“A wise
sentence,” remarked the stranger, gravely bowing his head. “Thus she will be a living
sermon against sin, until the ignominious letter be engraved upon her tombstone. 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!—he will be
known!”
Hawthorne
foreshadows, by the above quote from Chapter 3 of The Scarlet
Letter two things. The first is that Chillingworth, who as yet in Chapter 3
remains unnamed, will pursue an investigation of his own and his own sort to discover
the identity of the father of Hester's baby, which is precisely what he unrelentingly
does in later chapters of the story.
The second
foreshadowed occurrence is that ultimately, all the readers' questions about who the
father truly is will be answered, no matter how dismaying and shocking. This is in fact
precisely what occurs as the novel progresses with the horrible confirmations of the
truth as they come up later in the story.
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