In the mid-nineteenth century, particularly in the American colonies, a new philosophical movement known as Transcendentalism flourished. A number of famous writers of the period, including poet Ralph Waldo Emerson and, of course, Nathaniel Hawthorne, were believers in the emerging faith. They eschewed mainstream religion, perhaps as a natural reflexive motion repelling the overbearing efforts of the Calvinists and Puritans who arrived in the colonies in the two preceding centuries, and instead embraced the natural world and looked primarily to it for guidance. They viewed clergy with suspicion and preferred to think of mundane objects as being just as suited towards providing enlightenment. Transcendentalists viewed such everyday objects as microcosms of the world or even the universe and modified their behavior accordingly. How does Nathaniel Hawthorne’s belief in Transcendentalism affect the main characters in the book?
Dimmesdale is a weak man who cannot survive on his own. The Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, it is revealed early in the narrative, is a kindly pastor with a knack for writing moving, vibrant speeches for every Sunday mass. He preaches about the wages of sin and the merits of penitential confessions; yet who would know better than the recalcitrant clergyman himself? Whenever he stands in the pulpit, he feels as though his continued reticence on his own guilt will kill him. He walks around town as though hanging on to very life by the thinnest of shreds, even going so far as to keep one of his hands over his chest. Ultimately, Dimmesdale’s secret is his undoing, and Hawthorne intentionally characterizes him in this manner. He agrees to confess his transgression before his congregation only when his passa...
... middle of paper ...
...novel something of a Transcendentalist allegory. Hawthorne’s rather thinly veiled assertion is that the coldly calculated world of medicine and the stoically fixed orthodoxy of organized religion ultimately pall astraddle Transcendentalism. In plainest terms, the minister (representing religion) is morally lax and spiritually too weak to confess his misdeeds. The doctor (representing the world of allegedly incontrovertible fact) is wicked and corrupt, and his medicine cannot compensate for spiritual unwholesomeness. Hester (representing the Transcendentalists) commits a youthful indiscretion, yet refuses to let the judgments of her equally imperfect peers interfere with her own interests. Let not the verisimilitude of other philosophies deceive you, Hawthorne seems to argue in The Scarlet Letter, lest the fate of Dimmesdale and Chillingworth also befall you.
Before Dimmesdale’s untimely death in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Dimmesdale committed the sins of adultery and lying. In order to keep his sins a secret, Dimmesdale spoke nothing of his involvement in the affair until it tore him apart from the inside out.When Dimmesdale tried to confess his sin to his congregation, they saw the confession as if it were part of his sermon. “He had spoken the very truth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood”. (Hawthorne 171) Instead of correcting their assumption, Dimmesdale went along with it, once more hiding his sinfulness. When Dimmesdale finally confessed his sin openly...
Dimmesdale is to deliver this sermon, and it is a very big event in Puritan society. Hawthorne’s goal in this chapter is to relate the idea of things that happen in the past will almost always catch back up to you. Dimmesdale, Hester, and Pearl almost had a perfect escape until they found out that Chillingworth would be joining them. Dimmesdale has now been forced into a position where repenting his sins would be a better option than running away from them, and I believe he will do so during his
Through the characters Dimmesdale and Chillingworth, Hawthorne reveals the true nature of Puritan society through parallels among the three. All three’s hidden evil is masked by each of their perfect appearances. Chillingworth exhibited the Puritan’s benefit of the doubt they received because of their relation to religion, while Dimmesdale presented the fact that corruption fuels the association with religion and as corruption within someone or something increases, so does a person or people’s betterment.
The characters Hawthorne develops are deep, unique, and difficult to genuinely understand. Young, tall, and beautiful Hester Prynne is the central protagonist of this story. Shamefully, strong-willed and independent Hester is the bearer of the scarlet letter. Burning with emotion, she longs for an escape from her mark, yet simultaneously, she refuses to seem defeated by society’s punishment. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale claims the secondary role in The Scarlet Letter; he is secretly Hester’s partner in adultery. Conflicted and grieved over his undisclosed act, he drives himself to physical and mental sickness. He fervently desires Hester, but should he risk his godly reputation by revealing the truth? Dimmesdale burns like Hester. Pearl, the child produced in Hester and Dimmesdale’s sin, is the third main character. She is fiery, passionate, perceiving, and strikingly symbolic; at one point in the novel she is referred to as “the scarlet letter endowed with life!” Inevitably, Pearl is consumed with questions about herself, her mother, and Dimmesdale. The reader follows Pearl as she discovers the truth. Altogether, Hawthorne’s use of intricately complex, conflicted ch...
Life is unpredictable, and through trial and error humanity learns how to respond to conflicts and learns how to benefit from mistakes. Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter is a character who changes and gains knowledge from the trials he faces, but first he has to go through physical, spiritual, and emotional agony. In the midst of all the havoc, the young theologian is contaminated with evil but fortunately his character develops from fragile to powerful, and the transformation Dimmesdale undergoes contributes to the plot’s climax.
As for Reverend Dimmesdale, he is completely enveloped by his guilt from the sin that he has committed and is unable to come forward to confess it. Instead, he tortures himself each and every day. Hawthorne writes, ?His [Dimmesdale?s] inward trouble drove him to practices more in accordance with the old, corrupted faith of Rome than with the better light of the church ? In Mr. Dimmesdale's secret closet, under lock and key, there was a bloody scourge.? Later, he says that he tries to confess by saying that he has sinned but the Puritan community misinterprets it as a sign of him being a saint and that if he has sinned then what are they.
First of all, Hawthorne parallels the hypocrisy of Dimmesdale to that of Puritan society. Hawthorne describes Dimmesdale as, "a viler companion of the vilest, the worst of sinners," even though Dimmesdale is seen as the most holy man in the Puritan community. Puritan society was supposed to be a utopian society and do away with their English traditions. Similarly, as Dimmesdale was supposed to be holy, yet they both were hypocritical. Secondly, Dimmesdale portrays the Puritan society by not initially taking his place on the scaffold, "Ye have both been here before, but I was not with you… and we will stand all three together." The Puritans modeled Dimmesdale's hypocrisy, as they were supposed to be a "city on a hill" for the world to see while they ended up mixing up English tradition with their ideals. While Dimmesdale hid his sin at the first scaffold seen, so did the Puritans when they colonized America. The Puritans faults were not initially that obvious but as time grew on they appeared on their scaffold just as Dimmesdale does. Hawthorne writes about one of Dimmesdale's sermons that is, "addressed to the multitude a discourse on sin, in all its branches." In Dimmesdale's sermons, he spoke out against sin while at the same time he commits this sin, just as the Puritans committed sins that they condemned Dimmesdale's character models Puritan society in the way they treat religious persecution. The Puritans left England to flee from religious intolerance, but when they got to the colonies, they had no religious tolerance for people with different religious beliefs. Dimmesdale speaks out against adultery and commits it, the Puritans demand religious tolerance but refuse to give it.
Dimmesdale is the town minister and is a talented orator. He is seen as a powerful figure in his community, and as a result of this, he is the essence of what the patriarchal society is in this time period. The downfall of his character comes when he succumbs to the guilt due to being an adulterer with Hester Prynne. This is illustrated by his deprecating physical health which is a representation of his poor spiritual and mental wellbeing. It states in the narrative, “He looked haggard and feeble, and betrayed a nerveless despondency in his air… Here it was woefully visible, in this intense seclusion of the forest, which of itself would have been a heavy trial to the spirits” (Hawthorne, 129). Hawthorne depicts Hester as the individual to finally make Dimmesdale free of guilt by confessing in order to demonstrate the need for feminist qualities in a patriarchal society (Thomson, 2011). It states, “At last… I stand upon the spot where, seven years since, I should have stood; here, with this woman, whose arm, more than the little strength wherewith I have crept hitherward, sustains me, at this dreadful moment, from groveling down upon my face!” (Hawthorne 174). Hawthorne demonstrates with the culmination of the novel—the importance of feminism not only to the empowerment of the individual but also as a force of change to the norms of our society (Hester Prynne: Sinner,
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, there are many moral and social themes develped throughout the novel. Each theme is very important to the overall effect of the novel. In essence, The Scarlet Letter is a story of sin, punishment and the importance of truth. One theme which plays a big role in The Scarlet Letter is that of sin and its effects. Throughout the novel there were many sins committed by various characters. The effects of these sins are different in each character and every character was punished in a unique way. Two characters were perfect examples of this theme in the novel. Hester Prynne and The Reverend Dimmesdale best demonstrated the theme of the effects of sin.
In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Mr. Dimmesdale’s greatest fear is that the townspeople will find out about his sin of adultery with Hester Prynne. Mr. Dimmesdale fears that his soul could not take the shame of such a disclosure, as he is an important moral figure in society. However, in not confessing his sin to the public, he suffers through the guilt of his sin, a pain which is exacerbated by the tortures of Roger Chillingworth. Though he consistently chooses guilt over shame, Mr. Dimmesdale goes through a much more painful experience than Hester, who endured the public shame of the scarlet letter. Mr. Dimmesdale’s guilt is much more damaging to his soul than any shame that he might have endured.
Hawthorne's allegorical approach at real life situations provides his readers with a sense of accomplishment: a sense that if they learn lessons from others, then they will not have to learn from first hand experience. Although on the surface it may seem like another tale of Puritanistic virtue, The Scarlet Letter is the embodiment of life itself. After reading this novel, one may find that many events in real life today can relate directly to events in The Scarlet Letter.
Guilt, shame, and penitence are just a few of the emotions that are often associated with a great act of sin. Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale, a highly respected minister of a 17th century Puritan community, is true example of this as he was somehow affected by all of these emotions after committing adultery. Due to the seven years of torturous internal struggle that finally resulted in his untimely death, Mr. Dimmesdale is the character who suffered the most throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Mr. Dimmesdale’s ever present guilt and boundless penance cause him an ongoing mental struggle of remorse and his conscience as well as deep physical pain from deprivation and self inflicted wounds. The external influence of the members of his society
Through Hester’s own personal struggles with isolation and how it affects her outlook on life and the compassion she learns from the experience. And in addition, with other’s experience as well, such as Dimmesdale’s guilt and self-punishment. Alternatively, Hawthorne shows assumptions and strict moral values from the townspeople’s changing perspective on Hester and her scarlet letter, from a figure of shame and isolation to a brave and motherly figure. Above all Hawthorne shows both the good and the bad of Puritan society and its often misguided assumptions of character and rigid moral
The first description of Dimmesdale that Hawthorne presents to the reader is of Dimmesdale hiding his sin. One Puritan says, speaking of Hester's sin, "Reverend Master Dimmesdale, her godly pastor, takes it very grievously to heart that such a scandal have come upon his congregation" (38). Immediately, Dimmesdale is shown to the readers as not only concealing his sin, but also being hypocritical in his condemnation of a sin that he himself has also committed. On the very same page, Hawthorne speaks of the "dismal severity of the Puritanic code of law" (38). From the beginning of The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne uses dismal, a dark and evil ...
The Scarlet Letter is a fictional novel that begins with an introductory passage titled ‘The Custom-House’. This passage gives a historical background of the novel and conveys the narrator’s purpose for writing about the legend of Hester Prynne even though the narrator envisions his ancestors criticizing him and calling him a “degenerate” because his career was not “glorifying God”, which is very typical of the strict, moralistic Puritans. Also, although Hawthorne is a Romantic writer, he incorporates properties of Realism into his novel by not idealizing the characters and by representing them in a more authentic manner. He does this by using very formal dialogue common to the harsh Puritan society of the seventeenth century and reflecting their ideals through this dialogue. The Puritans held somewhat similar views as the Transcendentalists in that they believed in the unity of God and the world and saw signs and symbols in human events, such as when the citizens related the meteo...