The Scarlet Letter: A Romance - Section 16 - Another View of Hester

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dream Adio Books presents section sixteen of The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Chapter thirteen another view of Hester in
her late singular interview with mister Dimmesdale. Hester Prynne was
shocked at the condition to which she found the clergyman reduced.

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His nerve seemed absolutely destroyed. His moral force was abased
into more than childish weakness. It groveled 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

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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 mister Dimsdale's well being and repose. Knowing what this
poor fallen man had won, her whole soul was moved

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by the shuddering terror with which she 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 or wrong by any

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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 lynx that united her to
the rest of human kind. Links of flowers or silk,
or gold or whatever the material had all been broken.

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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
know 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,

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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 with neither public nor
individual interests and convenience. A species of general regard had

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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

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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

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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,

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it could only be a genuine regard for virtue that
had brought the poor wanderer back 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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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not there. A shadow had faded across the threshold the
helpful inmate had departed without one backward glance to gather
up the need 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,

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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

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more than justice when the appeal is made, as despots
loved 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

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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,

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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,

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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

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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

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of the very men who spoke thus the scarlet letter
had the effect of a cross on a nun's bosom.
It imparted to the wearer a kind of sacredness which
enabled her to walk so purely amid all peril. Had
she fallen among thieves, it would have kept her safe.
It was reported and believed by many that an Indian

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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

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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

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to the lack of demonstration in her manners. It was
a sad transfer, 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,

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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

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essential to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate,
and such the stern development of the feminine character and person,
where 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

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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 transformation. We

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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

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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

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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

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linked much of ancient principle. Hester Prynne imbibed the 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

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her lonesome cottage by the sea shore, thoughts visited her,
such as dead 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

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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

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come down to us in history hand in hand with
Anne 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,

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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 German 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

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nature had something wrong in it, which continually betokened that
she had been born amiss the affluence of her mother's
lawless passion, and often impelled Hester to ask, in bitterness
of heart, whether it were for good or ill that
the poor little creature had been born at all. Indeed,
the same dark question often rose into her mind with

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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 pointer as settled endency to speculation. Though
it may keep woman quiet as it does man, yet

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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,

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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

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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 chanced to come uppermost, they vanish. Thus
hester Prynne, whose heart had lost its regular and healthy throb,

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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

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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 mister Dimmesdale on the night
of his vigil had given her a new theme of reflection,

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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

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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 friend and helper, and had availed himself of the
opportunities thus afforded for tampering with the delicate springs of

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mister Dimmesdale's nature. Esther 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

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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

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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

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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 fene 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

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had so evidently set his grip. 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 end of

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Section sixteen. Dream Audio Books hopes you have enjoyed this program.