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.
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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.
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