Chapter III PhD
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CHAPTER III
AN EYE FOR AN EYE VS. AN EYE FOR A SOUL
Revenge Seekers
IN
WUTHERING HEIGHTS AND THE SCARLET LETTER
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…And she
(How shall I sing her?) whose soul knew no bellow for Might, passion, vehemence, grief, daring, since Byron died,
That world-famed son of fire-she, who sank baffled, unknown,
Self-consumed; whose too bold dying song shook, like a
Clarion-blast, my soul. (Miriam Allott, ed., Emily Bronte: Wuthering Heights: A Case Book. London, Macmillan Group, 1992. p. 67)
In this poem, "Haworth Churchyard", Mathew Arnold succinctly puts the unique characteristics of Emily Bronte's life-story, her great literary rank and the strong and matchless effect of her fictional masterpiece, Wuthering Heights. Emily Bronte is one of the notable landmarks of English literature. She was born on the 30th of July 1818 in Thornton, Yorkshire, the fourth daughter of a clergyman. The circumstances of her life were too cruel and grinding to undergo; for she was brought up almost motherless, and her two eldest sisters, Maria and Elizabeth contracted a fever and died while she was still too young to stand the pitiless blows of death. Consequently, she was made an introvert recluse.
Because of the distressful and grievous experiences that befell Emily Bronte since her first years of infancy, she withdrew to a secluded ivory tower, where she could enjoy the consolations and compensations of her rich and fertile imagination, in which the extremes of vigour and simplicity seemed to meet. The very fun and pleasure of her soul was to take a walk in the moors.
However, it is taken for granted that Emily Bronte's
…withdrawal from close relationships outside the family-and to some extent within it- was combined with an essentially religious or philosophic preoccupation with the meaning of human existence. (John Hewish, Emily Bronte: A Critical and Biographical Study. London: Macmillan, 1973, p. 23)
She, in particular, and her sisters in general, were bookworms who read everything they could, from the best English literature to the dreary religious tracts. Thus, she was quite aware of the various movements of thought and the multiple fashions of literature both in her own time and in history. But, most strikingly, she did not adopt any known or famous creed of thought. On the contrary, she just picked up a flower from each orchard and formed a visionary philosophy of her own. Mary Robinson observes rightly that:
We find in her writings no belief so strong as the belief in the present use and glory of life; no love so great as her love for earth - earth the mother and grave; no assertion of immorality, but a deep sense of rest. (Allot, p. 85).
Thus, Emily Bronte's main obsession was with the principal purport of life irrespective of any other considerations, such as; the other life, eternity. As a result, she believed that "good for goodness sake' is desirable, evil for evil's sake detestable, and that for the just and unjust alike there is rest in the grave" (Allot, p. 85). But, she was, undoubtedly, affected by morality and religion. That is to say that she did not definitely fling away the principles of morality and the tenets of religion, or replaced them by a creed of self-indulgence, debauchery and dissoluteness. On the contrary, she was a conservative moralist, but on a different scale:
Emily was a moralist on more than one level. We can accept it that she was unconscious of the full moral significance of Wuthering Heights - its lurid and uncompromising antinomianism, in which passion is substituted for grace, as the justification for an overriding of the moral law. (Cecil Day Lewis The Poetry of Emily Bronte. "Bronte Society Transactions, London: London: Jonathan Cape, 1957, p. 91)
Due to her religious environment together with her obsession with the moral purport of life and her conception that 'good for goodness sake is desirable, evil for evil's sake detestable', as previously mentioned, Emily Bronte exhibits, in her writings, a tame acceptance of the powerful existence of evil in life. She highly emphasizes therefore, the fact that man's wrongdoing emanates from his inner ambivalent nature:
For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immortality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come from inside… (The Holy Bible. King James Version. New York: American Bible Society, 1986, Mark 7:21-34)
These evils may either stay latent within man's heart, or be set free, and thus, corrupt his existence and devour his moral being.
Because of her wide reading and grasp of the various literary attitudes and fashions, the sources of Emily Bronte's art differ and vary. Her fictional masterpiece, Wuthering Heights
Combines elements of the Romantic tale of evil-possession, and Romantic development of the eighteenth-century Gothic novel, with the developing Victorian tradition of domestic fiction in a realist mode. (Lyn Pykett, Emily Bronte, In Women Writers Series. London, Macmillan, 1989, p. 73).
Thus, the novel is a vigorous gushing river that receives its water from multiple and rich resources. Despite the fact that the novel "is in all ways consistent with Emily's life … and in particular with her inner life, as that emerges … in her rare oracular statements and especially in her poetry" (Edward Chitham, A Life of Emily Bronte. New York: Basil Blackwell, 1987, p. 214), it remains so far from being an autobiography. Its consistency with Emily's inner life is incarnated in the quintessential thought rather than in the fictional aspects.
By and large, Emily Bronte is indebted, to a far extent, to the Romantic lucubration, and to that of Byron in particular, together with the Gothic tradition. The character of Heathcliff who "has the looks of a Byronic hero" (Jack Blondel, Emily Bronte: Experience Spirituelle et Creation Poetique. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1955, p. 145) attests to the Byronic influence on Emily Bronte's characterization. As for the Gothic influence, Mrs. Humphry Ward summarizes the Gothic elements of Wuthering Heights in
the Romantic tendency to invent and delight in monsters, the 'exaltation du moi', … ; the love of violence in speech and action, the preference for the hideous in character and the abnormal in situation - … (Allot, p. 98)
The Gothic technique is, thus, taken to be "the dominant genre of the first generation plot of Wuthering Heights …"(Pykett, p. 76). The novel is, therefore, not merely a domestic English fiction. On the contrary, it can be considered as a continental masterpiece as it includes certain literary elements that prevail in the European literature in general. As John Hewish rightly observes:
The innate Puritanism, seriousness and feeling for nature of Wuthering Heights could be claimed to be characteristics of the English imagination; on the other hand its symmetry and schematization, its technical sophistication and treatment of a romantic attachment as a sacred and fatal mission are characteristic of more 'serious' German fiction than Hoffmann's. such, for instance, as Goethe's novels … (Hewish, p. 126).
It is, also, needless to say that "in the genre of the Gothic romance, …, Faustian symbolism was a standard ingredient" (Stein, p. 34). Thus, Emily Bronte, affected by the Gothic technique and the Byronic lucubration, exploits the wide range of potential implications inherent in the Faust theme.
In fact, Wuthering Heights is taken to be "a sublime act of filial, literary and religious disobedience" (Stevie Davies, Emily Bronte. Harvester, Wheatsheaf: Billing and sons, 1988, p. 18). Its story is, in essence simple. It depicts two symmetrical families; the Earnshaws who inhabit Wuthering Heights and the Lintons who take Thrushcross Grange as their abode; and an intruding stranger; Heathcliff, the gypsy brat whom Mr. Earnshaw picked up from a street in London, grows up and falls in love with Catherine Earnshaw, who, due to her ambition and high birth, rejects him claiming that he was degraded by Hindley, her brother. So, she gets married to the rich and handsome Edgar Linton. Heathcliff leaves Wuthering Heights shocked and hurt. He gets back, later, a rich and stalwart gentleman. He seeks an atrocious vengeance over those who degraded him. He schemes to dispossess Hindley Earnshaw and Edgar Linton from their paraphernalia, and to become, consequently, the owner and master of both estates. At last, Heathcliff gives up his retaliation hoping for a unity with his idol, Catherine in the other world. Thus, the story of the novel is basically the story of Heathcliff's love of Catherine and his vengeance over Hindley and Edgar.
As one part of the thesis's three dimensional Faustian implications, revenge appears to be the major point in Bronte's novel. Heathcliff, an overthrown child, is damned from the beginning, he is a miserable lost kid who had been semi-adopted by a rich gentleman and who accompanies him to a warm and secure home. Facing the life he never knew and engaging with the children available, he faces the second sign of damnation; the boy, Hindley, is aggressive and his sister is not that welcoming and above all both kids were upset because Heathcliff's arrival has either ruined their presents or caused their absolute absence. Moving forward in the novel, Heathcliff faces other misfortunes that deny him the right for rest, love, richness, and peace of mind, the culmination of his miseries come with the death of Mr. Earnshaw. The Heathcliffian situation resembles Faust's sense that he is denied power, knowledge and absolute control. Both heroes are seeking what they thought they were deprived of; revenge is Heathcliff's Omni aim.
In fact, the treatment of time in Wuthering Heights is one of the most striking aspects of this novel; for the novel is, in essence, timeless. It is "a tale of elemental, universal passions, love scorned turning into a fury of revenge and hate" (Phyllis Bentley, The Bronte Sisters. London: Longman Group, 1971, p. 29). Because the novel is purely concerned with 'elemental, universal passions', Emily Bronte's deals with time as a pure duration. Thus, time in the novel is "retrospection and assessment as well as progression" (Wendy Craik, The Bronte Novels. London: Methun and Company, 1971, p. 45). It is worth noting that Heathcliff's life is extended through two generations, as well the young generation is perceived as a physical extension and embodiment of their old ancestry. Even after death, Heathcliff and Catherine are seen walking down the moors. The remark that Edgar Linton's grave is the only one that is "harmonised by the turf and moss creeping up its foot" and that "Heathcliff's (grave) is still bare" (Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights. London: Pan Books, 1976, p. 321), reinforces the assumption that Emily Bronte designed her novel to be concerned, in the first place, with pure themes; love and revenge in particular; and that her major character, Heathcliff, was intended to be an archetype.
It is worth noting that Emily Bronte's treatment of time in this novel anticipates Bergson's theory of duration. According to him, duration is "the continuous progress of the past which gnaws into the future and which swells as it advances. And as the past gnaws with no ceasing, so also there is no limit to its preservation" (Henry Bergson, Creative Evolution. Translated by Arthur Mitchel. London: Oxford University Press, 1949, p. 7). It is the past, then, which dominates man's life and gives vent to his conduct. In Wuthering Heights, the key to all the interpretations of the characters and their action lurks in childhood, the past. As Leo Bersani suggests:
The characters of Wuthering Heights teem with childhood animosities, allegiances and obsessions; they brawl, taunt, mock manipulate, weep and play their out-door and indoor orgiastic games within the vice of a terrible paradox. They are children liberated from the deterrent adult guardians who fence and chasten the outset of human life, but their liberation derives from the conditions that orphan and expose them. (Leo Bersani, A Future for Astyanax: Character and Desire in Literature. London: Marion Boyars, 1978, p. 203)
Thus, the fate of all the characters of Wuthering Heights is predetermined since the first days of their childhood. They were nice and natural children until Heathcliff, the destroyer of piece and quiet, arrives. It is remarked that "from the very beginning, he bred bad feeling in the house" (Wuthering Heights, p.65). So, Heathcliff's arrival resembles the act of throwing a stone down to a calm and quiet water-spring. It will cause the restless movement of the water, taking the shape of a whirling eddy. Heathcliff is, in fact, the centre of the vortex of Wuthering Heights. He is the structure of the novel because "the known span and compass of Heathcliff's life at Wuthering Heights is the span and compass of the novel. When he is not there, there is no story- …" (Craik, 'The Brontes', p. 164); exactly like any other Faustian based work of art.
It is worth noting that "Wuthering Heights is not among the masterpieces in which a rigid moral code operates …; for all its artistic autonomy it is personal and about conflict, …" (Hewish, p. 155). One of the major aspects of the conflict in this novel is the blasphemy of the characters who live in Wuthering Heights, as contrasting those who dwell the Thrushcross Grange. Replying to Nelly Dean's assertion that "it is for God to punish wicked people; we should learn to forgive", Heathcliff asserts unequivocally that "God won't have the satisfaction that I shall" (Wuthering Heights p. 85). Also, replying to the invocations of Nelly regarding taking care of his body and soul, Hindley says: "Not I! on the contrary, I shall have great pleasure in sending it to perdition to punish its maker" (Wuthering Heights p. 94). Furthermore, Catherine, commenting on the vision she saw in her vagary, says that:
Heaven did not seem to be my home; and I broke my heart with weeping to come back to earth; and the angels were so angry that they flung me out into the middle of the heath on the top of Wuthering Heights; where I woke sobbing for joy … (Wuthering Heights p. 102)
As Steve Davies suggests:
The central protagonists, relocation of heaven as an earthly sanctuary; their disavowal of allegiance to the paternity of God; their refusal of the church and their rejection of the reality of sin- are all logical extensions of certain features of Protestant thought, and familiar in Levelling Puritarism. (Davies, p. 20)
The blasphemy of the central protagonists can be considered as an important manifestation of the Faust theme. But, it is not a definite exploitation of the theme because what the protagonists do, in general, is merely that they fling away the tenets of religion and adopt a creed of their own. In other words, although they disobey God, they do not endeavour to usurp His prerogatives, and transcend their physical limitations.
Heathcliff, by his stubborn seeking of revenge, attempts at transcending his physical limitations and trespassing the un-allowed portals of Heaven. He is the only character all through the novel who scorns the rule that "it is impious to put oneself into the place of God", (Wagenknecht, p. 191), and insists on usurping God's prerogative to punish the wicked and faulty people. That is the reason why his existence is considered as "an affront to good manners; he is the illicit access forged (at the price of life itself) from the subconscious to the conscious world …", and because of his insistence to retaliate he is "resurrected as the demon lover…" (Davies, p. 80).
In fact, the strong attachment of Heathcliff to the infernos is reinforced from the very beginning. Mr. Earnshaw remarks that Heathcliff "is as dark almost as if it came from the devil" (Wuthering Heights p.64). Mrs. Linton, besides, conceives him to be a "wicked boy, at all events, … , and quite unfit for a decent house!" (Wuthering Heights p.89). So, all the evidences reinforce the assumption of John Skeleton that "Heathcliff, the boy, is ferocious, vindictive, wolfish; … He may be an imp of darkness…" (Allot, p. 69). With Emily Bronte's insistence to emphasize Heathcliff's evil and corruptive innate nature from the very beginning of the novel, one cannot but take for granted that he "is himself daemonic, … He is in many ways similar to the figures of imaginative power in the poetry, in that he is powerful, at times visionary, and alien" (Marget Homans, Women Writers and Poetic Identity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980, p. 141)
Nevertheless, the interpretation of Heathcliff's character should not be formed in a hasty and superficial manner; his is one of the most baffling and problematic characters in the English literature. His creator bestowed him with the capacity to evoke various ambivalent and contrasting impressions simultaneously. In other words, due to Emily Bronte's genius and far-fetched talent in constructing Heathcliff's character, the reader cannot help but to feel sympathy and repugnance towards him.
Heathcliff is being sympathized with because of his genuine and irrevocable love for the ethereal Catherine Earnshaw. He loves Catherine at full blast. As a Faust, Heathcliff, in his love for Catherine, proves that the Faust archetype is motivated with a strong affability towards beautiful women; for Catherine, like Helen of Troy, is "so immeasurably superior to them - to everybody on earth, …" (Wuthering Heights p. 76). Yet, Heathcliff's infatuation with Catherine is cordial rather than sensual. Heathcliff says:
Two words would comprehend my future - death and hell: existence, after losing her, would be hell … If he (Edgar) loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn't love as much in eighty years as I could in a day. (Wuthering Heights p. 161)
He loves Catherine so deeply that he says to her: "Catherine, you know that I could as soon forget you as my existence!" (Wuthering Heights p. 170). It is needless to say that Catherine, in her turn, loves Heathcliff wholeheartedly. She says:
My love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath: a source of little visible, but necessary. Nelly, I am HEATHCLIFF! He is always, always in my mind: not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself, but as my OWN BEING. (Wuthering Heights p.103-4)
These words together with Heathcliff's explosive and bitter wonder "what kind of living will it be when you - oh God; would you like to live with your soul in the grave?" (Wuthering Heights p. 172), signify the principle of Heathcliff's transformation into Catherine and vice versa. Thus, Catherine and Heathcliff are two bodies of one soul; as Catherine says: "whatever our souls are made of, HIS and MINE ARE THE SAME" (Wuthering Heights p. 102). Therefore, the two bodies, that draw the principle of life from one and the same soul, should be united by means of marriage; but on the contrary, they were predestined to be terribly separated.
Of her own free-will, Catherine refuses to marry Heathcliff on the ground that "if the wicked man in there (Hindley) had not brought Heathcliff so low, I shouldn't have thought of it. It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; …" (Wuthering Heights p. 102). By Catherine's refusal, the conflict becomes more bitter and severe. Heathcliff, shocked and deeply hurt, leaves Wuthering Heights, and nobody knows where he has gone. Up till now, the reader cannot but sympathize and pity this wretched and careworn creature. The feelings of sympathy and pity are based on certain factors.
For Heathcliff is "a dark-skinned gipsy in aspect", (Wuthering Heights p. 36); and a poor family less creature. So, he bitterly suffers his severe sense of inferiority to the rich and handsome Edgar Linton. As Emily Bronte exhibits the difference between Heathcliff and Edgar respectively "The contrast resembled what you see in exchanging a bleak, hilly, coal country for a beautiful fertile valley" (Wuthering Heights p.92). In addition to his severe sense of inferiority, Emily Bronte highly emphasizes that Heathcliff was terribly degraded by Hindley Earnshaw. When Mr. Earnshaw died, Hindley "drove him from their company to the servants, deprived him of the instructions of the curate, and insisted that he should labour out of doors instead" (Wuthering Heights p. 72). Consequently, Heathcliff's inferiority - complex and his degradation, as well as his deep love for Catherine are the justifications for the sympathy and pity of the reader. As Wendy Craik remarks:
Untill Catherine rejects him, he is entirely passive; he cannot help old Earnshaw's affection, nor Hindley's hate, nor the love between himself and Catherine, and though he talks of vengeance he takes no steps to advance himself … It is her rejection that turns him into a destructive force and lets loose his impulse to revenge. (Craik, p. 23)
Therefore, Heathcliff's evil and destructive nature is not manifest until he gets back later to Wuthering Heights. In his first appearance after a long period of absence, an ironic misconception of his real targets is held by Nelly Dean, who thinks that "he is reformed in every respect, apparently; quite a Christian: offering the right hand of fellowship to his enemies all around!" (Wuthering Heights p. 118).
On the contrary, Heathcliff's real motives were to annihilate his enemies, Hindley Earnshaw and Edgar Linton. But, implementing his fiendish scheme of vengeance, he did not aim at any physical hurt. He aimed, in the first place, at dispossessing his two enemies from their property. The moment Heathcliff makes up his mind to seek his atrocious revenge; his polluted demonic nature becomes crystallized more and more. It becomes evident that he is "filled with avarice on an almost squalid level. We may sympathize with him, but this lust for revenge is harder to excuse …" (Chitham, p. 191). Heathcliff, first of all, expropriates Hindley perpetually; for the latter mortgages his possessions at Heathcliff in exchange for money in order to satisfy his lust for gambling. Then, he marries Isabella Linton in order that he may inherit the Thrushcross Grange. Catherine endeavours to remove the scales from Isabella's eyes. She tells Isabella that Heathcliff is:
… an unreclaimed creature, without refinement, without cultivation: an arid wilderness of furze and whinstone … pray, don't imagine that he conceals depths of benevolence and affection beneath a stern exterior! He is not a rough diamond - a pearl - containing oyster of a rustic; he is a fierce, pitiless, wolfish man … He is a bird of bad omen. (Wuthering Heights p, 121-22)
In Heathcliff, therefore, "there is … a quality of demonic energy and cruelty … that cannot be explained in terms of psychological causation" (Robin Gilmour, The Novel in the Victorian Age: A Modern Introduction. London: Edward Arnold, 1986, p. 76). After Isabella gets married to Heathcliff, she, astonishingly, discovers his reality. She believes that
…he's a lying fiend! a monster, and not a human being! … Whatever he may pretend, he wishes to provoke Edgar to desperation: he says he has married me on purpose to obtain power over him. (Wuthering Heights p.164)
So, Heathcliff's very existence becomes wholly dedicated to destroying his enemies. He says:
I want you to be aware that I know you have treated me infernally - infernally! … and if you think I can be consoled by sweet words, you are an idiot; and if you fancy I'll suffer unrevenged, I'll convince you of the contrary, in a very little while! (Wuthering Heights p. 130)
Because of his sanguine and wayward misanthropic nature, Heathcliff's presence becomes "a moral poison that would contaminate the most virtuous" (Wuthering Heights p.132). He becomes strongly deemed as a ferocious sadist who draws his pleasure from the mayhem that he inflicts on his enemies. He tells young Catherine, whom he imprisons, that "I shall enjoy myself remarkably in thinking your father will be miserable: I shall not sleep for satisfaction" (Wuthering Heights p. 266). Furthermore, Edgar Linton informs his daughter that "Mr. Heathcliff dislikes me; and is a most diabolical man, delighting to wrong and ruin those he hates, if they give him the slightest opportunity" (Wuthering Heights p.223). Charlotte Bronte, in her preface to the New Edition of Wuthering Heights, regards Heathcliff rightly as "a man's shape animated by demon life - a Ghoul - an Afreet".
In fact, the real motives behind Heathcliff's malignant retaliation lurk not in the ill-treatment and wrongdoing of those who surround him; the outward conditions. He is, rather, "an archetypal figure, … an imaged recognition of that part of nature which is 'other' than the conscious part" (Dorothy Vanghent, The English Novel: Form and Function. New York: Holt Reinehart and Winston, 1953, p. 162). Therefore, his voracious desire to destroy his enemies emanates from his innate demonic nature that is let loose after Catherines's marriage to Edgar Linton. If Heathcliff married Catherine, he would have acted differently; but, more importantly, had his nature been different, he would have never sought nor implemented any scheme of revenge whether he married Catherine or not.
Trying to defend Heathcliff, David Cecil suggests that he is a "manifestation of natural forces acting involuntarily under the pressure of his own nature. But he is a natural force which has been frustrated of its natural outlet, so that it inevitably becomes destructive" (David Cecil, Early Victorian Novelists: Essays in Revaluation. London: Constable, 1960, p. 154). But, Cecil's analysis and justification of Heathcliff's malfeasance is incomplete because it highly emphasizes the extrinsic circumstances, represented in his deprivation of his beloved idol, and distracts the attention from his intrinsic vengeful and evil nature. It is true that Heathcliff is 'a natural force', but this force is essentially destructive and misanthropic.
Besides, the Marxist approaches to Heathcliff's character are altogether inconsistent and unprecise. Terry Eagleton claims that Heathcliff is a rebel against Capitalism:
Having mysteriously amassed capital outside agrarian society, Heathcliff forces his way into that society to expropriate the expropriators; and in this sense his machinations reflect the behaviour of a contemporary bourgeois class increasingly successful in its penetration of landed property. (Terry Eagleton, Myths of Power: A Marxist Study of the Brontes. London: Macmillan Group, 1975, p. 187)
In fact, considering Heathcliff as an economic rebel seems to be so far-fetched, because he left Wuthering Heights as a result of Catherine's refusal to marry. So, it is the frustrated love which let loose Heathcliff's evil and vengeful nature, not his dissatisfaction with the Capital System. Besides, this interpretations also dismisses completely the intrinsic callousness and vulgarity of Heathcliff, the man who is "rough as a saw-edge, and hard as whinstone!" (Wuthering Heights p.62)
Arnold Kettle, also, tries to defend Heathcliff, claiming that "we continue to sympathize with Heathcliff even after his marriage with Isabella, because Emily Bronte convinces us that what Heathcliff stands for is morally superior to what the Lintons stand for" (Arnold Kettle, An Introduction to the English Novel. 2 Vols, London: Hutchinson, 1951, Vol. II, p. 137). But, can Heathcliff, who "rejects … the consolations of Christianity" (Kettle, Vol. II, p. 139), be morally superior to the Lintons? What sort of moral superiority is this which flings away the tenets of religion, especially when taking into account that religion and morality are inseparable?
On the other hand, Heathcliff is an incarnation of the Faust theme. He, like Faust, barters his soul to the devil in exchange for power and revenge. But, he is more detestable and evil than the old Faust. He is:
… a child of darkness, darkness which protects his flight, his return, and the accomplishing of his schemes … . He is conscious of his own frustration and, like Milton's Satan, wishes to become destructive … He does not love his frustration for the delight which he finds in it, but rather for the suffering which it allows him to inflict on his victims, … . (Blondel, p. 134)
Heathcliff's sadism and his profane perversity in seeking revenge evince his identification with the devil. Young Catherine remarks that he is "lonely, like the devil, and envious like him? Nobody loves you - nobody will cry for you when you die!" (Wuthering Heights p. 278). Heathcliff, himself, emphasizes his dismissal from the familiar heaven. He says that when he dies "No minister need come; nor need anything be said over me" (Wuthering Heights p. 317). But, Emily Bronte, at last, evokes the sympathy of the reader with Heathcliff, who gives up his obdurate scheme of vengeance to the hope that he would accompany his beloved Catherine in eternity. He says:
It is a poor conclusion, is it not? … an absurd termination to my violent exertions? … My old enemies have not beaten me; now would be the precise time to revenge myself on their representatives: …But where is the use? I don't care for striking; I can't take the trouble to raise my hand! …; I have lost the faculty of enjoying their destruction, and I am too idle to destroy for nothing. (Wuthering Heights p. 308)
By Heathcliff retiring his revenge, and aiming towards a union with Catherine, Emily Bronte emphasizes that finally love outdid revenge. She again desires love for love's sake and detests evil for evil's sake, apart from any religious or moral view. She successfully employs the Faust theme to unveil the inner evil and corruptive nature of Heathcliff, evoking a strong feeling of contempt towards him, and brilliantly restores pity and sympathy with him by emphasizing his fascination and obsession with Catherine's love. Therefore, Emily's novel gains its unique and unmatched quality from "the terrible intensity with which its characters feel these mighty passions". For the protagonists, side by side with feeling mighty passions, express these passions with "such awful intensity, such uninhibited force, such untamed violence that one can hardly read of them without a strong shudder of excitement" (Derek Traversi, Wuthering Heights After a Hundred Years. Dublin Review, 245, 1949, p. 34). And the novel, as a whole, reveals:
… not pathological incoherence, but abundant evidence of conscious, intellectual control. It is, perhaps, unique for its time among English novels in that a strictly rationalist view of human life as part of nature is one of its organising principles. (J. Hillis Miller, Fiction and Repetition: Seven English Novels. Oxford: Blackwell, 1982, p. 152)
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Like Emily Bronte, Nathaniel Hawthorne in his major masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter, makes an extensive and unique use of the implications of the Faust theme.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 - 1864) is a major American novelist and short story writer. Mr. Van Wyck Brook has called him "the most deeply planted of American writers, who indicates more than any other the subterranean history of the American character" (Pelham Edgar, The Art of the Novel. New York: Holt Reinehart and Winston, 1956, p. 126). He came in a period where the American writers began, for the first time, to speak their own minds, rather than reiterate the native English themes. The writers of this period of American literary Renaissance "set forth their all embracing ideas and attitudes - ideas and attitudes on religion and the conception of human nature, democracy and the common man …, slavery and the civil war, science and human progress" (Walter Blair, The Literature of the United States. Chicago: Foresman and Company, 1957, p. 348-9). Therefore, Hawthorne, as a major writer of the American Renaissance, sets forth, essentially, his own genuine thought that is traced back to his puritan lineage.
Excessive bigotry and intolerance are the most dominating features of the theology of the Puritans. According to Hawthorne, the Puritans are "a people amongst whom religion and law were almost identical, and in whose character both were so thoroughly interfused" (Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter. New York, London: W.W Norton and Company, 1978, p. 41). Both bigotry and intolerance, however, are the principal reasons and justifications of the puritans' lack for clarity of vision; for they "wanted a Christianity so pure that it would admit of no toleration, no joy, no colour, no charity even; an austere religion which frowned on easy pleasure and punished vice in the sternest possible way" (Anthony Burgess, English Literature. London, Longman Group, 1974, p. 103). It is also well known that the puritans' ideal of civil government is that of John Calvin, whose tenets and doctrines adhere strictly to:
'Unconditional predestination' which denies any factor of unpredictability contingent on the human will; 'Limited atonement' which restricts the efficacy of Christ's sacrifice to the elect; 'Total depravity' which removes from man any shred of power to save himself; 'Irresistible grace' which indicates that God's grace is freely given, and can neither be earned nor refused; and 'perseverance of the saints' which shows that once a person is elected nothing can prevent his salvation. (Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards, Backgrounds of American Literary Thought. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1974, p. 24-25)
In fact, the Calvinistic dogma is primarily based on the Original Sin, man's first disobedience and his eating from the fruits of the Forbidden Tree. Due to the Original Sin, Calvinism definitely emphasizes the sinfulness of man. For Calvin, the Original Sin is "a hereditary corruption and depravity of our nature, extending to all parts of the soul" (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated by Henry Beveridge, 2 Vols. Michigan: Grand Rapids, 1966, BK. II, Ch. 1, p. 217). Consequently, Calvinism insists on God's total sovereignty and man's total depravity as God means all things to be in harmony, whereas man, out of his sinful; nature and corruptive soul, fosters disharmony.
Man, according to Calvinism, has no other choice but to sin. He sins "voluntarily … not by violent compulsion, or external force, but by the movement of his own passion, and yet such is the depravity of his nature, that he cannot move and act except in the direction of evil" (Calvin, BK 2., Ch. 3: p. 254). According to Calvinism, thus the heritage of the Original Sin spoils man's mental ability to discern the right and the wrong, sears his heart and annihilates his soul:
The mind of man is so entirely alienated from the righteousness of God that he cannot conceive, desire, or design anything but what is wicked, distorted, foul, impure, iniquitous; … His heart is so thoroughly envenomed by sin, that it can breathe out nothing but corruption and rottenness; his soul is inwardly bound with the fetters of wickedness. (Calvin, BK. 2, Ch. 5: p. 291)
It is taken for granted that the Calvinistic tenets are extremely dogmatic and severe. Following such tenets, the Puritans "took for granted the Calvinistic conception of the earth as 'a vale of tears and suffering'" (Horton and Edwards, p. 53). As a theologian, "Calvin shaped the ideas of the Huguenots in France, the puritans in England, and through them the early culture of America" (Brown, ed., p. 83). Therefore, being a puritan by birth and American in culture, Hawthorne had the Calvinistic tenets ingrained within his heart and soul. These tenets "were always with him, in his darkest depths, and although never consciously stated they ordered the black climate and the informing irony of his best writing" (Agens McNeill Donohue, Hawthorne: Calvin's Ironic Stepchild. Kent: The Kent State University Press, 1985, p. 8).
Hawthorne's main quest was, indeed, man's perfection; happiness in the journey of life, and salvation in the eternal life in Heaven. Thus, he was deeply affected by the Nineteenth-century Perfectionism. Those Perfectionists, despite taking for granted the sinful nature of man in the same way their Calvinistic puritan ancestors did, supposed that man can conquer his evil nature and, consequently, lead a perfected life of happiness and relief. As Claudia D. Johnson suggests:
Upham and his fellow perfectionists insisted on three essential characteristics of the perfected man which are relevant to Hawthorne's themes: man had to be guided by love, the transforming principle in the life of the perfected man; he had to live in this life rather for the hereafter; and he had to be active rather than passive. (Claudia D. Johnson, Hawthorne and Nineteenth Century Perfectionism. New York: Caddy and Budd, 1974, p. 143)
Thus, according to the Nineteenth-century Perfectionism, in the way to deliverance from this inferno, life, the basic guiding stars are love and activity. Therefore, the basic movements of thought that shaped Hawthorne's principles and mentality are Calvinism and the Nineteenth-century Perfectionism.
Besides, Hawthorne was an excellent reader, a bookworm that could hardly oppose reading any book or article he may across. Elizabeth Peabody, Hawthorne's sister-in-law, asserted that he "made himself thoroughly acquainted with the ancient history of Salem, and especially with witchcraft era" (Qtd. In Moncure D. Conway, Life of Nathaniel Hawthorne. London: Walter Scott, 1895, p. 31). Also, Hawthorne's son, Julian, affirmed that his father was deeply interested in "all manner of lists of things … The forgotten volumes of the New England Annalists were favourites of his, and he drew not a little material from them" (Julian Hawthorne, Hawthorne Reading. Folcroft: Folcroft Press, 1969, p. 107-8)
By and large, the puritan lineage of Hawthorne, his utter evaporation with the tenets of Calvinism, his identification with the Nineteenth-century Perfectionism, his wide reading and encyclopaedic knowledge - all these factors urged Hawthorne to believe that sin, guilt and evil reside within the human heart; "there is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps through the whole of life; but circumstances may rouse it to activity" (Hawthorne J, p. 37). Thus, "he calmly accepts the existence of evil and argues that it alone confers upon man the mantle of tragic dignity" (Stein, p. 5). Besides, it is suggested that;
Hawthorne was like his contemporary Poe in being strongly influenced by the current vogue of the Gothic novel of terror and in being an American romantic without being a Transcendentalist. (Brown, ed., p. 234)
Therefore, it may be claimed that, apart from his Calvinism, Hawthorne's literary sources are, to some extent, similar to those of Emily Bronte; the Romantic development of the Gothic technique which is completely convenient to his purposes. It is needless to say that in the Gothic technique, Faustian symbolism is inevitable and unavoidable. For Hawthorne, however:
The devil is a myth; Black man, Satan, Old Nick, Old Scratch, Beelzebub - whatever his disguise at a given moment - he is the reflection of the dark shadows that invade the sunlight of human life. He is the necessary evil in the equation of human destiny. (Stein, p. 8)
Like Emily Bronte's timeless novel, Wuthering Heights, Hawthorne offers a unique manipulation of time in his principal masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter. In one of his 'Four Quarters', T. S. Eliot emphasizes that the past determines the present, which, in its turn, shapes the future: "Time present and time past/Are both perhaps present in time future/And time future contained in time past" (T.S. Eliot, The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot. London: Faber and Faber, 1969, p. 398); an emphasis that resembles Henry Bergson's philosophy of 'pure duration'. To establish a continuum between past and present, Hawthorne, in this novel, exploits the various dimensions of the story of the Fall, Original Sin, with its inseparable Faustian symbolism, to prove that the sins of the past are absolutely responsible for all human misery and misfortune, plights and ordeals. The novel is, therefore, not mainly concerned with sin, but with sin's aftermath in the first place.
The story of The Scarlet Letter is, in essence, simple. Because of her ignominious and sacrilegious felony of adultery, Hester Prynne is sentenced to stand for some time on the scaffold, the pedestal of public shame, and to wear the scarlet letter 'A' for adulteress on her bosom for the rest of her life. The partner of her iniquity is unknown, and Hester stubbornly refuses to reveal his identity. Her husband, Roger Chillingworth, who has been absent for a long time, gets back to find his wife standing on the scaffold and holding a young baby tightly to her bosom. He knows everything, and becomes absolutely determined to retaliate for his hurt pride. He discovers that Hester's partner of iniquity is the reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, the priest. Chillingworth unites himself with Dimmesdale as the latter's leech, and probes into Dimmesdale's heart. By his detested determination to implement his accursed scheme of vengeance, Chillingworth, thus, barters his soul to the devil and identifies himself with the damned Faust. It is quite obvious that Hawthorne's main emphasis does not fall upon the sin of adultery, but it falls rather on "the consequent sins of solitude, hypocrisy and revenge, and their influence on the culprits' souls. Obviously, solitude is attached to Hester, hypocrisy to Dimmesdale; and revenge to Chillingworth" (Wagenknecht, p. 45)
As Henry James suggests, The Scarlet Letter "is densely dark … and it will probably long remain the most consistently gloomy of English novels of the first order" (Henry James, Hawthorne. London: Macmillan Group, 1887, p. 109). Despite the fact that the sin of adultery is the impetus of the novel "the book is a story of concealment. Its psychology is that of the concealment of sin amid circumstances that make a sin of concealment itself" (W. C. Brownell, American Prose Masters. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1909, p. 97). By concentrating on the sin of 'concealment' rather than adultery, Hawthorne "focuses on the inner disorders of feeling which bring his characters into conflict, not only with the external world, but with their own innate predispositions" (Stein, p. 5). Therefore, Hawthorne's dramatic centre is, Like Emily Bronte's, the internal world of man. According to Hawthorne, the levels of existence are variable but definitely overlapping. As Richard Harter Fogle brilliantly suggests:
There are four states of being in Hawthorne: one subhuman, two human, and one supernatural. The first is nature … In itself good, nature is not a sufficient support for human beings. The human levels are represented by Hawthorne's distinction between Heart and Head. The heart is closer to nature, the head to the supernatural. The heart may err by lapsing into nature, which means, since it has not the innocence of nature, into corruption. The danger of the head lies in the opposite direction. It aspires to be superhuman, and is likely to dehumanise itself in the attempt by violating the human limit. (Richard Harter Fogle, Hawthorne's Fiction: The Light and the Dark. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964, p. 112)
Thus, Dimmesdale is predominantly a heart character, despite his considerable intellect. Sin conquered him because of his weakness, the heart, in a burst of passion, which outdid both religion and reason. The demonic Chillingworth, contrariwise, is a head character who, by violating his human limit and his aspiration to be superhuman, stands as "a unique fusion of the typical Faustian hero and the Mephistophelian tempter of the puritan tradition" (Stein, p. 40).
From his first appearance, Chillingworth's dominating mental aspect is unequivocally averred. Though he was a weak aged decrepit of a 'furrowed visage', "there was a remarkable intelligence in his features, as of a person who had so cultivated his mental part …". It is Chillingworth's character that testifies to Hawthorne's primary preoccupation with the innate conflicts and agonies; for Chillingworth was a "man chiefly accustomed to look inward, and to whom external matters are of little value and import, unless they bear relation to something within his mind" (The Scarlet Letter p. 48). By emphasizing Chillingworth's lurid and perilous mental capacity together with his native ability to read the human soul, Hawthorne, by means of tragic irony, definitely avers that this ability "when unsupported by any moral sympathies, leaves him open to degradation, step by step, from a man into a fiend" (F. O. Matthiessen, American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1941, p. 273). So, Chillingworth's rejection of human sympathy and moral principles makes him "divorced wholly from the sources of life and goodness" (Hyatt Howe Waggoner, Hawthorne: A Critical Study. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1955, p. 13).
Unlike Heathcliff, Chillingworth undergoes a remarkable process of perceptual transformation from the extreme of goodness and benevolence into its contradicting pole of malignity and mayhem. He was "a man of thought, - the book - worm of great libraries, - a man already in decay, having given (his) best year to feed the hungry dream of knowledge" (The Scarlet Letter p. 57). Because of his scientific and erudite nature, Chillingworth, wonderfully, led a life that was basically characterized with human sympathy and benevolence; he indicates that his "heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire" (The Scarlet Letter p. 58). Thus, like any man, Chillingworth severely suffered from loneliness. He consequently, dreamt of a deep and warm life, he says: "And so, Hester, I drew thee into my heart, into its innermost chamber, and sought to warm thee by the warmth which they presence made there!" (The Scarlet Letter p. 58).
But, "confronted with his wife's disgrace, Chillingworth turns from white to black" (Leslie Fielder, Love and Death in the American Novel. Harmondsworth: Penguin Book Ltd. 1982, p. 436). Like Heathcliff, he "had set aside the humane injunction that men should love one another, to make a religion of the office of vengeance, which in the Scriptures is exclusively appropriated to God" (Darel Abel, Hawthorne's Hester. College English 13, 1952, p. 305-6). By rejecting the moral values and flinging away the consolations of religion, Chillingworth despised the Biblical rule that "when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey - whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?" (The New Testament. Romans 6:16-124). Thus, his lust for retaliation haunts him to the point that vengeance becomes the very essence of his being.
In fact, between Heathcliff and Roger Chillingworth there are, at least, three aspects of similarity and association; the distorted and ugly mien and physiognomy, the deep and genuine cordial passion for two exceptionally beautiful women, and the Faustian quintessence ensuing from the wayward desire of usurping God's prerogative, revenge.
Like Heathcliff, who is 'a dark-skinned gypsy', Chillingworth is physically deformed; for one of his shoulders rose higher than the other. Both characters, however, are quite aware of their physical defects. But, Heathcliff's ugliness evokes mainly the feelings of pity and sympathy, on the ground that it was an unjust verdict of fate to afflict this helpless creature with this ugliness; whereas Chillingworth's malformation evokes, in the first place, the feelings of contempt and unremitting dissatisfaction. Unlike Heathcliff, Chillingworth knows well how to exploit the reactions that his physical deformity might generate. In his first encounter with Hester, Chillingworth was aiming at unveiling the secret identity of her paramour. So, he makes a malicious use of his physical deformity in order to draw out a confession of her regarding the unknown adulterer. He says: "Misshapen from my birth-hour, how could I delude myself with the idea the intellectual gifts might veil physical deformity in a young girl's fantasy" (The Scarlet Letter p. 57). Like Heathcliff who says "I love my murderer - but yours! How can I?" (Wuthering Heights p. 172), Chillingworth does not intend to seek any vengeance over Hester because he believes that they:
have greatly wronged each other. Mine was the first wrong, when I betrayed they budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay. Therefore, as a man who has not thought and philosophised in vain, I seek no vengeance, plot no evil against thee. Between thee and me, the scale hangs fairly balanced. (The Scarlet Letter p. 58)
Both Heathcliff and Roger Chillingworth belong to the Faust archetype. Therefore, the latter, like the former, and also like his antecedent Faustus, has a strong desire towards the sensuous beauty of woman. Chillingworth loves and gets united to Hester Prynne, who is exceptionally beautiful, by means of legal marriage. Like Catherine Earnshaw, Hester is 'immeasurably' fascinating. She is described as:
tall, with a figure of perfect elegance, on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, … , and a face which, besides being beautiful, from regularity of feature and richness of complexion had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes. She was lady-like, … ; Characterized by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace. (The Scarlet Letter p. 43)
Because of his physical deformity, his extraordinary mentality and native power to read the human soul, his union with an excessively beautiful and exciting woman, and his detested determination to seek an atrocious vengeance, Chillingworth, like Heathcliff, is discerned as a demoniac Faust. The Faustian man, for Hawthorne, is 'one who, unable to deny the definitions of right and wrong by which his community lives, chooses nonetheless to defy them" (Fielder, p. 440). So, Chillingworth defies all the principles and morals of the Christian community he lives in, and becomes deaf to the warning that "it is impious to put oneself into the place of God" (WagenKnecht, p. 191).
From his first appearance, Chillingworth's instinctive vengeful nature is clearly manifested. When he knows about his wife's felony and punishment, he becomes deeply dissatisfied that the adulterer is still unknown; he says: "it irks me, nevertheless, that the partner of her iniquity should not, at least, stand on the scaffold by her side. But He Will Be Known!' - HE WILL BE KNOWN!" (The Scarlet Letter p. 50). From his first appearance, thus, he insinuates that the very essence of his life will be retaliation. He tries to arise compunction in his wife's conscience so that it might be possible to unveil the secret identity of the iniquitous adulterer, but Hester refuses to reveal her paramour's identity. Chillingworth becomes more determined to avenge his hurt manhood. He assumes that:
I shall seek this man as I have sought truth in books; as I have sought gold in alchemy. There is a sympathy that will make me conscious of him. I shall see him tremble, I shall feel myself shudder, suddenly and unawares. Sooner or later, he must needs be mine. (The Scarlet Letter p. 58).
Though Hester refuses to reveal the man's name, and though he is completely unknown, Chillingworth, by his power of penetrating the surface appearances, emphasizes that he will discern the scarlet letter 'A', which is not embroidered on his garments, in the man's heart; he concludes "let him live! Let him hide himself in outward honour, if he may! Not the less he shall be mine!" (The Scarlet Letter p. 59). With his waywardness and determination to avenge himself, and because "it is not granted him to pardon. (He has) no such power" (The Scarlet Letter p. 126), Chillingworth, like Heathcliff, becomes more and more associated with the devil. Hester inquires irritatedly "Art thou like the Black Man that haunts the forest round about us? Hast though enticed me into a bond that will prove the ruin of my soul?" (The Scarlet Letter p. 60). By revenge, Hawthorne reinforces the assumption that "if Mistress Hibbins be the devil's servant, the Prince of Darkness has yet a closer liegeman in The Scarlet Letter. From his first appearance Roger Chillingworth is described in demonic terms" (Daniel G. Hoffman, Form and Fable in American Fiction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1961, p. 182).
It seems that Chillingworth has found his prey in the Reverand Arthur Dimmesdale in whom there was "an apprehensive, a startled, a half-frightened look, - as of being who felt himself quite astray and at a loss in the pathway of human experience, and could only be at ease in some seclusion of his own" (The Scarlet Letter p. 52). It is possible that Chillingworth's ability to read the human soul discerned something in Dimmesdale's physical ailment, his seclusion, and his habit of putting his hand on his heart. He, however, becomes "the physician as well as friend of the young minister" (The Scarlet Letter p. 81)
Due to his propinquity with Dimmesdale, Chillingworth like Hoffmann's monk Medardus, sought continually to probe into the secrets of the minister's heart, a propensity for which he is condemned because he, thus, "has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart" (The Scarlet Letter p. 140). Hawthorne summarizes Chillingworth's wrongdoing in the following extract:
He now dug into the poor clergyman's heart like a miner searching for gold; or, rather, like a sexton delving into a grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had been buried on the dead man's bosom, but likely to find nothing save mortality and corruption. (The Scarlet Letter p. 25).
Chillingworth, thus, becomes a demonic sadist who draws his pleasure from the suffering and mayhem he inflicts upon the poor minister, Dimmesdale. He "continues to represent a severe purging force. His immediate effect on Dimmesdale is debilitating - Chillingworth keeps Dimmesdale alive only to prolong the tortuous game Chillingworth enjoys playing with the minister" (John Cladwell Stubbs, The Pursuit of Form: A study of Hawthorne and the Romance. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970, p. 87-8). His sadism is reinforced by his unequivocal refusal of Hester's invocations to set Dimmesdale free, claiming that Dimmesdale was not tortured enough; "He has but increased the debt!" (The Scarlet Letter p. 124). Therefore, Chillingworth proves himself to be a sadist ghoul or Vampire who stays alive by sucking people's blood and inflicting on them the suffering and havoc of the soul. Hawthorne suggests that:
In a word, old Roger Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office. This unhappy person had affected such a transformation by devoting himself, for seven years, to the constant analysis of a heart full of torture, and deriving his enjoyment thence, and adding fuel to those fiery tortures which he analysed and gloated over. (The Scarlet Letter p. 122-3)
Devoting himself to revenge, Chillingworth's aspect "had undergone a remarkable change. At first, his expression had been calm, meditative, scholar-like. Now, there was something ugly and evil in his face" (The Scarlet Letter p. 24). His Satanism and demonic transformation is emphasized more and more by Hawthorne:
It grew to be a widely diffused opinion, that the Reverand Arthur Dimmesdale, …, was haunted either by Satan himself, or Satan's emissary, in the guise of old Roger Chillingworth. This diabolical agent had the Divine permission, for a season, to burrow into the clergyman's intimacy, and plot against his soul. (The Scarlet Letter p. 94-95).
Due to his evil effect, Dimmesdale "continues to move toward evil simply because Chillingworth keeps nudging him in that direction" (John C. Gerber, Form and Content in The Scarlet Letter, The New England Quarterly No, 17, 1944, p. 45).
Yet, there are certain points of difference between Heathcliff and Roger Chillingworth. Heathcliff's revenge is, in essence, related to economy; for he sought to destroy the lives of his enemies by dispossessing them from their paraphernalia. But, Chillingworth's revenge is, basically, psychological, devoted primarily to emaciate and sear the psychological existence of a human being by probing into the secrets of his heart; and to be able to 'burrow into the intimacy' of a person, one must hide his real identity. That is why Chillingworth's demonism, unlike Heathcliff's, is "closely associated with his metamorphic power: indeed, he is the only character in this book who holds this power" (Hoffman, p. 179). Therefore, Chillingworth's pact with the Infernus seems to be more intimate and stronger than Heathcliff's; for, after his transformation, Chillingworth becomes:
a moral monster who feeds only on another's torment, divorced wholly from the sources of life and goodness. He is eloquent testimony to the belief that Hawthorne shared with Shakespeare and Melville among others: that it is possible for man to make evil his good. (Waggoner, p. 337).
In fact, Roger Chillingworth made the quest for evil and the systematic pursuit of revenge to be the very principles of his life. Thus, when there were no more evil errands to run, no more vengeance to chase, he damned himself. Thus, the culminating irony with Chillingworth "is that in seeking to damn Dimmesdale he has himself fallen into damnation" (Fogle, p. 140). Therefore, the change in Chillingworth's being, which took place after Dimmesdale's death, is utterly remarkable because:
All his strength and energy - all his vital and intellectual force - seemed at once to desert him; in so much that he positively withered up, shrivelled away, and almost vanished from mortal sight, like an uprooted weed that lies wilting in the sun. (The Scarlet Letter p. 183)
Chillingworth is, actually, the crystallization of Hawthorne's conviction that evil resides in every man's heart, and thought it may remain latent it is always there. Therefore, Hawthorne emphasizes that:
calm, gentle, passionless, as he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quite depth of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfortunate old man, which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any other mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy" (The Scarlet Letter p. 102).
Evaluating the three sinners of the novel, Hester is a sinner who capable of redemption, Dimmesdale is partially redeemed, while Chillingworth is the completely damned sinner. Therefore, Chillingworth is the worst sinner of the three, and perhaps one of the worst evil characters in the whole English literature.