Chapter 13 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 seashore, 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.