chapter 20
"Again, another incident of the same nature. Hurrying along the street, the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale encountered the eldest female member of his church, a most pious and exemplary old dame, poor, widowed, lonely, and with a heart as full of reminiscences about her dead husband and children, and her dead friends of long ago, as a burial-ground is full of storied gravestones."
What happens to D. is seeing a dame, Hester-alike (?) when this one would have been old, without the minister revealing the truth. He doesn't even remember some kind of prayers, but what he says makes the woman happy.
"The wretched minister! He had made a bargain very like it! Tempted by a dream of happiness, he had yielded himself with deliberate choice, as he had never done before, to what he knew was deadly sin."
It seems that A.D. regrets his decision! He thinks that what he committed now, deciding his future, was an even worse sin? ("And his encounter with old Mistress Hibbins, if it were a real incident, did but show its sympathy and fellowship with wicked mortals, and the world of perverted spirits.") this shows us even more how D. dissaproves his own choise...
Weakness? or is this realizing his calling and what he must do?
ReplyDelete