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. For seven years, Dimmesdale pretends he is innocent of adultery and gets praises for his faux act. Dimmesdale even says so himself that he feels extremely guilty and would rather share his crime than to keep it in secret. He obviously does not prefer sharing his crime with the public because he waits seven long years to do so. He was too obsessed with what others think and gossip about him. While everyone around Dimmesdale thinks he is a kind and sensitive sweetheart, Dimmesdale is obviously a jerk from the way he treats Hester. Dimmesdale constantly received compliments about how godly and good he was, and highly respected by the townsfolk. He had “a freshness, and fragrance, and dewy purity of thought, which, as many people said, affected them like tile speech of an angel.” He therefore knew he had enough power over the town in order to allow Hester not to wear the Scarlet …show more content…
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!”, thus presenting verbal abuse. He then guilts her into apologizing for not revealing that Chillingworth was her husband until then, by saying, “Woman, woman, thou art accountable for this!—I cannot forgive thee!”. Dimmesdale went further in putting down the images of others by immediately adding how awful he viewed Chillingworth, saying that he “has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart” and implying that Chillingworth was “the worst sinner in the