When Hester has her interview with Roger Chillingworth in
Chapter IV of The Scarlet Letter, she asks
him,
"Art
thou like the Black Man that haunts the forest round about us? Hast thouentice me into
a bond that will prove the ruin of my soul?""Not thy
soul," he answered, with another simile. "No, not
thine!"
Then, in Chapter X,
Roger Chillingworth, who throughout life
had been calm in temperament, kindly, though not
of warm affections, but every, and in all his relations with the world, a pure and
upright man
has begun his
investigation into the soul of Arthur Dimmesdale with the "equal integrity of a judge";
however, as he lives and consults with the minister, Chillingworth becomes more drawn to
"violating the sanctity of the human heart." At the end of Chapter X, for instance,
Chillingworth seems powerless to resist the temptation to look at the sleeping
minister's chest. And, when he does so, Hathorne describes him as like Satan who has
captured a soul. This idea of Chillingworth's becoming against his own will a fiend is
clearly expressed in Chapter XIV in which
old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence
of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable
space of time, undertake a devil's
office.
In a scene which does
arouse the reader's sympathy along with condemnation, Chillingworth, who now has "a red
light out of his eyes," speaks of fate as he asks Hester "What choice had you?" in
keeping quiet about Dimmesdale at her trial. Then, when Hester suggests that Dimmesdale
would have been better off dead than under the care of the physician, Chillingworth
admits,
“Better had he died at once! Never did mortal
suffer what this man has suffered. And all, all, in the sight of his worst enemy! He has
been conscious of me. He has felt an influence dwelling always upon him like a curse. He
knew, by some spiritual sense,—for the Creator never made another being so sensitive as
this,—he knew that no friendly hand was pulling at his heart-strings, and that an eye
was looking curiously into him, which sought only evil, and found it. But he knew not
that the eye and hand were mine!.... But it was the constant shadow of my presence!—the
closest propinquity of the man whom he had most vilely wronged!—and who had grown to
exist only by this perpetual poison of the direst revenge! Yea, indeed!—he did not
err!—there was a fiend at his elbow! A mortal man, with once a human
heart, has become a fiend for his especial
torment!”
At
this moment, Hester and Chillingworth share mutual pity as Chillingworth looks inward at
himself with horror, recognizing his transformation from a man "thoughtful of others" to
this "fiend." As Hester argues that she must reveal the secret of Chillingworth's
identity, the physician tells her,
Do with him as thou wilt! There is no good for
him,—no good for me,—no good for thee! There is no good for little Pearl! There is no
path to guide us out of this dismal maze!”... Forgive, and leave his further retribution
to the Power that claims it! I said, but now, that there could be no good event for him,
or thee, or me, who are here wandering together in this gloomy maze of
evil, and stumbling, at every step, over the guilt where-with we have strewn our
path.
Clearly,
Chillingworth perceives himself as an agent of fate, a fiend, who possesses no freedom
of will as he is powerless to resist the dictates of fate.
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