![]() ![]() Ironically, Dimmesdale is the father, so his statements receive different interpretations from Hester, who understands the true plea of Dimmesdale, and the hypocritical spectators, who see him as a morally instructive minister. Furthermore, Hawthorne magnifies the irony, cowardice, and hypocrisy through Dimmesdale’s interrogating of Hester: “…though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through life” (59). If Dimmesdale had revealed his sin publicly at this point in the novel, then he may have prevented a great deal of suffering on his part. His “self-restraint” comes from the idea of how concerned Dimmesdale is of keeping his high position in society, and, due to this fear, he restrains himself from confessing. By characterizing Dimmesdale as a man lacking courage, Hawthorne introduces the disadvantage Dimmesdale will later face-his inner struggle with hidden sin. Hawthorne manifests these characteristics of frailty through his descriptions of Dimmesdale during the first scaffold scene: “…apt to be tremulous, expressing both nervous sensibility and a vast power of self-restraint” (59). Unfortunately, Dimmesdale’s positive change from a feeling of weakness and cowardice is belated thus, he is unable to evade his intensifying guilt and prevent his ultimate death. ![]() Hawthorne utilizes the three scaffold scenes throughout the novel in order to manifest the progression of Dimmesdale from a craven, self-preserving, and religiously bound minister to a more candid and truly passionate father. Although Dimmesdale conceals his sin from public scrutiny during the majority of his life, he undergoes a significant metamorphosis. Both have committed a sin that ultimately strengthens them. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s dramatic novel, The Scarlet Letter, exposes the hypocrisy of a seventeenth-century Puritan society through the lives of two sinners, Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester Prynne. ![]()
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