Chapter three opens up with Hester Pryne still standing on the skaffold in front of the whole town, where she spots a man of small stature and "remarkable intellegent features" in the crowd. He makes a curious gesture at her that we don't understand until Chapter 4.
The clergy and government men on the balcony above her address Hester and try to get her to release the name of the man that engaged in her sin with her, but it proves to be in vain for Hester Pryne will not tell the secret that lays in her heart.
That night when she returns to the prison, she is in "a state of nervous excitement that demanded constant watchfulness." Her baby is also in writhing pain that causes it to cry endlessly. A man by the name of Roger Chillingworth, comes to treat the her and the baby.
While he is there, there is a sense of great tension between this man and Hester. Finally, he reveals himself as Hesters husband that had told Hester to go ahead of him into the village while he traveled into the foret learning from the Indians.
To an extent he blames himself for what has happend, knowing he hasn't been a husband to her and she has been left there by herself in a new place but at the same time he tells her to keep his name as a secret in her heart, just as she has kept the name of man who has fathered her baby.
I feel bad for Hester Pryne, her pain must be unbearable. I don't agree with what she did but I definitely understand why she did it. First being married to a man, obviously not for love, and then left to her lonesome in a new town by herself. I can understand how she would have reacted when a man finally did take notice to her and treated her the way she longed for and now to be left by herself, with this scarlet letter embroidered acrossed her breast. The pain I couldn't imagine.
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