“While this passed, Hester Prynne had been standing on her pedestal, still with a fixed gaze towards the stranger--so fixed a gaze that, at moments of intense absorption, all other objects in the visible world seemed to vanish, leaving only him and her" (61)
The passage is significant to the story because of the way Hawthorne wrote the chapter. The passage adds to the suspense of the newly introduced and slightly deformed character. As of that moment, the reader did not know who that man was and this spurred the curiosity of the reader. It is later revealed that the man was Hester Prynne's husband, yet he didn't want anybody to know.
Why didn't Prynne want to release her lovers name?
Why did her husband want his identity kept a secret?
Why was Hawthorne so descriptive when Hester Prynne spotted her husband, making it seem she didn't know him?
