Chapter 8: “The Elf-Child and the Minister”
1. After the governor challenges Hester’s fitness to raise Pearl, Hester makes an eloquent argument for why she is the perfect care-taker of Pearl, besides the most obvious fact that she is the child’s mother. She calls upon her inner strength and argues that the scarlet letter she must bore is a badge of shame but that, “this badge hath taught me,-it daily teaches me, - it is teaching me at this moment, - lessons whereof my child may be wiser and better, albeit they can profit nothing to myself” (92). She argues a very persuasive point of how she can teach her daughter to not make the same mistakes and relinquish to her what she has learned. Another tool of persuasion Hester uses is the fact Pearl was a gift from God for her to care for. Pearl, as she claims, is compensation for everything that they had taken from her but is still her little torture. Seeking help from Reverend Dimmesdale is her only hope, the Governor and other …show more content…
In the middle of the night Dimmesdale walks to the scaffold where Hester stood with little Pearl seven years earlier. After Dimmesdale has awoke some townspeople with a cry of self-hatred Hester and Pearl walk by from Governor Winthrop’s house and mount the scaffold with Dimmesdale. Now with both sinners on the scaffold and the scarlet letter between them a change in mood takes place in Dimmesdale, “ a tumultuous rush of new life, other life than his own, pouring like a torrent into his heart, and hurrying through all his veins”(126). Now Dimmesdale shares Hester’s sin but he still can’t bring himself to endure it publicly. Pearl asks Dimmesdale to appear on the scaffold in front of everyone but he replies with, “Nay; not so my little Pearl… At the great judgment day!” (127). He hides behind religion to evade Pearls invitation to escape from his secrets and his sins. Pearl mocks this cowardice by mumbling rubbish into his ear when Chillingworth appears at the foot of the
1. After the governor challenges Hester’s fitness to raise Pearl, Hester makes an eloquent argument for why she is the perfect care-taker of Pearl, besides the most obvious fact that she is the child’s mother. She calls upon her inner strength and argues that the scarlet letter she must bore is a badge of shame but that, “this badge hath taught me,-it daily teaches me, - it is teaching me at this moment, - lessons whereof my child may be wiser and better, albeit they can profit nothing to myself” (92). She argues a very persuasive point of how she can teach her daughter to not make the same mistakes and relinquish to her what she has learned. Another tool of persuasion Hester uses is the fact Pearl was a gift from God for her to care for. Pearl, as she claims, is compensation for everything that they had taken from her but is still her little torture. Seeking help from Reverend Dimmesdale is her only hope, the Governor and other …show more content…
In the middle of the night Dimmesdale walks to the scaffold where Hester stood with little Pearl seven years earlier. After Dimmesdale has awoke some townspeople with a cry of self-hatred Hester and Pearl walk by from Governor Winthrop’s house and mount the scaffold with Dimmesdale. Now with both sinners on the scaffold and the scarlet letter between them a change in mood takes place in Dimmesdale, “ a tumultuous rush of new life, other life than his own, pouring like a torrent into his heart, and hurrying through all his veins”(126). Now Dimmesdale shares Hester’s sin but he still can’t bring himself to endure it publicly. Pearl asks Dimmesdale to appear on the scaffold in front of everyone but he replies with, “Nay; not so my little Pearl… At the great judgment day!” (127). He hides behind religion to evade Pearls invitation to escape from his secrets and his sins. Pearl mocks this cowardice by mumbling rubbish into his ear when Chillingworth appears at the foot of the