Hypocrisy In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter

Angel124 | Adulteress141 Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter has been one of the most powerful factors in shaping the modern understanding of Puritan society, even though it was written in the Romantic era. The book is essentially a long parable, driven by Hester Prynne and Minister Arthur Dimmesdale’s adultery. Consequently, Hawthorne constructs the events and the setting of The Scarlet Letter to support a central idea: the hypocrisy of the Puritans. The text portrays the Puritans' New England accurately, but it is highly unlikely that the failures of their planned utopia ever played out with the blatant symbolism of the scarlet letter 'A'. Hawthorne instead meant to reveal classifications made by the Puritans' collective mentality,

The reflection that “no man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true” (170) is arguably the best distillation of The Scarlet Letter’s message that Hawthorne gives the reader. Dimmesdale’s first attempt to avoid this fate occurs in Hester’s trial, when he implores her to name the father of her infant rather than “’hide a guilty heart through life’,” and “’tempt him – [and in effect] compel him… – to add hypocrisy to sin’” (56). Dimmesdale has already resolved that he will not be able to confess of his own accord. However, once his sickness worsens, he makes several attempts to reveal his duplicity through sermons. Dimmesdale faults himself when his parishioners exalt him even more highly for the sermon, which they see as demanding absolute purity and tireless devotion to good works. Though vague terms may have clouded these confessions to an extent, Dimmesdale is trying to accomplish a near-impossible task: actively changing his labels. The Puritans are predisposed to associate a priest with a certain eloquence and capacity for speaking with heaven, and will not alter that belief no matter how corrupt he proclaims himself to be. Just as Hester can’t move past her crime because of the scarlet ‘A’, Dimmesdale is doomed to think he is damned, and act as if he is a saint, as long as the memory of the crime is locked within his soul. Even given his weakness at the point of the midnight vigil at the gallows, he is convinced that he will only see Pearl and Hester again “’at the great judgement day… [when Hester, Pearl, and himself] must stand together. But the daylight of [the] world shall not see [their] meeting” (121). Once Hester tells him that Roger Chillingworth was her husband, and now seeks revenge on his wife’s