that he stood on the verge of lunacy, if he had
not already stepped across it. It was impossible to doubt, that,
whatever painful efficacy there might be in the secret sting of
remorse, a deadlier venom had been infused into it by the hand that
proffered relief. A secret enemy had been continually by his side,
under the semblance of a friend and helper, and had availed himself of
the opportunities thus afforded for tampering with the delicate
springs of Mr. Dimmesdale’s nature. Hester could not but ask herself,
whether there had not originally been a defect of truth, courage, and
loyalty, on her own part, in allowing the minister to be thrown into a
position where so much evil was to be foreboded, and nothing
auspicious to be hoped. Her only justification lay in the fact, that
she had been able to discern no method of rescuing him from a blacker
ruin than had overwhelmed herself, except by acquiescing in Roger
Chillingworth’s scheme of disguise. Under that impulse, she had made
her choice, and had chosen, as it now appeared, the more wretched
alternative of the two. She determined to redeem her error, so far as
it might yet be possible. Strengthened by years of hard and solemn
trial, she felt herself no longer so inadequate to cope with Roger
Chillingworth as on that night, abased by sin, and half maddened by
the ignominy that was still new, when they had talked together in the
prison-chamber. She had climbed her way, since then, to a higher
point. The old man, on the other hand, had brought himself nearer to
her level, or perhaps below it, by the revenge which he had stooped
for.

In fine, Hester Prynne resolved to meet her former husband, and do
what might be in her power for the rescue of the victim on whom he
had so evidently set his gripe. The occasion was not long to seek. One
afternoon, walking with Pearl in a retired part of the peninsula, she
beheld the old physician, with a basket on one arm, and a staff in the
other hand, stooping along the ground, in quest of roots and herbs to
concoct his medicines withal.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

XIV.