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Essay On The Scarlet Letter And Dimmesdale's Secrets

410 Words2 Pages

Secrets have the power to destroy reputations and endanger people’s livelihoods. In The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne has an affair which leads to her having a child. However, she refuses to ever reveal the identity of the child’s father and has to face all punishment on her own. Roger Chillingworth arrives in Boston the day Hester has to stand on the scaffold, but decides to not expose that he is her husband from Europe that everyone thought was dead. Lastly, readers discover that Reverend Dimmesdale is the father to Hester’s child, but he does not announce this until years later. Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Hester, Roger, and Dimmesdale keep secrets and deceive the public and, because of this, their lives are changed forever. Hester is …show more content…

The scarlet letter “A” blazes in front of everyone’s eyes as they solemnly watch the woman face her punishment. When she is confronted by Governor Bellingham, Reverend Wilson, and Reverend Dimmesdale and asked to confess who the father is, Hester refuses. She claims that her “child must seek a heavenly Father; she shall never know an earthly one” (Hawthorne 49)! However, this means that all of the blame is thrown on to Hester’s shoulders to carry, forcing her into a life of solitude and loneliness. After leaving prison, she settles down in a cottage secluded from the rest of the town where she makes a living with her extremely intricate needlework. Whenever Hester walks through the town, the people harshly judge her or their children attack her by throwing mud, for example (Hawthorne 71). The only life Hester now knows is one of seclusion and desolation; her sole true happiness takes form in her now older child, Pearl. However, because the townspeople believe Hester is an unfit mother, they try to take Pearl away. Ultimately she keeps her child, but the citizens reiterate that in their eyes Hester will always be the woman that had an illegitimate child with a father that remains unknown. The only person that avidly searches for the identity of this mysterious father is Hester’s former husband, Roger

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Hester can wear her scarlet letter in public, and has adjusted enough to continue living a normal life. Dimmesdale, on the other hand, lives in secret with his scarlet letter affecting him more every day. He envies how Hester has managed to embrace her scarlet letter, while his guilt is only increasing. At one point, Dimmesdale feels so much envy that he says, “Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! Mine burns in secret!

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In addition, Dimmesdale fells guilt even though he still does not confess. Narrator says, “The scarlet letter burned on Hester Prynne’s bosom. Here was another ruin, the responsibility of which came partly home to her” (narrator 154). This ruins Hester life. People in her town wanted her to leave the town or be punished such as wear a big red A on her bosom for the rest of her life.

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In the book The Scarlet Letter, Hester and Dimmesdale both have sinned and they both were about of it. There are two people to make a child so it's not just Hester's fault at all. She saves Dimmesdale by not telling anyone who the father of Pearl is, and for that Dimmesdale he has to leave with knowing the father of Pearl is himself, and having no one knowing that it is him. Hester is dealing with the sin, she made with Dimmesdale, well because she knows the truth about everything and everyone knows what she has done. She wants the towns people to know what she has been.

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Dimmesdale is the biggest jerk of The Scarlet Letter. From the beginning of the book, Dimmesdale is a hypocrite. Although it is implied that he preaches against premarital sex as a Puritan pastor, Dimmesdale commits adultery with Hester. After getting Hester pregnant, he avoids visiting Hester and his daughter for seven years.

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Furthermore, in the story of The Scarlet Letter, Hester, has a child with the town’s minister Arthur Dimmesdale, however, Chillingworth, the actual husband of Hester gets wind of this news and immediately sets out to find out who committed

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She continues to hold onto her regrets; however, her personality flourishes. Hawthorne portrays Hester as a strong individual, who even alters the stigma surrounding her. The women of the town eventually see her positive attitude, and they begin to interpret the scarlet letter differently: “Such helpfulness was found in her, - so much power to do, and power to sympathize, - that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant Able; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman’s strength” (151). Their interpretation of the letter shifts, and although Hester becomes an outcast of the community, she embraces her sin and learns to live with it.

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“And the infectious poison of that sin had been thus rapidly diffused throughout his moral system” (Hawthorne 174). In The Scarlet Letter, Dimmesdale serves as the holiest person many people meet in their moral lifetime, and as the purest embodiment of God’s word. However, Dimmesdale has a wounding secret, a cancer, that tears his soul apart throughout his time in America. Dimmesdale falls prey to sin in a moment of passion with Hester, resulting in her condemnation by the townspeople, and the birth of their child, Pearl. For years, Dimmesdale’s life is defined by an internal conflict - his job demands his purity in the eye of the townspeople, but he desires the acceptance of herself that Hester achieves through her sin being made public.

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In The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, a young woman named Hester Prynne moves to Boston, Massachusetts while her husband takes care of affairs back home in England. After about two years’ time she partakes in an affair with the town’s reverend, Arthur Dimmesdale, whom remains her unidentified lover. Soon after the affair she becomes pregnant and gives birth to her daughter, Pearl. The town becomes suspicious of the pregnancy, knowing the insemination occurred after she had come to Boston and the Puritan town accuses her of adultery. As punishment she is sentenced to stand on the town scaffold while wearing a scarlet letter “A” on her bosom, which she must now wear for the remainder of her life as a reminder of her sin.

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In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays how a young woman, Hester Prynne, is forced to live with the scarlet letter “A” on her breast to mark her shame of adultery. Hester commits the appalling crime with the well known Puritan minister, Arthur Dimmesdale. Being punished to wear the scarlet letter brings about a change among Hester’s character due to the ridicule from the public, the constant reminder of her sin from her illegitimate child, Pearl, and becoming secluded from society. Knowing his reputation and importance to the town, Dimmesdale is forced to bury his sin, bringing about an increasing amount of guilt throughout the years. Along with Hester and Dimmesdale, the letter affects Pearl’s life, as her main purpose is to function

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Throughout The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne exposes the blindness of the Puritan people through the treatment of Hester, Chillingworth, and Dimmesdale’s external characters. Hester Prynne is labeled as an adulteress and mistreated by society because of their unwillingness to see her true character. Chillingworth, the husband of Hester, leads the town to believe he is an honorable man and skillful doctor, when his true intents root from his vindictive nature Finally, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, Hester’s lover and the father of her baby, acts as the perfect man therefore the town views him as an exemplar model, while he is truly a sinner. In the novel, Hawthorne portrays Hester as a strong, resilient woman, though the members of her community

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Hester Prynne is a victim of the scarlet letter, but Arthur Dimmesdale is the victim. When reading The Scarlet Letter, by Nathanial Hawthorne, it is easy to focus on Hester and her suffering, as she is the primary focus of the novel. But, with a little close reading, it soon becomes apparent that Dimmesdale’s suffering is more destructive than Hester’s. As a result of her crime, Hester is banished to the fringes of Puritan society; inducing an almost complete social exile. Yet Dimmesdale's position as the head of the Church creates a moral quagmire of his values and sin; one which his inability to reconcile and drives him to self loathing.

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The book “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is a complex novel that has underlying themes of sin and the responsibility for sin. The novel takes place in a Puritanical society, but two people, Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, fornicate with each other, even though Hester is married to someone else. Only Hester is punished, so Dimmesdale keeps his guilt inside, not revealing it to anyone. Hester’s husband, Chillingworth, then proceeds to ruin Hester’s partner in crime, corrupting his soul and being the ultimate cause for his death. Hester, on the other hand, leads a relatively happy life after she had repented for her sin.

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