![]() Hawthorne says, "there was a fascination for the minister in the company of the man of science, in whom he recognized an intellectual cultivation of no moderate depth or scope together with a range and freedom of ideas that he would have vainly looked for among the members of his own profession." This love of wisdom is what will draw the two men together, thus facilitating Chillingworth's plans. In the New World, men of learning were rare. His love of learning and intellectual pursuit attracts Dimmesdale. He now realizes that from the moment they met, the scarlet letter would be at the end of their path. Because he married her when she was young and beautiful and then shut himself away with his books, he realizes that their marriage did not follow "the laws of nature." He could not believe she, who was so beautiful, could marry a man "misshapen since my birth hour." He deluded himself that his intellectual gifts dazzled her and she forgot his deformity. He does, however, see his role in her downfall. When Chillingworth arrives in the colony and learns of Hester's situation, he leaves her alone nearly seven years as he single-mindedly pursues Dimmesdale. So Hawthorne skewers their belief in mentioning Chillingworth's arrival when he states, "Individuals of wiser faith, indeed, who knew that Heaven promotes its purposes without aiming at the stage-effect of what is called miraculous interposition, were inclined to see a providential hand in Roger Chillingworth's opportune arrival." The Puritans believed that the hand of God, or Providence, was in every event. Hawthorne further develops this "other world" involvement - whether fate or predetermined by some higher power - when he describes the physician's appearance as being just in time to "help" Dimmesdale. This study of herbs and medicines later links his work to the "black medicine" and helps him keep his victim alive. He has, indeed, spent his life as a lonely scholar, cutting himself off when necessary in the quest for knowledge from the world of other men. Instead, as the scholar, he studied their knowledge of herbs and medicines to learn. While he was a captive of the Indians for "upward of a year," he did not judge them as heathens and infidels, and, unlike the Puritans, he did not seek to convert them. His rude awakening is described a second time in Chapter 9 when Hawthorne calls him "a man, elderly, travel-worn, who, just emerging from the perilous wilderness, beheld the woman, in whom he hoped to find embodied the warmth and cheerfulness of home, set up as a type of sin before the people." What should have been a warm and loving homecoming after being apart from his wife has become terrible.Ĭhillingworth is not a Puritan. At that point, however, he has several choices he chooses revenge. The reader feels a bit sorry for Roger Chillingworth during the first scaffold scene when he arrives in Massachusetts Bay Colony and finds his wife suffering public shame for an adulterous act. Although he "could hardly be termed aged," he has a wrinkled face and appears "well stricken in years." He has, however, a look of calm intelligence, and his eyes, though they have a "strange, penetrating power," are dim and bleared, testifying to long hours of study under lamplight. He is small, thin, and slightly deformed, with one shoulder higher than the other. Having just ended over a year of captivity by the Indians, his appearance is hideous, partly because of his strange mixture of "civilized and savage costume."Įven when he is better dressed, however, Chillingworth is far from attractive. ") in the novel by associating him with deformity, wildness (the Indians), and mysterious power. dropping down, as it were, out of the sky, or starting from the nether earth. ![]() Hawthorne begins building this symbol of evil vengeance with Chillingworth's first appearance (". Once he comes to Boston, we see him only in situations that involve his obsession with vengeance, where we learn a great deal about him. While he develops from a kind scholar into an obsessed fiend, he is less of a character and more of a symbol doing the devil's bidding. Roger Chillingworth, unlike Hester and Dimmesdale, is a flat character.
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