Reading Response #2
The second response I'm doing is about Hester's long-lost husband's return. He happens to return while she is being paraded around town and he visits her in prison before she's released. You would think that the husband would be somewhat mad when he returned to find that his wife had a child, but he really wasn't all that mad at her, he was very civil surprisingly. "'I have greatly wronged thee,' murmured Hester. 'We have wronged each other,' answered he. 'Mine was the first wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay. Therefore, as a man who has not thought the philosophized in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot no evil against thee. Between thee and me, the scale hangs fairly balanced. But, Hester, the man who has wronged us both! Who is he?" (Hawthorne, 100) even when Hester is asked by her own husband and will not tell him who the other man was. She keeps to this as well when the clergymen of the town ask her as well, they even give the other man a chance to come forward and join her in shame while she is paraded around town, and when he doesn't come forward she keeps standing tall, by herself in all her shame. She goes through years as a single parent with nobody knowing who the man is that she had a child with. Little Pearl, Hester's daughter grows up with no idea of who her father is or who it could be, but Hester's husband had his mind set that he would find out who it was. "'One thing, thou that wast my wife, i would enjoin upon thee,' continued the scholar. 'Thou hast kept the secret of thy paramour. Keep, likewise, mine! There are none in this land that know me. Breathe not, to any human soul, that thou didst ever call me husband! Here, on this wild outskirt of the earth, I shall pitch my tent; for elsewhere a wanderer, and isolated from human interests, I find here a women, a man, a child, amongst whom and myself there exist the closest ligaments. No matter whether of love or hate; no matter whether of right or wrong! Thou and thine, Hester Prynne, belong to me. My home is where thou art, and where he is. But betray me not!" (Hawthorne, 101). Nobody knows who Roger Chillingworth (as he goes by now) actually is. Hester's husband takes up a false name when he gets there because nobody knows him and he wants to go unknown, but Hester does question his reasoning as to why he would choose to do this "'It may be,' he replied, 'because I will not encounter the dishonour that besmirches the husband of a faithless woman. It may be for other reasons." and these other reasons we come to find are to find the man who betrayed him. Hester's husband, although doesn't come up very much in the book, plays a big role. Hester now has to deal with keeping two major secrets, both in which hold the identities of people. Thats a lot to bear along with the pressures of being a social outcast and having a child in which she believes to be an elf. Her husband does end up getting some suspicions about relearn Dimmesdale, and these happen to be right. He ends up manipulating the reverend and this causes the reverend a lot of discomfort because he doesn't realize what Roger Chillingworth is doing to him. After seven years Hester wants to tell Roger's secret and this creates even more problems with his suspicions about the reverend and if he confirms them it could really be a mess.
