The Interview in the Prison

The Interview in the Prison is the first private confrontation between Hester Prynne and her long-lost husband, Roger Chillingworth, following her public shaming on the scaffold. In this tense, clandestine meeting, Chillingworth reveals his identity, administers medicine to Hester and her infant, and extracts a vow of secrecy from Hester, setting in motion the novel's central drama of concealed identities, revenge, and psychological torment.

Background and Circumstances

After Hester Prynne's return to the prison following her exposure on the scaffold, she was found to be in a state of nervous excitement that demanded constant watchfulness, lest she should perpetrate violence on herself or do some half-frenzied mischief to the poor babe. As night approached, it proving impossible to quell her insubordination by rebuke or threats of punishment, Master Brackett, the jailer, thought fit to introduce a physician. He described him as a man of skill in all Christian modes of physical science, and likewise familiar with whatever the savage people could teach in respect to medicinal herbs and roots that grew in the forest. There was much need of professional assistance, not merely for Hester herself, but still more urgently for the child—who, drawing its sustenance from the maternal bosom, seemed to have drank in with it all the turmoil, the anguish and despair, which pervaded the mother's system. The child now writhed in convulsions of pain, and was a forcible type, in its little frame, of the moral agony which Hester Prynne had borne throughout the day.

The Physician's Entrance and His Actions

Closely following the jailer into the dismal apartment, appeared that individual of singular aspect whose presence in the crowd had been of such deep interest to the wearer of the scarlet letter. He was lodged in the prison, not as suspected of any offence, but as the most convenient and suitable mode of disposing of him, until the magistrates should have conferred with the Indian sagamores respecting his ransom. His name was announced as Roger Chillingworth. The jailer, after ushering him into the room, remained a moment, marvelling at the comparative quiet that followed his entrance; for Hester Prynne had immediately become as still as death, although the child continued to moan. The stranger had entered the room with the characteristic quietude of the profession to which he announced himself as belonging. His first care was given to the child, whose cries, indeed, as she lay writhing on the trundle-bed, made it of peremptory necessity to postpone all other business to the task of soothing her. He examined the infant carefully, and then proceeded to unclasp a leathern case, which he took from beneath his dress. It appeared to contain medical preparations, one of which he mingled with a cup of water. He remarked that his old studies in alchemy and his sojourn for above a year past among a people well versed in the kindly properties of simples had made a better physician of him than many that claim the medical degree. He told Hester, "The child is yours—she is none of mine—neither will she recognise my voice or aspect as a father's. Administer this draught, therefore, with thine own hand." Hester repelled the offered medicine, at the same time gazing with strongly marked apprehension into his face, whispering, "Wouldst thou avenge thyself on the innocent babe?" The physician responded half coldly, half soothingly, "Foolish woman! What should ail me to harm this misbegotten and miserable babe? The medicine is potent for good, and were it my child—yea, mine own, as well as thine! I could do no better for it." As she still hesitated, he took the infant in his arms and himself administered the draught. It soon proved its efficacy; the moans of the little patient subsided, its convulsive tossings gradually ceased, and in a few moments it sank into a profound and dewy slumber. The physician next bestowed his attention on the mother. With calm and intent scrutiny, he felt her pulse, looked into her eyes—a gaze that made her heart shrink and shudder, because so familiar, and yet so strange and cold—and, finally, satisfied with his investigation, proceeded to mingle another draught. He remarked, "I know not Lethe nor Nepenthe; but I have learned many new secrets in the wilderness, and here is one of them—a recipe that an Indian taught me, in requital of some lessons of my own, that were as old as Paracelsus. Drink it! It may be less soothing than a sinless conscience. That I cannot give thee. But it will calm the swell and heaving of thy passion, like oil thrown on the waves of a tempestuous sea." He presented the cup to Hester, who received it with a slow, earnest look into his face, not precisely a look of fear, yet full of doubt and questioning as to what his purposes might be. She looked also at her slumbering child. "I have thought of death," said she—"have wished for it—would even have prayed for it, were it fit that such as I should pray for anything. Yet, if death be in this cup, I bid thee think again, ere thou beholdest me quaff it. See! it is even now at my lips." "Drink, then," replied he, still with the same cold composure. "Dost thou know me so little, Hester Prynne? Are my purposes wont to be so shallow? Even if I imagine a scheme of vengeance, what could I do better for my object than to let thee live—than to give thee medicines against all harm and peril of life—so that this burning shame may still blaze upon thy bosom?" As he spoke, he laid his long fore-finger on the scarlet letter, which forthwith seemed to scorch into Hester's breast, as if it had been red hot. He noticed her involuntary gesture, and smiled. "Live, therefore, and bear about thy doom with thee, in the eyes of men and women—in the eyes of him whom thou didst call thy husband—in the eyes of yonder child! And, that thou mayest live, take off this draught." Without further expostulation or delay, Hester Prynne drained the cup, and, at the motion of the man of skill, seated herself on the bed, where the child was sleeping; while he drew the only chair which the room afforded, and took his own seat beside her.

The Confrontation and the Oath of Secrecy

Hester could not but tremble at these preparations; for she felt that—having now done all that humanity, or principle, or, if so it were, a refined cruelty, impelled him to do for the relief of physical suffering—he was next to treat with her as the man whom she had most deeply and irreparably injured. Chillingworth then spoke, acknowledging his own folly in marrying a woman so much younger and more beautiful, and admitting that he had wronged her by betraying her budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with his decay. He declared, "I seek no vengeance, plot no evil against thee. Between thee and me, the scale hangs fairly balanced. But, Hester, the man lives who has wronged us both! Who is he?" Hester replied firmly, "Ask me not! That thou shalt never know!" Chillingworth responded with a smile of dark and self-relying intelligence, asserting that he would discover the man through a sympathy that would make him conscious of him, and that sooner or later he must needs be his. He then made a crucial demand: "One thing, thou that wast my wife, I would enjoin upon thee. Thou hast kept the secret of thy paramour. Keep, likewise, mine! There are none in this land that know me. Breathe not to any human soul that thou didst ever call me husband! Here, on this wild outskirt of the earth, I shall pitch my tent; for, elsewhere a wanderer, and isolated from human interests, I find here a woman, a man, a child, amongst whom and myself there exist the closest ligaments. No matter whether of love or hate: no matter whether of right or wrong! Thou and thine, Hester Prynne, belong to me. My home is where thou art and where he is. But betray me not!" When Hester asked why he desired this, he replied that it might be because he would not encounter the dishonour that besmirches the husband of a faithless woman, or for other reasons. He warned her, "Shouldst thou fail me in this, beware! His fame, his position, his life will be in my hands. Beware!" Hester agreed, "I will keep thy secret, as I have his," and she took the oath. As he left, he said, "And now, Mistress Prynne, I leave thee alone: alone with thy infant and the scarlet letter! How is it, Hester? Doth thy sentence bind thee to wear the token in thy sleep? Art thou not afraid of nightmares and hideous dreams?" Troubled, Hester asked, "Art thou like the Black Man that haunts the forest round about us? Hast thou enticed me into a bond that will prove the ruin of my soul?" He answered with another smile, "Not thy soul. No, not thine!"

Consequences and Significance

This interview established the secret bond between Hester and Chillingworth, binding her to silence about his identity while he pursued his revenge against her unknown lover. The oath Hester swore would later torment her, as she witnessed Chillingworth's gradual transformation into a fiend-like figure who devoted himself to the constant analysis of a heart full of torture. The meeting also set the terms of Hester's long isolation: she would remain in Boston, living on the outskirts of the town in a small thatched cottage, bearing the scarlet letter as a daily punishment, while Chillingworth insinuated himself into the community as a physician and, eventually, into the intimate confidence of Arthur Dimmesdale. The psychological weight of this secret—and the knowledge that she had allowed the minister to be thrown into a position where so much evil was to be foreboded—would drive Hester, years later, to resolve to reveal Chillingworth's true character to Dimmesdale, a decision that would culminate in the forest meeting and the eventual public revelation on the scaffold.