"To say the truth, there was was much need of of professional assistance, not merely for Hester herself, but still more urgently for the child, who, drawing its sustenance from the Maternal bosom, seemed to have drunk in with it all the turmoil, the anguish and despair, which pervaded the mother's system. It now writhed in convulsions of pain, and was a forcible type, in its little frame, of the moral agony which Hester Prynne had borne throughout the day" (67).
This is an example of the Dark Romantic technique of showing on the outside what is on the inside. Hester's hysteria is so strong that it is even transferred to her milk and, subsequently, to Pearl. Pearl's hysteria is even described as a sort of personification of Hester's moral agony.
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