Chapter Three
Entry Five
The third chapter deals with the first meeting of Hester Prynne and her husband while she is standing on the scaffold.
Long before Hester sees him, he already recognized her. When he arrived at the place in front of the prison, his eyes lay on her. First, his glance was careless, seeming not to realize who he is looking at. As soon as he does realize it, the author Nathaniel Hawthorne described it as following:
“His look became keen and penetrative. A writhing horror twisted itself across his features, like a snakegliding swiftly over them, and making only little pause, with all its wreathed intervolutions in open sight.”
In this first recognition, the husband reveales his real face, his naked soul. The penetrating feature in his glance fits to further descriptions of him (someone who is able to look in someone’s soul). The horror that appeared on his expression seemed like a snake slithering over his face.
Again, Hawthorne refers to the bible (Hester was described as Virgin Mary). The snake made Eve eat the apple from the tree of knowledge of good and evil although she was not allowed to. This makes snakes seem evil to us even now, they have a bad and sinister-misleading attitude. Furthermore they are agile and able to disappear at lightning speed.
All in all, a snake always stands for an evil element, something that you better not trust.
So Hawthorne wants the reader to see the dark side of the husband’s soul.
He won’t let engage the reader’s sympathy for him right from the beginning.
After that, he fastly controlled his facial expressions and the convulsion “grew almost impectible, and finally subsided into the depths of his nature.” This also emphasizes that this evilness is a part of his being, unable to be removed.
As soon as he realizes she recognizes him standing in the crowd, “he slowly and calmly raised his his finger, made a gesture with it in the air, and laid it on his lips.”
Hawthorne does not go into detail what exactly he is doing with his hands, but when you normally lay your finger on your lips, you want to show someone to keep silent. Maybe this gesture should show Hester that he knows they both recognize each other, but that neither he nor she should reveal the fact that they know each other.
This part of the chapter might be the most important one because it is called “The Recognition.” Although the jury is talking and judging on her later in the chapter and they try to figure out who the father of Hester’s baby is, it does not seem as important as the first glance in each other’s eyes.
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