Inof ,
anddecide that they will end their years of silent suffering and run away,
together, from their Puritan community.
This decision has an enormously
positive effect on the emotional state of each of the lovers.
About
Dimmesdale, Hawthorne writes:
a glow of strange enjoymnent
threw its flickering brightness over the trouble of his breast...His spirit rose...and attained
a nearer prospect of the sky...
Hester removes the
scarlet letter from her dress and flings it into the forest; she also removes the "formal
cap that confined her hair."
her youth, and the
whole richness of her beauty, came back from what men call the irrevocable past...and [she
experienced] a happiness before unknown...
At this point,
Hawthorne describes (perhaps in an exaggerated fashion) how the happiness of the two lovers
spread beyond themselves and affected the natural world around them:
as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring
a very flood into the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf...Such was the sympathy of
Nature...with the bliss of these two spirits!
This
sentence is the basis for the chapter's name, "A Flood of Sunshine." It refers to:
a)the literal flood of light from the sun, and b)to the overflowing joy that was experienced by
Hester and Dimmesdale.
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