THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 5

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• Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne

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 vigour 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 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 honourable 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 colour to 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 could   
    never 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, unrecognised 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 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 doorway, or labouring 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   
    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 needlework. 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 characterised 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 snowy lawn, the sorrow of the survivors- there was a frequent and   
    characteristic demand for such labour 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 hand; 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 vigour with which society frowned upon her   
    sin.

  
   

Hester sought not to acquire anything 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 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 infrequently 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 steadfast 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   
    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 moral 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 succour 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 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 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 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 rumour 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,   
    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 rumour than our modern incredulity may be inclined to admit.   
   

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1. Ebooks list page : 86
2. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 2
3. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 11
4. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 10
5. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 7
6. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 8
7. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 9
8. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 20
9. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 6
10. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 4
11. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 23
12. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 3
13. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 1
14. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 12
15. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 14
16. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 16