The Scarlet Letter

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.