Arthur Dimmesdale Hypocrisy

The Captive Soul

Hypocrisy is an immense apprehension in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter. One of the main characters, Arthur Dimmesdale, who is a highly respected priest, preaches all day about sin and is seen as a holy person, but he commits a sin that is rooted in the town of Boston for seven years. This sin is the cause of much anguish for all of the main characters in the novel which makes Dimmesdale an important source of hypocrisy. Hawthorne uses Dimmesdale, a highly respected religious official, as a source of hypocrisy to show that followers of the Puritan religion will idolize their leader without knowing their leader’s true background.

While Dimmesdale was prodding Hester to hand over the name of her lover at the first scaffold scene, he uneasily speaks for he is the father of Pearl. Dimmesdale conveys Hester to “be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him... though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through life” (212). This is clearly

hypocritical of Dimmesdale because he is in a high place in society but does not step down nor does he reveal his sin making himself feel guilty through life. During this scene, the other high church officials are eager to listen to Dimmesdale because they cannot wait to hear what magnificent speech is going to come out of his mouth, but little do they know that he is questioning Hester about himself. It is possible that Hawthorne cues the reader into knowing what is going on between Hester and Dimmesdale, but he makes sure that the rest of the Puritan society is blind.
As Dimmesdale undergoes physiological issues due to Chillingworth mentally torturing him, he creates powerful sermons relating his agonies to the sins of everyday churchgoers. Unfortunately for him, the everyday churchgoers describe him using “self-condemning words” like the “godly youth” and “the saint on earth” which gives him more anguish and hypocrisy (364). He is not able continue his life guilt-free because all of his supporters think that he is some kind of a God. This part of the text refers to the fact that the Puritans will follow Dimmesdale no matter what without knowing that he is a sinner. Not only do they idolize him but they make him suffer even more than he was by hiding his sin which causes him to preach about sin as a way to make his own sin have less of an impact on the society.
Making the situation worse than it already is, Dimmesdale will not even own his sin and go up on the scaffold with Hester and Pearl to show the Puritans that he committed adultery with Hester.

When Pearl asks him to stand with her on the scaffold he replies with “Not so, my child. I shall, indeed, stand with thy mother thee one another day, but not to-morrow!” (383). Dimmesdale once again is afraid to show his sin to the world because he is not able to own up to it. He is not even generous enough to alleviate the burden that is set on Hester from her sin being revealed to the public. With all of this in consideration, Hawthorne seems to infer that a respected man with a guilty conscience would rather keep his position in society than do the right thing and release the guilt from his conscience which would then remove the societal pressure on those affected by that same

guilt.
Hypocrisy, guilt, and blindness are all words that are used multiple times to describe the Puritan society and Dimmesdale. It’s possible that Hawthorne wants to let the reader know that the Puritans were more concerned about being “visible saints” than truly being saints or at the very least confessing their sins. The well respected reverend Dimmesdale preaches blasphemy everytime he talks because he will not even put his words into actions when regarding his own sins.