Pearl alone Hawthorne sets free, the spell which bound her human
sympathies broken by the kiss she bestows on her guilty father.
There are few passionate outbursts of feeling, save when Hester
momentarily unlocks her heart in the forest--and even here
Hawthorne's language is extraordinarily restrained:
"'What we did had a consecration of its own. We felt it
so! We said so to each other. Hast thou forgotten it?'
'Hush, Hester!' said Arthur Dimmesdale, rising from the
ground. 'No; I have not forgotten.'"
Or again, after Dimmesdale has confessed that he has neither
strength nor courage left him to venture into the world: "'Thou
shalt not go alone!' answered she, in a deep whisper. Then all
was spoken."
In _The House of the Seven Gables_ (1851), as in _The Scarlet
Letter_, Hawthorne again presents his scenes in the light of a
single, pervading idea, this time an ancestral curse, symbolised
by the portrait of Colonel Pyncheon, who condemned an innocent
man for witchcraft.
"To the thoughtful man there will be no tinge of
superstition in what we figuratively express, by
affirming that the ghost of a dead progenitor--perhaps
as a portion of his own punishment--is often doomed to
become the Evil Genius of his family.
Pages:
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290