Nathaniel Hawthorne/Nathaniel Hawthorne.iso/pc/articles/a1/t0007

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                                                          V                                                       88
                                          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 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 have been described,
where she was made the common infamy, at which all mankind 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 separate and insulated event, to occur but once in her lifetime,
and to meet which, therefore, reckless 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 to annihilate, in his iron arm--had held her up, through the terrible
ordeal of her ignominy. But now, with this unattended walk from her
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. To-morrow would bring its own trial with it; so would the next day,
and so would the next; each its own trial, and yet the very same that was
now so unutterably grievous to be borne. The days of the far-off future
would toil onward, still with the same burden for her to take up, and bear
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along with her, but never to fling down; for the accumulating days, and
added years, would pile up their misery upon the heap 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, 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.
     It may seem marvellous, 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 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 a people whose customs
and life were alien from the law that had condemned her,--it may seem
marvellous, that this woman should still call that place her home, where,
and where only, she must 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
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their lifetime; 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 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--were foreign to her, in comparison. The
chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling to her inmost soul,
but never could 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 scene and
pathway that had been so fatal. There dwelt, there trode 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-altar, for a joint futurity of endless retribution. Over and
over again, the tempter of souls 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
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
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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; 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, 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 grew on the
peninsula, did not so much conceal the cottage from view, as seem 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, 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, or standing in the door-
way, or laboring in her little garden, or coming forth along the pathway that
led townward; and, discerning the scarlet letter on her breast, would
scamper off, with a strange, contagious fear.
     Lonely as was Hester's situation, and without a friend on earth who
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dared 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
grasp--of needle-work. 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, 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, 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 sombre, 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 reins of
power; and were readily allowed to individuals dignified by rank or wealth,
even while sumptuary laws forbade these and similar extravagances to the
plebeian order. 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
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snowy lawn, the sorrow of the survivors,--there was a frequent and
characteristic demand for such labor as Hester Prynne could supply. 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 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 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 needle-work was seen on the ruff of the Governor;
military men wore it on their scarfs, and the minister on his band; it decked
the baby's little cap; it was shut up, to be mildewed and moulder away, in
the coffins of the dead. But it is not recorded that, in a single instance, her
skill was called in aid to embroider the white veil which was to cover the
pure blushes of a bride. The exception indicated the ever relentless vigor
with which society frowned upon her sin.
     Hester sought not to acquire any thing beyond a 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
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sombre hue; with 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, 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. 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 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 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 stedfast
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
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world. With her native energy of character, and rare capacity, it could not
entirely cast her off, although it had set a mark upon 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, 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 human kind. She stood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside
them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make
itself seen or felt; no more smile with the household joy, nor mourn with the
kindred sorrow; or, should it succeed in manifesting its forbidden
sympathy, awakening only terror and horrible repugnance. These emotions,
in fact, and its bitterest scorn besides, seemed to be the sole 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. 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 succor them. Dames of elevated
rank, likewise, whose doors she entered in the way of her occupation, were
accustomed to distil drops of bitterness into her heart; sometimes through
that alchemy of quiet malice, by which women can concoct a subtile poison
from ordinary trifles; and sometimes, also, by a coarser expression, that fell
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upon the sufferer's defenceless 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 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 forbore to pray for her enemies; lest, in spite of her
forgiving aspirations, the words of the blessing should stubbornly twist
themselves into a curse.
     Continually, and 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, around the poor, sinful woman. If she entered 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 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 minds, but was none the
less terrible to her, as proceeding from lips that babbled it unconsciously. It
seemed 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,--had the summer breeze
murmured about it,--had the wintry blast shrieked it aloud! Another peculiar
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torture was felt in the gaze of a new 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 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 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 sinned alone?
     Her imagination was somewhat affected, and, had she been of a softer
moral and intellectual fibre, 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, 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-stricken by the revelations that were thus made.
What were they? Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the bad
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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 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 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
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, according to the rumor of all tongues, had kept cold snow
within her bosom throughout life. That unsunned 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 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. O 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 Prynne yet
struggled to believe that no fellow-mortal was guilty like herself.
     The vulgar, who, in those 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
averred, that the symbol was not mere scarlet cloth, tinged in an earthly dye-
pot, but was red-hot with infernal fire, and could be seen glowing all alight,
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 rumor than our modern incredulity may be inclined to admit.