Chapter Chapter 13 · ANOTHER VIEW OF HESTER

. ANOTHER 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 owned to no other, nor to the whole world

besides. The links that united her to the rest of humankind—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 townspeople. 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

favour. 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.

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 labour 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-creature. 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 sympathise—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 favoured 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 frame-work of reasoning, that made

it a far tougher labour 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, and 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 a woman, and ceased to

be so, might at any moment become a woman again, if there were only the

magic touch to effect the transformation. 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 fragment 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 stigmatised 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 women 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 clue 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 medicine withal.

XIV.