Almost nothing is known of Hester Prynne's childhood. The
only history that the reader learns of Hester is the time period during which she was
married to Roger Chillingworth. In Chapter 4 of The Scarlet Letter
in which Chillingworth, who has seen her on the scaffold, comes to administer
to her distraught child. While they are in private, her husband talks with Hester of
the past. He tells Hester that from the moment that they came down the church-steps
together, he
"might have beheld the bale-fire of that scarlet
letter blazing at the end of our
path!"
Hester is hurt by his
remark and retorts,
"thou knowest that I was frank with thee. I felt
no love, nor feigned
any."
Chillingworth, then,
admits his folly in hoping that his heart was "a habitation large enough for many
guests," and his love could compensate for Hester's lack. He tells her that they have
wronged each other:
"Mine was the first wrong, when I betrayed thy
budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay.....But, Hester, the man
lives who has wronged us both! Who is
he?"
Probably only in her
teens--"the child of honourable parents"--when she married Chillingworth, Hester sought
true love after he became missing and lived with the Indians for
years.
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