The Scarlet Letter: A Romance - Section 08 - Hester at Her Needle

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dream Ario Books presents section eight of The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Chapter five, Hester at her needle. Hester
Prynne's term of confinement was now at an end. Her
prison door was thrown open, and she came forth into
the sunshine, which, falling on all alike, seemed to her

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sick and morbid heart, as if meant for no other
purpose than to reveal the Scarlet Letter on her breast.
Perhaps there was a more real torture in her first
unattended footsteps from the threshold of the prison than even
in the procession and spectacle that had been described, where
she was made the common infamy at which all mankind

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was summoned to point its finger. Then she was supported
by an unnatural tension of the nerves, and by all
the combative energy of her character, which enabled her to
convert the scene into a kind of lurid triumph. It
was moreover a se and insulated event to occur but
once in her lifetime, and to meet which therefore reckless

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of economy, she might call up the vital strength that
would have sufficed for many quiet years the very law
that condemned her. A giant of stern features but with
vigor to support as well as annihilate. In his iron
arm had held her up through the terrible ordeal of
her ignominy. But now with this unattended walk from her

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prison door began the daily custom, and she must either
sustain and carry it forward by the ordinary resources of
her nature, or sink beneath it. She could no longer
borrow from the future to help her through the present grief.
Tomorrow would bring its own trial with it, so with
the next day, and so with the next, each its

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own trial. And yet the very same that was now
so unutterably grievous to be borne. The days of the
far off future would oil onward still with the same
burden for her to take up and bear along with her,
but never to fling down, for the accumulating days and
added years would pile up their misery upon the heap

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of shame throughout them all. Giving up her individuality, she
would become the general symbol at which the preacher and
moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and
embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus
the young and pure would be taught to look at
her with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast, at her,

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the child of honorable parents, at her, the mother of
a babe that would hereafter be a woman, at her
who had once been innocent, as the figure the body
the reality of sin, and over her grave, the infamy
that she must carry thither would be her only monument.

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It may see seem marvelous that, with the world before her,
kept by no restrictive clause of her condemnation, within the
limits of the Puritan settlement, so remote and so obscure,
free to return to her birthplace or to any other
European land, and there hide her character and identity under
a new exterior, as completely as if emerging into another

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state of being, and having also the passes of the dark,
inscrutable forest open to her, where the wildness of her
nature might assimilate itself with the people whose customs and
life were alien from the law that had condemned her.
It may seem marvelous that this woman should still call
that place her home, where and where only she must

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needs be the type of shame. But there is a fatality,
a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the
force of doom which almost invariably compels human beings to
linger around and haunt ghost like the spot where some
great and marked event has given the color to their lifetime.

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And still the more irresistibly the darker the tinge that
saddens it, her sin, her ignominy were the roots which
she had struck into the soil. It was as if
a new birth, with stronger assimilations than the first, had
converted the forest land, still so uncongenial to every other

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pilgrim and wanderer, into Hester, Prynne's wild and dreary but
life long home all other scenes of Earth, even that
village of rural England, where happy infancy and stainless maidenhood
seemed yet to be in her mother's keeping, like garments
put off long ago or foreign to her. In comparison,

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the chain that bound her here was of iron lynx
and galling to her inmost soul, but could never be broken.
It might be, too, doubtless. It was so, although she
hid the secret from herself and grew pale whenever it
struggled out of her heart like a serpent from its hole.
It might be that another feeling kept her within the

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scene and pathway that had been so fatal. There dwelt,
there trod the feet of one with whom she deemed
herself connected in a union that, unrecognized on earth, would
bring them together before the bar of final judgment, and
make that their marriage alter for a joint futurity of
endless retribution. Over and over again. The tempter of souls

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had thrust this idea upon Hester's contemplation, and laughed at
the passionate and desperate joy with which she seized, and
then strove to cast it from her. She barely looked
the idea in the face, and hastened to bar it
in its dungeon. What she compelled herself to believe, what
finally she reasoned upon as her motive for continuing a

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resident of New England, was half a truth and half
a self delusion. Here, she said to herself, had been
the scene of her guilt, and here should be the
scene of her earthly punishment, and so perchance the torture
of her daily shame would at length purge her soul
and work out another purity than that which she had lost,

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more saint like. Because the result of martyrdom, Hester Prynne
therefore did not flee on the outskirts of the town,
within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close
vicinity to any other habitation, there was a small thatched cottage.
It had been built by an earlier settler and abandoned

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because the soil about it was too sterile for cultivation.
While its comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere
of that social activity which already marked the habits of
the emigrants. It stood on the shore, looking across a
basin of the sea at the forest covered hills towards
the west. A clump of scrubby trees, such as alone

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grew on the peninsula, did not so much conceal the
cottage from view as seemed to denote that here was
some object which would fain have been, or at least
ought to be concealed in this little lonesome dwelling with
some slender means that she possessed, and, by the license
of the magistrates, who still kept an inquisitorial watch over her,

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hester established herself with her infant child. A mystic shadow
of suspicion immediately attached itself to the spot. Children too
young to comprehend. Wherefore this woman should be shut out
from the sphere of human charities, would creep nigh enough
to behold her plying her needle at the cottage window,

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or standing in the doorway, or laboring in her little garden,
or coming forth along the pathway that led to townward,
and discerning the scarlet's letter on her breast, would scamp
her off with a strange, contagious fear. Lonely as was
Hester's situation, and without a friend on earth who dared

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to show himself. She, however, incurred no risk of want.
She possessed an art that sufficed, even in a land
that afforded comparatively little scope for its exercise, to supply
food for her thriving infant and herself. It was the art,
then as now, almost the only one within a woman's

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grasp of needlework. She bore on her breast in the
curiously embroidered letter, a specimen of her delicate and imaginative skill,
of which the dames of a court might gladly have
availed themselves to add the richer and more spiritual adornment
of human ingenuity to their fabrics of silk and gold. Here, indeed,

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in the sable simplicity that generally characterized the Puritanic modes
of dress. There might be an infrequent call for the
finer productions of her handiwork. Yet the taste of the age,
demanding whatever was elaborate in compositions of this kind, did
not fail to extend its influence over our stern progenitors,

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who had cast behind them so many fashions which it
might seem harder to dispense with. Public ceremonies, such as ordinations,
the installation of magistrates, and all that could give majesty
to The forms in which a new government manifested itself
to the people were as a matter of policy, marked
by a stately and well conducted ceremonial and a somber,

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but yet a studied magnificence. Deep ruffs, painfully wrought bands,
and gorgeously embroidered gloves were all deemed necessary to the
official state of men assuming the reigns of power, and
were readily allowed to individuals dignified by rank or wealth,
even while sumptuary laws forbade these and similar extravagances to

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the plebeian or in the array of funerals too, whether
for the apparel of the dead body or to typify
by manifold emblematic devices of sable cloth and snowy lawn,
the sorrow of the survivors. There was a frequent and
characteristic demand for such labour, as Hester Prynne could supply

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baby linen for babies, then wore robes of state, afforded
still another possibility of toil and emolument. By degrees nor
very slowly her handiwork became what would now be termed
the fashion, whether from commiseration for a woman of so
miserable a destiny, or from the morbid curiosity that gives

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a fictitious value even to common or worthless things, or
by whatever other intangible circumstance was then as now sufficient
to bestow on some persons what others might seek in vain.
Or because Hester really filled a gap which must otherwise
have remained vacant. It is certain that she had ready

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and fairly requited employment for as many hours as she
saw fit to occupy with her needle. Vanity, it may
be chose to mortify itself by putting on for ceremonials
of pomp and state the garments that had been wrought
by her sinful hands. Her needlework was seen on the
roff of the governor. Military men wore it on their scarves,

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and the minister on his band. It decked the baby's
little cap. It was shut up to be mildewed and
molder away in the coffins of the dead. But it
is not recorded that in a single instance her skill
was called in to embroider the white veil, which was
to cover the pure blushes of a bride. The exception

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indicated the ever relentless rigor with which society frowned upon her.
Sin Hester sought not to acquire anything beyond the subsistence
of the plainest and most ascetic description for herself and
a simple abundance for her child. Her own dress was
of the coarsest materials and the most somber hue, with

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only that one ornament the scarlet letter, which it was
her doom to wear. The child's attire, on the other hand,
was distinguished by a fanciful, or we might rather say,
a fantastic ingenuity, which served indeed to heighten the airy
charm that early began to develop itself in the little girl,

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but which appeared to have also a deeper meaning. We
may speak further of it hereafter, except for that small
expenditure in the decoration of her infant, Hester bestowed all
her superfluous means in charity on wretches less miserable than herself,
and who not unfrequently insulted the hand that fed them.

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Much of the time which she might readily have applied
to the better efforts of her art, she employed in
making coarse garments for the poor. It is probable that
there was an idea of penance in this mode of occupation,
and that she offered up a real sacrifice of enjoyment
in devoting so many hours to such rude handiwork. She

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had in her nature a rich, voluptuous, oriental characteristic, a
taste for the gorgeously beautiful, which, save in the exquisite
productions of her needle, found nothing else in all the
possibilities of her life to exercise itself upon women derive
a pleasure incomprehensible to the other sex from the delicate

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toil of the needle. To Hester Prynne, it might have
been a mode of expressing and therefore soothing the passion
of her life, like all other joys. She rejected it
as sin, this morbid meddling of conscience with an immaterial
matter betokened, it is to be feared no genuine and

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steadfast penitence, but something doubtful, something that might be deeply
wrong beneath. In this manner, hester Prynne came to have
a part to perform in the world. With her native
energy of character and rare capacity. It could not entirely
cast her off, although it had set a mark upon

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her more intolerable to a woman's heart than that which
branded the brow of Cain. In all her intercourse with society, however,
there was nothing that made her feel as if she
belonged to it. Every gesture, every word, and even the
silence of those with whom she came in contact implied

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and often expressed that she was banished and as much alone,
as if she inhabited another sphere, or communicated with the
common nature by other organs and senses than the rest
of humankind. She stood apart from moral interests, yet close
beside them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside

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and can no longer make itself seen or felt. No
more smile with the household joy, nor mourn with the
kindred's sorrow, or should it succeed in manifesting its forbidden sympathy,
awaking only terror and horrible repugnance. These motions, in fact,
and its bitterest scorn, besides, seemed to be the sole

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portion that she retained in the universal heart. It was
not an age of delicacy, and her position, although she
understood it well and was in little danger of forgetting, it,
was often brought before her vivid self perception like a
new anguish, by the rudest touch upon the tenderest spot.

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The poor, as we have already said, whom she sought
out to be the objects of her bounty, often reviled
the hand that was stretched forth to sucker them. Dames
of elevated rank, likewise, whose doors she entered in the
way of her occupation, were accustomed to distill drops of
bitterness into her heart, sometimes through that alchemy of quiet

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malice by which women can concoct to subtle poison from
ordinary trifles, and sometimes also by a coarser expression that
fell upon the sufferer's defenseless breast like a rough blow
upon an ulcerated wound. Hester had schooled herself long and well.
She never responded to these attacks, save by a flush

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of crimson that rose irrepressibly over her pale cheek, and
again subsided into the depths of her bosom. She was
patient a martyr, indeed, but she foreboret a prey for enemies, lest,
in spite of her forgiving aspirations, the words of the
blessing should stubbornly twist themselves into a curse. Continually, and

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in a thousand other ways did she feel the innumerable
throbs of anguish that had been so cunningly contrived for
her by the undying the ever active sentence of the
Puritan tribunal clergymen paused in the street to address words
of exhortation that brought a crowd with its mingled grin
and frown round the poor, sinful woman. If she entered

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a church, trusting to share the Sabbath smile of the
universal Father, it was often her mishap to find herself
the text of the discourse. She grew to have a
dread of children, for they had imbibed from their parents
a vague idea of something horrible in this dreary woman,
gliding silently through the town with never any companion but

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one only child. Therefore, first allowing her to pass, they
pursued her at a distance, with shrill cries and the
utterance of a word that had no distinct purport to
their own mind, but was none the less terrible to her,
as proceeding from lips that babbled it unconsciously. It seemed

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to argue so wide a diffusion of her shame that
all nature knew of it. It could have caused her
no deeper pang. Had the leaves of the trees whispered
the dark story among themselves at the summer breeze, murmured
about it at the wintery blast, shrieked it aloud. Another
peculiar torture was felt in the gaze of a new

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eye when strangers looked curiously at the scarlet letter, and
none ever failed to do so. They branded it afresh
into Hester's soul, so that oftentimes she could scarcely refrain,
yet always did refrain from covering the symbol with her hand.
But then again, an accustomed eye had likewise its own

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anguish to inflict, its cool stare of familiarity was intolerable
from first to last. In short, Hester Prynne had always
this dreadful agony in feeling a human eye upon the token.
The spot never grew callous, it seemed, on the contrary,
to grow more sensitive with daily torture. But sometimes once

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in many days, or perchance in many months, she felt
an eye, a human eye, upon the ignominious brand that
seemed to give a momentary relief, as if half of
her agony were shared. The next instant back it all
rushed again, with still a deeper throb of pain, For
in that brief interval she had sinned anew, had Hester

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sinned alone, her imagination was somewhat affected, and had she
been of a softer moral and intellectual fiber, would have
been still more so by the strange and solitary anguish
of her life, walking to and fro with those lonely
footsteps in the little world with which she was outwardly connected.

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It now and then appeared to Hester, if altogether fancy,
it was nevertheless too potent to be resisted. She felt
or fancied then that the scarlet letter had endowed her
with a new sense. She shuddered to believe, yet could
not help believing that it gave her a sympathetic knowledge
of the hidden sin in other hearts. She was terror

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stricken by the revelations that were thus made, What were they?
Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the
bad angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman,
as yet only half his victim, that the outward guise
of purity was but a lie, and that if truth
were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze

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forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne's. Or must
she receive those intimations so obscure yet so distinct as truth?
In all her miserable experience, there was nothing else so
awful and so loathsome as this sense. It perplexed as

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well as shocked her by the irreverent inopportuneness of the
occasions that brought it into vivid action. Sometimes the red
infamy upon her breast would give a sympathetic throb as
she passed near a venerable minister or magistrate, the model
of piety and justice, to whom that age of antique
reverence looked up as to a mortal man in fellowship

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with angels? What evil thing is at hand? Would Hester
say to herself, lifting her reluctant eyes. There would be
nothing human within the scope of view save the form
of this earthly saint. Again a mystic sisterhood would contumaciously
assert itself as she met the sanctified frown of some matron, who,

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according to the rumor of all tongues, had kept cold
snow within her bosom throughout life. That unsummed snow in
the matron's bosom, and the burning shame on Hester Prynne's
what had the two in common? Or? Once more, the
electric thrill would give her warning, behold, Hester, here is

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a companion, And looking up, she would detect the eyes
of a young maiden glancing at the scarlet letter shyly
and aside, and quickly averted with a faint chill crimson
in her cheeks, as if her purity were somewhat sullied
by that momentary glance. Oh fiend whose talisman was that
fatal symbol, wouldst thou leave nothing, whether in youth or age,

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for this poor sinner to revere? Such loss of faith is,
ever one of the saddest results of sin, be it
accepted as a proof that all was not corrupt in
this poor victim of her own frailty and man's hard law,
that Hester Prine yet struggled to believe that no fellow
mortal was guilty like herself. The vulgar, who in those

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dreary old times were always contributing a grotesque horror to
what interested their imaginations, had a story about the scarlet letter,
which we might readily work up into a terrific legend.
They have averred that the symbol was not mere scarlet
cloth tinged in an earthly dipod, but was red hot
with infernal fire, and could be seen glowing all alight

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whenever Hester Prynne walked abroad in the night time, and
we must needs say it seared Hester's bosom so deeply
that perhaps there was more truth in the rumour than
our modern incredulity may be inclined to admit. End of
Section eight. Dream Audiobooks hopes you have enjoyed this program.