Page:Americans (1922).djvu/170

 two possibilities of escape from the predicament in which he has placed his hero and heroine is more subtle than is ordinarily noticed. What he has made clear is, that for the minister, who at the end is as thoroughly dominated by Puritan forms of thought as at the beginning, confession was fated and inevitable. For him Hester's solution would have involved the repetition of a deadly sin. His temporary decision to flee with her is therefore consistently represented as filling his mind with perverse suggestions of evil. Arthur Dimmesdale, we may be sure, was happier dying on the scaffold than he would have been sailing to Europe.

It is to be observed, however, that the devilish persecution which afflicts him does not touch Hester. Nor is she exhibited as participating in the ecstasy of his confession. To his question, "Is not this better than what we dreamed of in the forest?" she only murmurs, "I know not! I know not!" And her last words express her quite heretical hope of union with the minister in another world. She believes that in her seven years of suffering she has made amends to heaven for her wrongdoing. With the lapse of time even her rigorous fellow-townsmen relent, take her again into their affections, and even turn to her for counsel "in the continually recurring trials of wounded, wasted, wronged, misplaced, or erring and sinful passion." Hawthorne, while remarking that she often thinks amiss, obviously admires the natural desire of her