THE DARK LADY
373
is a gap between
Rappaccini's Daughter
and
The Scarlet Letter,
which was written six years later and which is the most truly
novelistic of Hawthorne's romances. Its concrete historical setting
gives it greater density of material and sharpness of outline; and
largely because of this gain in ·reality, Hester Prynne is the least
symbolically overladen and distorted of the four heroines who
share in the character of the dark lady. There is nothing satanic
about her motives and she is the only one who, far from being ulti–
mately spurned, is justified instead.
There are ambiguities in
The Scarlet Letter,
as in all of Haw–
thorne, yet it is possible to say that it represents his furthest
advance in affirming the rights of the individual. Known as a
story of the expiation of a sin, it is quite as much an analysis of
this sin as a "kind of typical illusion." It is the Reverend Mr.
Dimmesdale, his brain reeling from ghostly visions, who in his
repentance plies a bloody scourge on his own shoulders; Hester,
on the other hand, is ready to reject the puritan morality alto–
gether, to make a clean sweep of the past and to escape from the
settlement in order to fulfill her love without shame or fear. Her
pariah-status in the community is not productive of remorse and
humility. On the contrary, we are told that "standing alone in the
world ... the world's law was no law for her mind.... In her
lonesome cottage, by the seashore, thoughts visited her, such as
dared enter no other dwelling in New England."
This is best shown in Chapters XVII and XVIII of the novel,
when Hester finally persuades the minister that the only way he
could rid himself of Chillingsworth's persecution is to desert his
congregation and return to England. At first he thinks that she
bids him go alone, whereupon he protests that he has not the
strength or courage to embark on such a venture. At this point she
reveals her plan, proving that she does not recognize her guilt,
that for her nothing has changed, that in fact "the whole seven
years of outlawry and ignominy had been little other than a prep–
aration for this very hour."-But some of the passages that follow
are worth quoting at length.
He repeated the word.
"Alone, Hester!"
"Thou shalt not go alone!" answered she,
in
a deep whisper.
Then all was spoken!
Arthur Dimmesdale gazed into Hester's face with a look in
