The Scarlet Letter Chapters 4-6

*This will be edited and expanded further in the upcoming days*
Chapter 4
This chapter, I hope, is a sign that the book will become progressively more interesting. Chapter four was far better to me than the previous three but to be fair it was only the first 3 chapters.  In the middle of reading it I said, "Wooooooooooooah Hester was married to the physician?" but alas I remembered she was previously married so this "physician" was her husband. Well well well. Aside from his percieved inadequacies as a husband or rather objective honesty, he seemed lame to me. If he felt so strongly that he was not fit for Hester as a husband(objectively), I don't think he would revel in his curiosity so much as to take up a detective case to find the man who was smashin while he was away. I can understand what he's doing though, as this is/was his life, his current wife, and the 1600's when not much else is going on in that town(or neighboring ones for that matter). I can understand that the man is upset that the woman who made vows bore the child of another man as if they were non existent. That's cold, but for some reason unsurprising. If he wishes to find the man who accompanied her in adultery, I would hope he does not have the same chances of doing so as he will in his quest of being a successful alchemist. That would surely be disappointing for him.

Her husband is a walking ghost of sorts, since he is perceived to be dead yet he is alive and has taken up a new identity. This identity is birthed from the perception of his death and the new reality he is living in where his wife is an outcast for having committed adultery. An unfortunate life to live in a Puritan town in the early 1600's.

Chapter 5:
"On the outskirts of the town, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close vicinity to any other habitation, there was a small thatched cottage. It had been built by an earlier settler, and abandoned, because the soil about it was too sterile for cultivation, while its comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that social activity which already marked the habits of the emigrants. It stood on the shore, looking across a basin of the sea at the forest-covered hills, towards the west. A clump of scrubby trees, such as alone grew on the peninsula, did not so much conceal the cottage from view, as seem to denote that here was some object which would fain have been, or at least ought to be, concealed. In this little lonesome dwelling, with some slender means that she possessed, and by the licence of the magistrates, who still kept an inquisitorial watch over her, Hester established herself, with her infant child. A mystic shadow of suspicion immediately attached itself to the spot. Children, too young to comprehend wherefore this woman should be shut out from the sphere of human charities, would creep nigh enough to behold her plying her needle at the cottage-window, or standing in the doorway, or labouring in her little garden, or coming forth along the pathway that led townward, and, discerning the scarlet letter on her breast, would scamper off with a strange contagious fear."

This sounds like a nice life, for her at least. Chapter 5 is a nice contrast to the emotion filled chapter before it where her husband was acting like a mad man. We get to see a side of Hester that shows what she does other than being a single mother in a town that continuously heckles her. We even get to see that she has a "refined" taste in garment aesthetics.

In chapter 6 we get to meet the baby (Jeremy John voice). It's strange how parallel the Puritan community in the book is to towns and neighborhoods in our area today. As I was reading I questioned how much sense it made to believe that I child would be "sinful" like her mother when she had no concept of what these "sins" were. It is interesting though, that the children (however naive and foolish they may be) act like their parents (towards Hester anyway) although I'm not convinced that the attitudes and actions come from a place a visceral as their parents'. I also don't think at that age(or any possibly) is a learned social behavior like rudeness or teasing so much so that is justifies mistreatment of a child (Pearl). It seem's like some of these people aren't thinking..