During these long seven years, Chillingworth has become obsessed with revenge, and this deadly sin has changed him considerably. He pities Hester because he feels she is not really sinful, and any breach with God’s law has been paid many times over by her wearing of the scarlet letter. He further feels that if she had “met earlier with a better love than mine, this evil had not been.” On the other hand, he also says it is his fate to change from a “kind, true, just” man to a fiend who does the devil’s work.
By placing these two characters together in this chapter without Pearl, Hawthorne shows what the years have done to Chillingworth. We see a side of the old scholar that makes us pity him despite his treatment of Dimmesdale, and we feel that of them all, Hester has paid her dues and deserves our respect.
