This sense of power arises from dealing with a subject which demanded the whole force and intensity of Hawthorne’s nature. Hester Prynne herself is a strong character, and her errors are those of strength and independence rather than of weakness. She says to Mr. Dimmesdale that what they did “had a consecration of its own,” and it is this belief which supports her under a weight of obloquy that would have crushed a more fragile spirit. She does not collapse into a pitiful nonentity, like Scott’s Effie Deans, nor is she maddened to crime like George Eliot’s “Hetty Sorrel”; [Footnote: A name apparently compounded from Hester Prynne and Schiller’s Agnes Sorrel.] but from the outset she forms definite resolutions,--first to rehabilitate her own character, and next to protect the partner of her shame. This last may seem to be a mistaken devotion, and contrary to his true interest, for the first step in the regeneration from sin is to acknowledge manfully the responsibility of it; but to give the repentance even the appearance of sincerity, the confession must be a voluntary one, and not be forced upon the delinquent person by external pressure. We cannot withhold our admiration for Hester’s unswerving fidelity to this twofold purpose. We may condemn her in our minds, but we cannot refuse her a measure of sympathy in our hearts. I believe this to be the explanation of her apparent inconsistency at the close of the book. Many of Hawthorne’s commentators have been puzzled by the fact that Hester, after so many years of contrition, should advise Dimmesdale to fly to England, and even offered to accompany him. Women have not the same idea of law that men have. In their ideas of right and wrong they depend chiefly on their sense of purity; and it is very difficult to persuade a woman that she could be wrong in obeying the dictates of her heart. Hester perceives that her former lover is being tortured to death by the silent tyranny of Chillingworth; the tide of affection so long restrained flows back into her soul; and her own reputation is as nothing compared with the life of the man she hopes to save. There is no other passage in American fiction so pathetic as that woodland meeting, at which their mutual hopes of happiness blaze up like the momentary brightness of a dying flame. Hester’s innocent child, however, representing the spirit of truthfulness, is suddenly seized with an aversion to her father and refuses to join their company,--an unfavorable omen and dark presage of the minister’s doom. Pearl’s behavior, on this occasion, may be supposed to represent the author’s own judgment. How far shall we agree with him? The past generation witnessed one of the noblest of women uniting herself, for life and death, to a man whom she could not marry on account of purely legal objections. Whether Hester’s position in the last act of this drama is comparable with that of Marian Evans every one must decide according to his or her conscience.