Chapter 15-22 Notes/Outline

Chapter 15: Hester and Pearl

• Once again Chillingworth is gathering herbs
• How evil is Chillingworth
  -Do thing turn evil at the touch of his hand?
  -Would he leave behind evil or grow wings and fly away? (158).
• Hester questions the fact that she ever married him.
  -“‘He betrayed me! He has done me worse wrong than I did him!’” (159).
• Pearl searches for a “pastime”
  -One moment evokes a sense of empathy within Pearl
  -With her pockets full of pebbles, she prepares herself to hit them but does not do it because she didn’t want to cause harm to a small being (161).
  -Pearl “inherited her mother’s gift for devising drapery and costume” (161).
  -Gathers eel-grass and forms a freshly green A on her chest
• Pearl asks for an explanation as to why her mother wears the scarlet letter (162).
• Hester came to believe that perhaps Pearl was mature enough to handle information regarding Hester’s lifestyle (162).
  -“The steadfast principles of an unflinching courage” (162).
  

Chapter 16: A Forest Walk

• Hester was determined to reveal Chillingworth’s true motive to Dimmesdale
  -“Hester Prynne remained constant in her resolve to make known to Mr. Dimmesdale, at whatever risk of present pain or ulterior consequences, the true character of the man who had crept into his intimacy” (164).
  -Hester avoided meeting Dimmesdale in his study
• Once again, Pearl makes a remark regarding the scarlet letter
  -“‘The sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom” (165).
• Sunshine vanishes as Hester approaches
• During their walk through the forest, Hester explains Pearl’s nature
  -“Never failing vivacity of spirits; she had not the disease of sadness, which almost all children… inherit” (166).
  -“She wanted¾what some people want throughout life¾a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanize and make her capable of sympathy” (166).
• Pearl
  -Hears stories about the “Black Man”
  -Was told that her mother’s scarlet letter was the Black Man’s mark on Hester
  -“this scarlet letter was the Black Man’s mark on thee, and that it glows like a red flame when thou meetest him at midnight, here in the dark wood” (167).
  -Hester confesses to Pearl that the scarlet letter is the “Black Man’s Mark”
  -Pearl is compared to the brook
  -“Pearl resembled the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from a well-spring as mysterious, and had flowed through scenes shadowed as heavily with gloom” (169).
  -Pearl mentioning Dimmesdale’s hand on his chest is very ironic considering she doesn’t know that he is her father
  -And, mother, he has his hand over his heart! Is it because, when the minister write his name in the book, the Black Man set his mark in that place? But why does he not wear it outside his bosom, as thou dost, mother?’” (169).
• Dimmesdale’s appearance
  -“He looked haggard and feeble, and betrayed a nerveless despondency in his air, which had never so remarkably characterized him in his walks about the settlement, nor in any other situation where he deemed himself liable to notice” (170).

Chapter 17: The Pastor and his Parishioner

• The Encounter: Both Dimmesdale and Hester so rarely met that they questioned each other’s existence
  -“It was no that they thus questioned one another’s actual and bodily existence, and even doubted of their own” (171).
  -“It was with fear, and tremulously, and as it were, by a slow, reluctant necessity, that Arthur Dimmesdale put forth his hand, chill as death, and touched the chill hand of Hester Prynne” (171).
• Dimmesdale’s thoughts
  -Believes that Hester had it better off because she has received absolution for her sin unlike himself.
  -“Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! Mine burns in secret!” (173).
• Hester alludes to Chillingworth being Dimmesdale’s enemy
  -“‘Thou hast long had such an enemy, and dwellest with him, under the same roof!” (173).
  -“She left the minister to bear what she might picture to herself as a more tolerable doom” (174).
  -“She doubted not, that the continual presence of Roger Chillingworth,¾the secret poison of his malignity, infecting all the air about him… that these bad opportunities had been turned to a cruel purpose” (174).
• Hester reveals Chillingworth’s true intentions
  -“By means of them, the sufferer’s conscience had been kept in an irritated state, the tendency of which was, not to cure by wholesome pain, but to disorganize and corrupt his spiritual being” (174).
• Hester would rather die at his feet than confess this wrong
• Finally confesses that Chillingworth was her husband
• “‘Let God punish! Thou shalt forgive!” (175).
• Dimmesdale does forgive Hester but claims that Chillingworth is worse than both himself and Hester
• Hester advises Dimmesdale to consider moving away to no longer have to deal with Chillingworth
  -“‘Do anything, save to lie down and die! Give up this name of Arthur Dimmesdale, and make thyself another, and a high one, such as thou canst wear without fear or shame” (179).
• Dimmesdale
  -“‘I dare not quit my post, though an unfaithful sentinel, whose sure reward is death and dishonor, when his dreary watch shall come to an end!” (178).

Chapter 18: The Flood of Sunshine

• Hester
  -“She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness; as vast, as intricate and shadowy, as the untamed forest” (180).
  -“The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free” (180).
  -“Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers,¾stern and wild ones,¾and they had madder her strong, but taught her mush amiss” (180).
• Dimmesdale
  -“Had never gone through an experience calculated to lead him beyond the scope of generally received laws” (180).
  -“He was only the more trammelled by its regulations, its principles and even its prejudices” (180).
  -“As a man who had once sinned, but who kept his conscience all alive and painfully sensitive by the fretting of an unhealed wound” (180).
• “And be the stern and sad truth spoken, that the breach which guilt has once made into the human soul is never, in this mortal state, repaired” (181).
• “But there is still the ruined wall, and, near it, the stealthy tread of the foe that would win over again his unforgotten triumph” (181).
• Both Hester and Dimmesdale decide to go off together
  -Dimmesdale feels joy again because Hester has agreed to accompany him “‘O Hester, thou art my better angel!’” (182).
• They want to look forward and never look back
  -Hester feels ready to ride herself of the scarlet letter
  -“So speaking, she undid the clasp that fastened the scarlet letter, and, taking it from her bosom, threw it to a distance among the withered leaves” (182).
  -“The stigma gone, Hester heaved a long, deep sigh, in which the burden of shame and anguish departed from her spirit” (182).
• “All at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest” (183).
• “Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world” (183).
• Pearl had been warmly greeted by nature
  -“Like a bright-apparelled vision, in a sunbeam, which fell down upon her through an arch of boughs” (184).
  -“The truth seems to be, however, that the mother-forest, and those wild things which it nourished, all recognized a kindred wildness in the human child” (185).

Chapter 19: The Child at the Brook-Side

• Both Dimmesdale and Hester admire their daughter with an emotion that had never once come over them
  -“Just where she had paused, the brook chanced to form a pool, so smooth and quiet that it reflected a perfect image of her little figure” (187).
• Hester felt distant from Pearl as if Pearl “had strayed out of the sphere in which she and her mother dwelt together” (187).
  -The impression was correct but it was Hester’s fault
  -“Another inmate had been admitted within the circle of the mother’s feelings, and so modified the aspect of them all, that Pearl, the returning wanderer, could not find her wonted place, and hardly knew where she was” (187).
• Pearl burst into a fit pointing at Hester’s chest because what she was accustomed to seeing was no longer there
  -The scarlet letter was a pacifier for Pearl’s tantrum
• Pearl is correct about the letter
• Hester must continue to wear it until the move away
  -“I must bear its torture yet a little longer,--only a few days longer,¾until we shall have left this region and look back hither as to a land which we have dreamed of” (190).
  -“There was a sense of inevitable doom upon her, as she thus received back this deadly symbol from the hand of fate” (190).
• Hester is no longer able to reveal her beauty
  -“As if there were a withering spell in the sad letter, her beauty, the warmth and richness of her womanhood, departed, like fading sunshine; and a gray shadow seemed to fall across her” (190).
• Dimmesdale was afraid that Pearl would not like him and he was correct
  -“It was only by exertion of force that her mother brought her up to him, hanging back, and manifesting her reluctance by odd grimaces” (191).
• -“Pearl broke away from her mother, and running to the brook, stooped over it, and bathed her forehead, until the unwelcome kiss was quite washed off” (191).

Chapter 20: The Minister in a Maze

• Hester’s vocation as a self-enlisted Sister of Charity had made her familiar with the captain and crew so she was able to secure the passage of Dimmesdale, herself, and Pearl
• It was decided that they were to leave for Europe in four days
  -Dimmesdale was happy because then he would be able to preach the Election Sermon in three days and terminate his professional career
• As Dimmesdale returned to town, he was filled with the a physical energy that had overcome him after his encounter with Hester
• Although he had walked the same streets and saw the same people the day before, suddenly everything appeared different to him
  -“This phenomenon, in the various shapes which it assumed, indicated no external change, but so sudden and important a change in the spectator of the familiar scene, that the intervening space of a single day had operated on his consciousness like the lapse of years” (195).
  -“At every step he was incited to do some strange, wild, wicked thing or other, with a sense that it would be at once involuntary and intentional; in spite of himself, yet growing out of a profounder self than that which opposed the impulse” (195).
• Dimmesdale was faced with temptations but was victorious over them all, specifically a young and pretty virgin girl.
  -“Such was his sense of power over this virgin soul, trusting him as she did, that the minister felt potent to blight all the field of innocence with but one wicked look, and develop all its opposite with but a word” (197).
• Old Mistress Gibbons (witch lady) overheard him saying that he had been in the forest and perhaps had signed the Devils book
• Wondered what was going on with him
  -“Tempted by a dream of happiness, he had yielded himself, with deliberate choice, as he had never done before, to what he knew was a deadly sin” (199).
• Felt himself a whole new person when arriving at his home
  -“But he seemed to stand apart, and eye this former self wioth scornful, pitying, but have-envious curiosity. That self was gone. Another man had returned from the forest; a wiser one; with a knowledge of hidden mysteries which the simplicity of the former never could have reached” (200).
• Refuses to take the medicine Chillingworth offers to him
  -“The physician knew then, that, in the minister’s regard, he was no longer a trusted friend, but his bitterest enemy” (201).

Chapter 21: The New England Holiday

• Hester and Pearl enter the market place to witness the new Governor receive office
• All Hester can think about his her excitement and how she is no longer going to be obligated to wear a gray cloth
  -“It had the effect of making her fade personally out if sight and outline” (203).
  -“For one last time more, encountered it freely and voluntarily, in order to convert what had so long been agony into a kind of triumph” (203).
• Hester also thought about her journey
  -“A few hours longer, and the deep mysterious ocean will quench and hide forever the symbol which ye have caused to burn upon her bosom!” (203).
• Pearl does not understand why Dimmesdale does not recognize them in daylight but recognizes them in the forest at nighttime.
  -“‘What a strange sad man is he!’” (205).
• There had been several forms of merriment within the town
  -“We have yet to learn again the forgotten art of gayety” (208)
• Hester was rarely approached
  -“It was a forcible type of the moral solitude in which the scarlet letter enveloped its fated wearer” (210).
• Chillingworth runins everything!!!!!!!
  -“Roger Chillingworth, the physician, was seen to enter the market-place, in close and familiar talk with the commander of the questionable vessel” (209).
  -“Chillingworth, he calls himself--is minded to try my cabin-fare with you? Ay, ay, you must have known it; for he tells me he is of your party, and a close friend to the gentleman you spoke of,-- he that is in peril from these sour old Puritan rulers!” (210)
  -"Roger Chillingworth, himself, standing in the remotest corner of the market-place, and smiling on her; a smile which… conveyed secret and fearful meaning” (211).

Chapter 22: The Procession

• Dimmesdale was filled with a new energy but seemed distant in thought
• Hester sees Dimmesdale as a different person, someone she could never have any type of connection with
  -“Her spirit sank with the idea that all must have been a delusion, and that, vividly as she had dreamed it, there could be no real bond betwixt the clergyman and herself… while she groped darkly, and stretched forth her cold hands, and found him not”(214-215).
• Mistress Hibbons implies that she is aware that Dimmesdale and Hester went to the forest and in due time, Dimmesdale’s letter will be revealed (217)
  -“When the Black Man sees one of his own servants, signed and sealed, so shy of owning to the bond as is Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, he hath a way of ordering matters so that the mark shall be disclosed in open daylight to the eyes of all the world!” (217).
  -Also says “‘They say, child, thou art the lineage of the Prince of the Air!’” (217).
• Hester moved closer to the scaffold to hear Dimmesdale’s speech
  -“An irresistible feeling kept Hester near the spot. As the sacred edifice was too much thronged to admit another auditor, she took up her position close beside the scaffold” (217).
• Dimmesdale’s speech is very well delivered, however, it evokes a sense of guilt and sorrow perhaps “telling its secet”(218).
• During this time, Pearl is being surrounded by seamen and one gives her a message to tell her mother
  -“‘Then tell her,’ rejoined he, ‘that I spake again with the black-a-visaged, hump-shouldered old doctor, and he engages to bring his friend, the gentleman she wots of, aboard with him. So let thy mother take no thought, save for herself and thee.’”(219-220)
• People began to surround Hester and stare at the scarlet letter which brought her back to 7 years ago when she was first being punished
• “At the final hour, when she was so soon to fling aside the burning letter, it had strangely become the centre of more remark and excitement, and was thus made to sear her breast more painfully, than at any time since the first day she put it on” (221).