“To do penance is to bewail the evil we have done, and to do no evil to bewail.” Penance is the act of voluntary, self inflicted punishment as an outward expression of repentance for having done wrong. This statement, made by Pope Gregory I, states that penance is a continuous cycle of self infliction and the act of abstaining from the sinful deed. In The Scarlet Letter, penance is seen acting in unison with penitence, repentance, and redemption. Although neither Reverend Dimmesdale nor Hester Prynne can be seen dealing with these concepts similarly, all concepts can be seen having relevance to one another.
Penance and penitence are usually seen acting in unison because they are both specific steps in one’s path to redemption from God.
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To seek redemption without first accomplishing these acts, would result in contradicting one’s religious practices and reflect impartial ment upon their final judgment day. Reverend Dimmesdale is seen pursuing redemption although his act of penitence was never completed. This is illustrated when the minister is standing at the scaffold and the narrator provides a sequence of rhetorical questions, “Why, then, had he come hither? Was it but the mockery of penitence? A mockery, indeed, but in which his soul trifled with itself. A mockery at which angels blushed and wept, while fiends rejoiced, with jeering laughter!” (ch 12; 101). These sequence of questions followed by a sequence of their explanations grants the reader knowledge of Dimmesdale’s confused yearn to be redeemed by God. Furthermore the passage goes on to say, “He had been driven hither by the impulse of that Remorse which dogged him everywhere.” (ch 12; 101). The use of the word remorse when describing a controlling figure in Dimmesdale’s life correlates with the definition of repentance: to express sincere remorse about one’s sin. Allowing the proposition of the internal conflict: head or heart. Substituting Dimmesdale’s contradictory, unresolved feeling of remorse and his yearn for redemption into the necessary