Even in a novel full of instances of sanctimony and sin within the Puritanical community about which he writes, Nathaniel Hawthorne is careful to only ever subtly develop a homosexual subtext to the relationship that exists between doctor Roger Chillingworth and Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. The Scarlet Letter’s men of science and faith are inextricably linked from the earliest chapters of the novel and spend much of the narrative in each other’s company: Chillingworth, suspicious that the guilt-ridden and sickly reverend impregnated his wife, protagonist Hester Prynne, and hellbent on vengeance as a result, inserts himself into Arthur Dimmesdale’s life as the ailing man’s primary physician. Not long thereafter, though, the relationship between