Hypocrisy In Scarlet Letter

French poet Jean De La Fontaine once said, “Nothing weighs on us so heavily as a secret does.” Set in the harsh Puritan community of seventeenth-century Boston, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is a tale of a woman named Hester Prynne who is involved in an affair scandal. As a result she is punished by the relentless society and is ordered to bear a scarlet “A” on her bosom for the remainder of her life which stands for adulterer. However, the mystery as to who the father is of her newborn baby, Pearl would remain a mystery for seven years. One of the town’s most renowned figures, their beloved minister Arthur Dimmesdale proves to be a true exhibit of Mr. Fontaine’s saying since he is the illicit lover of Hester and is Pearl’s

Dimmesdale was quieter by nature and additionally was a very pious man, demonstrated in his conversations with Chillingworth. This caused his sin to weigh down on him even more. In Dimmesdale’s discussion with Chillingworth, Dimmesdale suggests that one might keep their sin a secret because (10-120/121) In this quote, Dimmesdale is really describing himself.

Dimmesdale realizes that he must confess his sin and face whatever consequences may lie ahead of him, whether or not his confession is seven years past due. Before reaching the “well-remembered and weather-darkened scaffold,” where Hester Prynne had encountered the “world’s ignominious stare,” Arthur Dimmesdale cautiously comes to a pause (246). Only two people in the crowd, Roger Chillingworth (Hester’s husband) and Hester Prynne, understand why Dimmesdale halts before ascending up the scaffold. He will finally reveal his identity to the town and release the guilt that has built inside of him for seven years. As Hester and Pearl are about to accompany Dimmesdale up to the scaffold, Chillingworth “trusts himself through the crowd” – or, from Hawthorne’s description, “so dark, disturbed, and evil was his look,” Chillingworth “rose up out of some nether region to snatch back his victim from what he sought to do” (247). Ignoring Chillingworth’s effort to stop Dimmesdale, the three mount the scaffold and face the eager crowd. In one of Dimmesdale’s final speeches, he claims that Hester’s scarlet letter “is but the shadow of what he bears on his own breast” (250). The moment after Dimmesdale reveals his ‘scarlet letter’, he stood “with a flush of triumph in his face as one who had won a victory” (251). As Dimmesdale had wished, his remorse and internal pain is forgotten once he reveals his true identity, allowing his soul to experience its elapsed freedom.

At this point in the book, Dimmesdale is well respected by the townspeople, and looked up to by many. He has a superior reputation and worries about ruining it. Dimmesdale urges Hester on the scaffold to tell the officials and the community the name of Pearl’s father. Though he does not have the courage to, since Dimmesdale is Hester’s spiritual mentor and pastor, he is obligated to question Hester about the crime. He knows that if he admits to his sin, he will lose the respect of the townspeople. The speech is two fold, meaning something different to both Hester and the townspeople. Dimmesdale starts contradicting himself, wanting Hester to name the father, but at the same time also not wanting her to: “Even in the first scaffold scene Hawthorne shows forth the deep ambivalence of Dimmesdale’s position: the minister would like to be named and known for what he is, an adulterer” (Twayne 3). Dimmesdale encourages Hester to give up his name when he says, “What can thy science do for him, except tempt him—yea, compel him, as it were—to add hypocrisy to sin?” (Hawthorne 26). According to his ability to keep in his true emotions, Dimmesdale seems unafraid to the community. Dimmesdale is a healthy Reverend, but his confidence slowly deteriorates as his sin consumes

Nathaniel Hawthorne's bold novel, The Scarlet Letter, revolves around sin and punishment.  The main characters of the novel sharply contrast each other in the way they react to the sin that has been committed

Reverend Dimmesdale was a renowned, prideful man stricken with sin and extreme guilt.  From the time Hester and Dimmesdale made love, he was grievous of his sin but he also felt a great love towards her.  Dimmesdale's stubborn pride troubled him greatly, and although he tried many times, he could not confess his sin to his religious followers.  Dimmesdale felt guilt so strongly that he scourged himself on his breast and patterned an “A” into his own flesh, yet he could not confess his sin until his grief grew so great it caused him to perish.  Reverend Dimmesdale's sin was greater than Hester's because he let his pride conflict with his repentance, and let his life be ruined by his anguish.

Prompt: How does Hawthorne develop his themes of sin, hypocrisy, and corruption in the Puritan society through the occurrences of the scarlet letter, the scaffold, the Puritans, the prison, and the forest in the story?

Hester Prynne’s ability to sustain her stability and strength of spirit is the express result of her public guilt and penance. She was Arthur Dimmesdale’s partner in adultery, but she is used by Hawthorne as a complete foil to his situation. Unlike Dimmesdale, Hester is both strong and honest. Walking out of prison at the beginning of the novel, she decides that she must “sustain and carry” her burden forward “by the ordinary resources of her nature, or sink with it. She could no longer borrow from the future to help her through the present grief” (54). Hester openly acknowledges her sin to the public, and always wears her scarlet letter A. In the forest scene, she explains to Dimmesdale that she has been truthful in all things except in revealing his part in her pregnancy. “A lie is never good, even though death threaten on the other side” (133). Even Dimmesdale himself realizes that Hester’s situation is much healthier than his own when he states, “It must needs be better for the sufferer to be free to show his pain, as this poor woman Hester is, than to cover it all up in his heart” (92-93). This life of public shame and repentance, although bitter, lonely, and difficult, helps Hester retain her true identity while Dimmesdale seems to be losing his.

Mr. Dimmesdale is an almost perfect example of the contrast between public and private truth in The Scarlet Letter. The young clergyman is often seen as saint by the public. Many of his sermons throughout the book bring dozens to Christ in the small town. The people of the town even began to say,“The saint on earth! Alas, if he discern such sinfulness in his own white soul, what horrid spectacle would he behold in thine or mine!”(Hawthorne 246). In private though, Mr. Dimmesdale is actually being eaten alive by the guilt that his sin with Hester gave him. Mr. Dimmesdale’s adulterous act caused

Dimmesdale and Hester both pay penance for their sin through shame and in Dimmesdale’s

In The Scarlet Letter Hypocrisy is evident everywhere. The characters of Hester, Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and the very society that the characters lived in, were steeped in hypocrisy. Hawthorne was not subtle in his portrayal of the terrible sin of hypocrisy; he made sure it was easy to see the sin at work , at the same time however, parallels can be drawn between the characters of The Scarlet Letter and of today’s society.

(Insert quote). Hester also does not believe that what she did was a sin since her and Chillingworth were never really married because they did not love each other. She even tells Chillingworth, “thou knowest that I was drank with thee. I felt no love, nor feigned any”. This is hypocritical of Hester because she says she did not commit a sin but yet she wears the scarlet letter without a fight. If she hasn’t committed a sin, why wear it? In addition, Hester says to him, “What we did had a consecration of its own. We felt it so” (Hawthorne __). Chillingworth asks Hester not to reveal his identity to anyone and Hester agrees but she says she says she loves Dimmesdale (Hawthorne __). Thus, Hester could be blamed responsible for Dimmesdale’s pain caused by Chillingworth because if she truly did love Dimmesdale, she would have warned Dimmesdale about who Chillingworth really is to begin with.

Hester serves her penance in the community, while Dimmesdale performs his covertly. Despite the pillory that Hester endures, she does not lament her past. Though Hester is publicly degraded, she feels no internal contempt regarding her past actions, so in order to repent, she condemns herself to her own punishment of maintaining her presence in the puritan society, declaring to herself, “Here[...] had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul[...]”(V,68). Regardless of being able to flee back to her homeland and evade the societal disreputation imposed upon her, Hester resolves to stay in the Puritan society as an act of self-punishment, since the only penalty that would be potent in cleansing her soul and that she cannot avert is that which she condemns herself to. Dimmesdale’s shame began as an insidious hindrance, but eventually, he became subjugated by it and turned to afflicting himself physically as atonement for the acts of sinful love that he had committed.

By revealing this small, hidden regret, he exposes Hester’s tortured state of mind. Unable to reach salvation in the town she desired to live in, she regretfully decided to leave and abandon her sorrows. The burden society placed on her with the scarlet letter was too demanding for her to handle any longer. Similarly, Arthur Dimmesdale was distressed from his ignominy. Afraid of societal repercussions, Dimmesdale had been “overcome with a great horror of mind, as if the universe were gazing at a scarlet token on his naked breast” (102). Society’s extensive honor toward him exacerbated his pain, thus causing society to trap Dimmesdale; this prevented him from revealing his dark secret and reaching salvation. Additionally, he began to picture his surroundings as an obstacle designed to hinder his path to redemption. His shortcoming to reach salvation agonized Dimmesdale to the point where he was incapable of recalling “[any] text of Scripture, nor aught else, except a brief, pithy, and, as it then appeared to him, unanswerable argument against the immorality of

As far as the townspeople know, Hester is the lone sufferer for one sin committed by two people. No one would ever guess that their minister, alone, is guilty of three major crimes: adultery, hypocrisy, and neglecting confession. His heart becomes so heavy with guilt, remorse, and sorrow that he punishes himself by fasting for days, whipping his own back. Some believe that this is what caused the scarlet "A" to mysteriously appear on his chest. The guilt that is a direct result of concealing his terrible sins is literally destroying him. Hawthorne writes, "No man, for any considerable period can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true." (196) Dimmesdale is learning this lesson the hard way. His inner-conscience longs to confess, but he has too much worldly wealth at stake. He successfully keeps his secret from the town until he realizes it has already killed him.