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 women 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 clue 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.
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The scarlet letter had not done its office. Now, however, her
interview with the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the night of his
vigil, had given her a new theme of reflection, and held up to
her an object that appeared worthy of any exertion and sacrifice
for its attainment. She had witnessed the intense misery beneath
which the minister struggled, or, to speak more accurately, had
ceased to struggle. She saw that he stood on the verge of
lunacy, if he had not already stepped across it. It was
impossible to doubt that, whatever painful efficacy there might
be in the secret sting of remorse, a deadlier venom had been
infused into it by the hand that proffered relief. A secret
enemy had been continually by his side, under the semblance of a
friend and helper, and had availed himself of the opportunities
thus afforded for tampering with the delicate springs of Mr.
Dimmesdale's nature. Hester could not but ask herself whether
there had not originally been a defect of truth, courage, and
loyalty on her own part, in allowing the minister to be thrown
into a position where so much evil was to be foreboded and nothing
auspicious to be hoped. Her only justification lay in the fact
that she had been able to discern no method of rescuing him from
a blacker ruin than had overwhelmed herself except by
acquiescing in Roger Chillingworth's scheme of disguise. Under
that impulse she had made her choice, and had chosen, as it now
appeared, the more wretched alternative of the two. She
determined to redeem her error so far as it might yet be
possible. Strengthened by years of hard and solemn trial, she
felt herself no longer so inadequate to cope with Roger
Chillingworth as on that night, abased by sin and half-maddened
by the ignominy that was still new, when they had talked
together in the prison-chamber. She had climbed her way since
then to a higher point. The old man, on the other hand, had
brought himself nearer to her level, or, perhaps, below it, by
the revenge which he had stooped for.
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