The Evil Mistriss Hibbins of The Scarlet Letter

The Evil Mistriss Hibbins of The Scarlet Letter

Evil can be defined as, "That which is the reverse of good,

physically or morally; whatever is censurable painful, disastrous, or

undesirable." In the novel "The Scarlet Letter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne,

Mistriss Hibbins can also be defined in those terms. She is believed to be

evil by many of the characters. Henry Louis Mencken once said, "It is a sin

to believe evil of others, but is seldom a mistake." In this novel he was

right, Mistriss Hibbins is evil. However, she is an important character who

appears more often than most people realize and her evilness has a serious

impact on most of the characters.

Mistriss Hibbins represents evil in the novel. She was accused of

being a witch. This is a very evil thing in the eyes of the Puritans.

Mistriss Hibbins can also be said to be evil simply because she is always

in the forest, which is an evil place. She is said to go on "night rides"

and attend witch meetings there. "And Mistriss Hibbins, with some twigs of

the forest clinging to her skirts, and looking sourer than ever, as having

hardly got a wink of sleep after her night ride."

The people in town are scared to even be near Mistriss Hibbins. At

the last scaffold scene, "The crowd gave way before her, and seemed to fear

the touch of her garment, as if it carried the plague among its gorgeous

folds." Here, it says that the townspeople were so scared, that they

thought her evil was contagious.

Mistriss Hibbins also effects the way some of the characters think

in the novel. In one part of the novel, Mistriss Hibbins tells Pearl, the

daughter of Hester Prynne, that Dimmesdale, who is her father, is the

"Prince of Air". "They say, child, though art of the lineage of the Prince

of Air!" In this quote she was telling Pearl that Dimmesdale is the devil.

Pearl gets influenced by her and believes her father is the devil. In one

scaffold scene, Pearl yells out, "Mistriss Hibbins says my father is the

Prince of Air. If though callest me that ill-name, I shall tell him of thee,

and he will chase thy ship with a tempest.