Chapter 18: A Flood of Sunshine

-The only way for Hester and Dimmesdale to find happiness is to leave the town together.
~“The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not trend. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers,-stern and wild ones,- and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss” (180).
~“If this be the path to a better life, as Hester would persuade me, I surely give up no fairer prospect by pursuing it!” (181)

-Hester takes the scarlet letter off her chest, lets her hair down, and smiles. She has gained her beauty back and the sun is no longer hiding from her.
~“She undid the clasp that fastened the scarlet letter, and, taking it from her bosom, threw it to a distance among the withered leaves” (182).
~“All at once, as with a sudden smile of heaven, forth burst the sunshine, pouring a very flood into the obscure forest, gladdening each green leaf, transmuting the yellow fallen ones to gold, and gleaming adown the gray trunks of the solemn trees” (183).
~“Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber must always create a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world” (183).

-Hester wants Dimmesdale to meet Pearl, so he can love her as much as she does. Dimmesdale is apprehensive about meeting Pearl, because most children don’t like him.
~ “I have long shrunk away from children, because they often show a distrust,- a backwardness to be familiar with me, I have even been afraid of little Pearl!” (183)