The narrator also explores Hester's inner nature, suggesting that here change has not occurred, at least not the change that the community had expected.
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 any thing 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 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 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 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 of it, would have held to be a
deadlier crime than that stigmatized 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. Every thing 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 woman 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 clew 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.
