Hester Prynne Hypocrisy

Roger Chillingworth is a vile man who hides his disgrace of having a disloyal wife and finds pleasure in tormenting the poor Arthur Dimmesdale. When he comes to town at the beginning of The Scarlet Letter, Chillingworth makes Hester promise not to tell anyone that he is her real husband.“ ‘Breath not, to any human soul, that thou didst ever call me husband!’…’because I will not encounter the dishonor that besmirches the husband of a faithless woman…’”(Hawthorne 52-53).

Believed by many writers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, society corrupts and conforms the individual, and it is the individual who breaks from consistency and conformity that is most free. Hester Prynne, a woman punished for adultery, is isolated by herself and her community, but breaks free from strict Puritan society. Roger Chillingworth, the husband of Hester, isolates himself which leads to the destruction of himself and the community. Hester Prynne and Roger Chillingworth experience different types of isolation, and while Hester chooses to transcend Puritan laws and live a purposeful life regardless of how it affects her, Chillingworth decides to become infatuated with the sin of Arthur Dimmesdale and live in revenge outside of Puritan

Even though Hester’s sin is the one the book is titled after and centered around, it is not nearly the worst sin committed. Hester learns from her sin, and grows strong, a direct result of her punishment. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. “ Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers--stern and wild ones--and they had made her strong... “ Hester also deceived Dimmesdale, also committing the sin of deception. She swore to Chillingworth that she would keep their marriage a secret. She even withheld this from Dimmesdale, whom she truly loved. Hester finally insisted on telling Dimmesdale and clearing her conscience. In this passage, you can see how he grows angry at Hester: “O Hester Prynne, thou little, little knowest all the horror of this thing! And the shame!--the indelicacy!--the horrible ugliness of this exposure of a sick and guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat over it! Woman, woman, thou art accountable for this! I cannot forgive thee!”  Dimmesdale does forgive Hester. She has done

Hester Prynne was at war with her conscience about telling the community who her mister was. Being that Hester already committed the sin of adultery and the community found out about it she still wanted to keep who her mister was a secret. Arthur Dimmesdale, who happens to be Hester Prynne's mister was also at war with his conscience. Arthur Dimmesdale is said to be a “man of the church,” and keeps being the father of Pearl and Hester’s partner in adultery a secret and seemingly gets a heart problem. Both Hester and Arthur already have committed a sin and initially keep their affair a secret and its leads to Arthur developing a heart

Physically deformed and mysterious, Roger Chillingworth finally met his wife after being separated from her for almost two years.  He showed no great anger towards her and took upon himself some of the accountability saying it was “...my folly and thy weakness,” (Hawthorne 52) which was the cause of Hester's sin.  Chillingworth's only feeling was one of revenge towards the man who had been Hester's lover.  Chillingworth was obsessed by hate and revenge so much that when Dimmesdale died “... the life seemed to have departed...” (Hawthorne 72) from him and he died within a year of Dimmesdale's death.  Chillingworth never felt guilt or attempted repentance because he “... violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart.” (Hawthorne 133).  He sought to destroy Dimmesdale's

In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne exhibits how three very unique characters are evidently brought together by the sins that they have perpetrated and how they manage to perform acts of atonement in the puritanical Boston society. Hester Prynne sins by committing the shocking transgression of adultery. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, who as well engages in adultery with Hester, abandons her and their daugher because of his own cowardice and hypocrisy. Roger Chillingworth grows to become a maleficent being who tries to corrupt the very soul of Reverend Dimmesdale. Although Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale do sin greatly, it is Roger Chillingworth who sins to the most ferocious degree.

     Hester Prynne, through the eyes of the Puritans, is an extreme sinner. She has gone against the Puritan ways by committing Adultery. The Puritans believed that Hester was a lost soul that could only be saved by sincere and thorough repentance. For this

On June 1642, in Boston, people gather to see the punishment of a young girl by the name of Hester Prynne, she was found guilty of cheating and was forced to wear a scarlet A on her clothes as a sign of shame because of it. Also, she should stand on the scaffold for three hours she was open to much humiliation when the young girl came to the scaffold, lots of the females there are upset because of her beauty and dignity. She was told and persuaded to name her child’s Father, but she refused. When she looks out over into the people, she can see a little, irregular man that she recognizes and it turns out to be her long-lost husband, who was supposed to be lost at sea. When her husband sees her on the scaffold in shame, he asks a man why she’s

Hester Prynne was seen as a risk taker. The 17th century is the time periods in which it took place. During this time period the things Hester did were not allowed to be done. Her actions are characterized as "but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony" (Hawthorne 44). What she wanted for herself was always put before what she actually needed. Because of her behavior there were consequences to go along with them. Hester slowly becomes an outcast to the society, as well as Pearl when she is born. People in the community often said a few thing about her and talked behind her back."People say," said another "that the reverend Master Dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very grievous to the heart that such a scandal has come upon his congregation" (Hawthorne 107). This quote shows how the others around her are effected by her

Puritan society is also portrayed in a negative light when observing its effects on Dimmesdale. Arthur Dimmesdale is praised by many in his community as a holy figure and thus a leader, however, he is just as much a sinner as Hester, since together they committed adultery. The fact that he hides this secret in order to preserve this false image of himself shows how much he cares about how he is viewed by society. While many would argue that he does this out of his own free will, there is no doubt that he feels pressure from society to keep his past hidden and maintain this holy facade. Once Dimmesdale dies, some townspeople “affirm that the Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale, on the very day when Hester Prynne first wore her ignominious badge, had begun a course of penance … by inflicting a hideous torture on himself” (Hawthorne 230). When they see the letter branded on Dimmesdale, they are shown how he has been tortured by himself and by Chillingworth, as a result of the agony society put him through in hiding his secret of having committed sin. This instance shows how, in a deterministic society, even those viewed as the

Hester was forced to marry Roger Chillingworth, but she did not love him. She fell in love with Arthur Dimmesdale and slept with him behind Chillingworth’s back (Hawthorne 69). Hester Prynne was felt as if she was not loved by Chillingworth, so she decided to start seeing the priest Arthur Dimmesdale. Hester and Dimmesdale are not the types of shame and secrets (Howells). In Hester’s endurance of punishment there is publicity but not confession (Howells). The tragedy of the story is Hester Prynne’s personality (Howells). She dominates by virtue and is womanly and typical her (Howells). The A keeps Hester away but hardly equips her with

In The Scarlet Letter, Roger Chillingworth changes from a freelance intellectual to an estranged physician as feelings of revenge control his life. Chillingworth neglected his marriage with Hester and the consequences ended up having an effect on both of their identities. In Chapter 15, Hester states her opinion on Chillingworth: “He betrayed me! He has done me worse wrong than I did him!” (159). In Hester's eyes, Chillingworth's actions changed her perspective on life as he is the sole reason she sinned in the first place. Hester coped with a life change while Chillingworth coped with revenge as a general effect of Chillingworth's neglect. Roger Chillingworth was physically and emotionally consumed by his years long plans for revenge on Reverend Dimmesdale. In Chapter 14, Roger Chillingworth says this of the Reverend to Hester: “Yea...better had he died...to be tortured with frightful dreams...perpetual poison of the direst revenge!” (155). In this quote, we see that Chillingworth's anger has turned his vile actions into words as he discusses the poisoning and brainwashing he forces Dimmesdale to endure on a daily basis. Chillingworth allowed jealousy and guilt control his life until it eventually ended. Chillingworth's’ revenge ended up killing him in the end since his plans worked and Dimmesdale died on the scaffold in which Hester lived out her daily punishments. Roger was ultimately responsible for the destruction of the lives of Hester, Dimmesdale and himself.

The three main characters in the novel are Hester Prynne, Roger Chillingworth, and Dimmesdale. Hester is an adulteress and has a baby named pearl and she is convicted and her punishment is to wear a scarlet letter “a” upon her chest and to wear it until her death where it will be marked upon her grave as well. Her husband who she cheated on was Roger Chillingworth, which was his alias in the new world. He discovers Hester’s ignominy and is set on finding her partner in the “crime” they committed against him. Dimmesdale is the man who Hester had an affair, although he is the minister and that is a huge scandal for the preacher who speaks against infidelity. Hawthorne makes the relationship acceptable by showing that Hester and Dimmesdale actually love each other opposed to Chillingworth and Hester’s fake love.Chillingworth convinced Hester into marrying him which she never wanted to do in the first place, he only wished to own someone not love them. Chillingworth can be associated to evil because of his wish for revenge and torture to Dimmesdale which are considered the worst kind of sins. Chillingworth is also referred to as a leech which is what

Hester Prynne has a certain series of ethics she lives by, and she sticks by those. The first ethic vs. law decision she made was to have an affair with Dimmsdale. She very clearly told Roger Chillingworth that “thou knows I was frank with thee. I felt no love, nor feigned any” (Hawthorne, 63). It would have been ethically wrong for her to stay by her husbands side and put on a facade. She loved and continued to love Arthur Dimmsdale even though she knew it was illegal to act on it, but

In The Scarlet Letter there are three main sinners presented to the reader. Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale and Roger Chillingworth are all written with their own forms of sin, and each has a unique coping mechanism for their sins and guilt. Sin, at this time, was a hugely important part of daily life, and punishment for one’s sins was universally seen as not only a positive thing, but a necessary action to keep the people of the colony pure. Both Hester and Dimmesdale receive great punishments for their sin of adultry. However, one character is portrayed as a true sinner, more so than the others. Roger Chillingworth is by far the worst sinner in The Scarlet Letter. This is made apparent by