How To Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale's Double-Talk In The Scarlet Letter

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Dimmesdale's Double-talk in The Scarlet Letter





Abstract: Critics of Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Scarlet Letter' are wrong to attribute to Hester the means of persuading Dimmesdale to elope with her and their child. It is Dimmesdale who uses his rhetorical mastery to talk Hester into talking him into eloping. An analysis of his conversation with Hester in the forest in comparison with his sermons shows that he is using the same discursive strategy he employs to convince his parishioners that he is a sinless man.



The Reverend Mister Arthur Dimmesdale is usually understood to be guilty of two sins, one of commission (his adultery with Hester) and one of omission (his cowardly and hypocritical failure to confess). This is his state through most of The Scarlet Letter; but when Dimmesdale meets Hester in the forest (Chapters 16-19), he agrees to flee Boston with her, to seek out a new life in the Old World, and, presumably, to live with her in adultery. By the lights of his community and his profession, this resolution is a far more serious sin than any he had committed to date, but most critics have agreed that Dimmesdale is not primarily responsible for his actions in the forest. Both Michael Colacurcio …show more content…

"Since he [Dimmesdale] knows that Hester loves him, he is almost sure she will not consider the revealing of her |fellow-sufferer' a more effectual means to

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