The Scarlet Letter Ch. 17: Secrets in the

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Secrets in the Forest

0:00

0:00 / 0:00

0:00

Summary

Hester is constant in one resolve. At whatever cost of present pain, Dimmesdale is going to learn the true character of the man who crept into his intimacy. For several days she cannot catch him. She knows the meditative walks he takes, and she looks for him on them, and the meeting will not happen in the town.

When she does find him, he is the man Pearl described and not a figure of health secretly waiting for rescue. He shows no lively suffering except the hand over the heart. Death, to Hester's eye, is neither an object he wishes nor an object he avoids. He is walking because walking is what he still does.

The forest is the only ground left where she can speak without a window, a sexton, or the physician in the next room. She has rehearsed the sentence. He has not asked for it. The path in front of them is narrow enough that one of them will have to stop. The sentence she has rehearsed is the physician's real name, and Dimmesdale has not asked to hear it. She will not say the physician's name on a street where a window or a sexton might hear it.

In this chapter:Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Choosing Where Truth Can Be Spoken

Some conversations need space outside normal surveillance. Hester takes Pearl into the forest because Boston and Chillingworth make honest speech impossible at home.

When a truth keeps stalling in the usual room, change the room before you abandon the truth.

This chapter

Inside the Mind: Hester Prynne

Sunshine plays along the path and withdraws as she comes near. Pearl says the light does not love her. There is no scaffold here, and the day still treats her as the woman with the letter. She has brought a seven-year silence into the one place that feels unsupervised, and the woods keep the mark in sight.

Continue this thoughtHester Builds a Life the Town Did Not Order

Coming Up in Chapter 18

In the forest she calls "Arthur Dimmesdale" twice before he knows the voice. She tells him he will not face the physician, or the next life, alone. He repeats the word back to her: alone.

PreviousPrevious Chapter NextNext Chapter

Original text

2,213 wordscomplete

Chapter 17

Secrets in the Forest

A FOREST WALK. Hester Prynne remained constant in her resolve to make known to Mr. Dimmesdale, at whatever risk of present pain or ulterior consequences, the true character of the man who had crept into his intimacy. For several days, however, she vainly sought an opportunity of addressing him in some of the meditative walks which she knew him to be in the habit of taking, along the shores of the peninsula, or on the wooded hills of the neighboring country. There would have been no scandal, indeed, nor peril to the holy whiteness of the clergyman’s good fame, had…

Public-domain chapter text, formatted for reading.

Master this chapter. Complete your experience

Purchase the complete book to access all chapters and support classic literature

Buy atAmazon.com

Available in paperback, hardcover, and e-book formats

Jude the Obscure

Thomas Hardy

Explores morality & ethics

Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy

Explores morality & ethics

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Oscar Wilde

Explores morality & ethics

A Tale of Two Cities

Charles Dickens

Explores morality & ethics

Moral Dilemmas & Ethics Identity & Self-Discovery Social Class & Status

Lessons from The Scarlet Letter

Theme-by-theme analyses that connect this book to modern life skills.

Deep diving the literary elements.

Secrets in the Forest

Summary

Why This Matters