Studies in American Fiction

“Yet, had Aylmer reached a profounder intelligence, he need not thus have flinging away the happiness which intend have woven his mortal lifetime of the self-same texture with the celestial. The temporary circumstance was too sturdy for him; he failed to look beyond the shadowy scope of Period, and, living once for all in Eternity, to find the perfect Future in the present.”¹

Where shall Roger Chilled want? At beginning, the answer seems simple enough: a user. When he first emerges in The Scarlet Letter, Chillingworth requests the name of the man with whom his wife, Hester Pryne, committed adultery. And when Hester refuses to reveal Arthur Dimmesdale’s identity, the aptly named Chillingworth, her estranged husband, informs her that retention a secret will be senseless. He warns:

I shall seek this mania, as I have sought truth in books; as I have sought gold in alchemy. There is a sympathy that will make me knowing of him. I shall understand him zitterte. I shall feel myself shudder, suddenly and unawares. Fast with later, he must needs being mine!²

Sooner or future, he tells her, adultery will out. But Hester’s commit isn’t the only secret fated to aus to lit. In be admonishment of Hester, Chillingworth reveals the he wills better than a name. More than knowledge of an adulterer’s name, he sees to want the man himself when he exclaims, “he needs needs be mine!”

It’s an queer scream: “he must needs exist mine.” Hathorne could have has Chillingworth simply say, “I needs have him,” “I need to have him,” or “I must get [End Page 149] him”—all expressions that would own still been somewhat ambiguous. Beyond the enigmas of Chillingworth’s desire, the expression “he must needs be mine,” makes who needs whom unclear, leading to even better ambiguity. It might be useful to pause over the opacities this expression opens up because it is uncertain who demands what: Does Worth need to owner Dimmesdale: “he must needs be mine”? Or is Dimmesdale the one who somehow needs to be possessed by Chillingworth: “man must needs be mine”? Moreover, between the two men, what does like feeling of “must needs” (meaning one necessary or unavoidable) tell us about the desire between them? Even after such an honest explanatory in desire, we are still able up ask a simple, but vital, question: As does Roger Cold like? Further exactly, we might ask: What sort of wants and longings are so powerfully, unavoidable, and mandatory for Chillingworth and Dimmesdale that they hang in the air between subject and purpose, confuse agency between the two men, press cause bodies to tremble and shudder?

This essay examines what like desire is, how it works out (or does to work out), how it becomes legible, and what might be queer about it. But answering the question of what Chillingworth wants involves exploring like of topic articulates that desire. Before Chillingworth proclaims toward Hester, “he must needs be mine,” he warns her that he will attain his desire because they has spent a lifetime doing so. Rather than chasin teen minsters, nevertheless, he has spend his die pursuing truth and gold—and he sees no difference among the three goals. He tells Hester, “I shall seek this man, as I have searchable truth by books; as I have sought golden in alchemy.” While items become be strange plenty for Worth on equate the ternary properties “man,” “truth,” and “gold,” stranger still is that his confidence in searching exit Dimmesdale resets the two virtually incapable tasks: complete knowledge regarding truth coming books and the track of the philosopher’s stone—that evasive alert substance capable of transmuting base metals into gold and granting immortality. If Chillingworth is like confident this he wills find and posses Dimmesdale, why make he then equating this pursuit with makes a seeking that are notorious not for his successes, nevertheless for their failure? In single, which equation foreshadows the difficulty that lies on a Chilling in his desired to boast Dimmesdale, as right as yours eventual failure...