Dimmesdale’s Guilt In Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel, The Scarlet Letter, admitting guilt opens oneself to sin. When Hester admits to being guilty of adultery, it condemns her. However, by accepting her condemnation, she saves her soul. On the other hand, Dimmesdale does not confess to his part in the adultery. He keeps his guilt bottled up inside.
Dimmesdale suffers differently from Hester, because while she “bore it all” to the townspeople (181), his fears forced him to hide his sin, living a life full of “nothing but despair” (177). Hester, though made a social pariah of the town, has a more honest and healthy way of dealing with her sin. Because Hester is forced to face her wrongdoings under the watchful eye of her Puritan neighbors, she did not have the same guilt of secrecy that Dimmesdale did. Dimmesdale, by hiding his sin, allows himself to become a captive to his guilt. The way that Dimmesdale dealt with his guilt was unhealthy for him, both mentally and physically.
Another thing we learn about Dimmesdale is that he is quite envious of Hester. Since she gets to wear her scarlet letter in front of everyone and everyone knows of her sins unlike Dimmesdale who is the only one other than God who knows of the
In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne illustrates how effective public shaming really is. Hester Prynne is outcast from society and is forced to wear the scarlet letter “A” on her chest representing her crime of adultery. In the 17th century, the Puritans used public shaming as an effort to try to reform criminals. Today, public shaming is used more to bring attention and humiliation to a crime. In today’s world, public shaming could attract more attention because of the rapid spread of information.
Nearly 400 years ago shame emerged as a technique for punishment and many have used it ever since. Even in puritan times, as seen in the historical novel, The Scarlet Letter, shaming, although it has some downfalls, has provided a useful way to prevent offenders from repeating their actions. Despite some critics believing that shaming has detrimental effects on an offender, shaming ultimately provides a more humane, economical, and effective way of punishing criminals, furthermore judges should use ignominy as a form of punishment. Some may believe that shame causes one to feel socially isolated, such as the main protagonist in Hawthorne's novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hester Prynne. After committing adultery and receiving the letter A,
In chapter 2 of The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne continues to portray the critical attitude Puritans had towards sins and repentance. Through the use of symbols, he exaggeratedly exposes how far a Puritan were to repent for their sins. From the moment Hester Prynne walks outside of the gate the women and men gathered immediately begin to gossip and badmouth her, besides not knowing anything about her other than the sin she committed. As she walks to the scaffold women begin to say her punishment of wearing an “A” is too light. They state that she can easily cover it, yet a woman rebuttals and says that she will forever “feel it in her heart” .To make things worse a woman goes as far as to say that she should be scalded with the
The Scarlet Letter and Sins In the past, adultery was, as it is today, considered a sin. Harsh punishment always applies to women under this circumstance. If a priest, in this case Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, a role model of society commits sin of this nature, harsher punishment awaits him. There were many different forms of punishment for sinners; they would publicly humiliate, ruin reputations, exclude them from the community (treat them as if they were outcasts).
Few sensations in the human experience stand as universal as sin. All who ever live on this Earth shall sin; and sin, with its war waging upon embattled humans roaming the earth, its pillaging and plundering the immense spectrum of human emotions, its seeping into every crevasse of the human experience, comes with an immense flurry of guilt, isolation, concealment, punishment, and consequences. With this burden of sin, all people must face this question: What happens when this sin—this horrible plague of blackness and death—overcomes an individual? In his book, The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorn delves deep into this very question of what individuals do when guilt and the isolation resulting in the concealment of sins overtakes their soul.
Hawthorne does this to elude to the reasons why Dimmesdale, the assumed sinner, chooses not to openly state his connection to Hester. Dimmesdale never truly reveals his sin because of his position as a leader of the Puritan society and his fear of the punishment that society inflicts on sinners. His role as a leader is significant because his duty was to abstain from sin and live a model life. When Hester and Dimmesdale decide to leave the community, it is revealed what has kept Dimmesdale within its confines: At the head of the social system, as the clergymen of that day stood he was only the more trammeled by its regulations, its principles, and even its prejudices.
In having Hester reject her punishment, Hawthorne also makes a statement about his rejection of Puritan society as a whole. Despite many attempts to force her to disclose the identity of her partner, Hester never reveals Dimmesdale's name. She shoulders the burden of her public shaming entirely alone even after Dimmesdale exposes himself. When he dies Hester is left to pick up the pieces and she does so with strength and grace. "What Hester achieves through Dimmesdale's death,..
Punishment in The Scarlet Letter In life everyone falls short of making the right decisions, but mistakes do not define a person, one is defined by the deeds they accomplish and the tasks they are able to overcome even in the most difficult trials. In The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne asserts the fact that self punishment is more conflicting than social punishment in order to prove the Puritans customs were askew. He rebuts the Puritans through the main characters Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale as they face hardships of the societal humiliation as well as the forgiveness they must give themselves. At times, the punishment should fit the crime, but under certain circumstances, the crime itself holds all the punishment that is
Hester blatantly exposes herself and her sin, yet Dimmesdale has lived without confessing. The correlation between public and hidden sin appear since Dimmesdale's whole state is deteriorating (due to the lack of confession, unlike Hester). Accordingly, Hester is morally approved by God’s law, while Dimmesdale is approved by man’s law but his life is a lie. Hester towards the end of story proves to be a reliable source of kindness and support for those who need it. “O Hester, thou art my better angel!”
I felt very confident in my Scarlet Letter Project. Like Hester’s scarlet letter, I made my letter as ornate and beautiful as a piece of art. I assembled pieces of my letter from my online blog and internet pictures. Unlike Hester, I would not be ashamed for adding a “personal touch” to my letter. In the early chapters of the novel, the townspeople ridiculed Hester for having a letter of “gorgeous luxuriance” (Hawthorne 43).
Because of the effects that Dimmesdale’s sin had on those living in his society, his sin is the greatest of all those presented in the novel, as illustrated by Hawthorne through Dimmesdale’s interactions with others. Because, unlike Hester, Dimmesdale hides his sin from the
In the “Scarlet Letter,” Nathaniel Hawthorne portrays hypocrisy of the Puritan society, where the protagonist Hester Prynne face many consequences of her actions and the how she tries to redeem herself to the society. During the seventeenth puritans believe that it is their mission to punish the ones who do not follow God’s word and it is their job to stop those from sinning. Therefore, the hypercritical puritan society punishes Hester harshly for committing adultery, but in Hester’s mind, she believes that what she did was not a sin but acts of love for her man. Eventually, she redeems herself by turning her crime into an advantage to help those in need, yet the Puritan society still view her as a “naughty bagger.” (Hawthorne 78)
