Dimmesdale And Tawdry In Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Scarlet Letter'

The secrecy behind Dimmesdale and Hester’s tawdry affair emphasizes a sole, unique aspect within the three individuals that, when combined, create the crucial essences contained in each human being: the malicious facet, religious loyalty and guilt, and the need for redemption.
Dimmesdale inhabits the shame brought on by religiosity. After sinning twice, first the adultery he commit with Hester and second by lying and hiding the first, Dimmesdale wallows in his own guilt. He begins to have visions of Hester and Pearl pointing out his guilt and of members of the community mocking him. He wishes to stand with Hester and Pearl on the scaffold. He wishes to tell his congregation, "to speak out, from his own pulpit, at the full height of his voice, and tell the people what he was" (125), but he hides this and the guilt gnaws at him. It gnaws at him until
it rises from within his soul to etch a scarlet letter on his chest.
This mark he shows when he finally seizes the chance to prove his loyalty to his religion and confess. When he confesses on the scaffold, Dimmesdale calls out "in the Name of Him" and rambles on "the will which God hath granted" him (219). It is not out of societal guilt or personal redemption that he confesses but instead religious loyalty. After proclaiming his sin to the colony, Dimmesdale dies as if in the moment of his confession God had decided that the minister's time on earth had finished, that he had completed his purpose.
Roger Chillingworth embodies the evil essences within all human beings, brought about by temptation and sin. The liaison between his wife and the minister causes Chillingworth to focus all of his energy on punishing the
man for adultery. Originally he is a studious, tranquil individual; however, the need to penalize Dimmesdale soon consumes every part of his being. He makes it his sole purpose in life to harm the clergyman for the sin. During a conversation with Hester, Chillingworth states, “By thy first step awry, thou didst plant the germ of evil; but, since that moment, it has all been a dark necessity” (page 152). Chillingworth inserts himself into Dimmesdale’s life and puts all of his efforts into condemning him. The doctor invades the privacy of Dimmesdale by manipulating the poor man’s mind as well as searching his body while he is sleeping. Chillingworth becomes “striking evidence of man’s faculty of transforming himself into a devil” (page 148). Eventually, he develops into Satan’s pawn as he has awakened the devilish fragment from within himself. Hawthorne exaggerates Chillingworth’s internal conversion in order to emphasize the fact that focusing on harming others will ultimately destroy one’s humanness. Roger Chillingworth has “made the very principle of his life to consist in the pursuit and systematic exercise of revenge” (page 225). Following the death of Dimmesdale, Chillingworth begins to deteriorate and subsequently expires because his sole purpose in life disappears. Chillingworth epitomizes the devilish potential contained in all individuals. Hawthorne utilizes Chillingworth as a portrayal of the underlying potential of evil in all of society.
Hawthorne’s protagonist, Hester, exemplifies the crucial human need for redemption. Initially, she is a disgraced woman, called a “brazen hussy” (51) and paraded out as a “spectacle of shame and guilt” (53), however she takes an ironic sense of pride in the moment. She creates a beautifully embroidered letter A that is “greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony” (50). But for all her affronts to the community, Hester cannot leave. Even though the Puritans outcast her from village, Hester “did not flee” (73), but she instead chooses to live in a cottage “on the outskirts of town.. not in close vicinity to any other habitation” (73). For although she could, Hester does not let herself leave, and thus she needs redeemtion, to be once again accepted in the Puritan lifestyle. Thus she begins to change herself. She begins to wear more modest clothing including a traditional cap which hides “dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam” (50), which she previously let free, and delves herself into charity work so that she would soon be known as one who would “give of her little substance to every demand of poverty” (140). All these attempts are not in vain as soon many people “had quite forgiven Hester” and began to “look upon the scarlet letter as the token, not that one sin, for which she had borne so long and dreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since.” (142). The marking of sin once used to exclude her from a society, which she so desperately wanted to be included, has, through her actions, become a symbol of her purity. Her many altruistic actions and changed role show that humans have an intrinsic desire for social acceptance and redemption.