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3.3 Hypocrisy
In The Scarlet Letter Hypocrisy is evident everywhere. The characters of Hester , Dimmesdale, Chillingworth, and even the society or the characters lived in., were
steeped in hypocrisy. Hawthorne was not subtle in his portrayal of the terrible sin of hypocrisy; he made sure it was easy to see the sin at work. Parallels can be drawn
between the characters. The first character, Hester Prynne, is guilty of adultery and of hypocrisy. She
“loves” Dimmesdale yet she says nothing while for seven years Dimmesdale is slowly tortured. This love she felt that was so strong, that it made her break sacred vows must
have disappeared. Why else would she condemn her supposed love to the hands of her vengeful husband. Dimmesdale is continually tortured by his inner demons of guilt that
gnaw at his soul, and Chillingworth makes sure these demons never go away. Hester allows this to happen. Physically and mentally the minister begins to weaken, slowly he
becomes emaciated, and he punishes himself constantly. Only when Hester knows that if Chillingworth is aloud to continue, that Dimmesdale will surely go insane if she does
not reveal her secret. She did not reveal who her lover was on the scaffolding when she had the perfect opportunity to.
Also, she did not tell her husband who her lover. Hester can atone for her sin of adultery, but every day that she keeps the secret of her lover, and the true identity of
Roger Chillingworth a secret she is committing a sin. If Hester would have “Take heed how thou deniest to him---who, perchance, hath not the courage to
grasp it for himself---the bitter, but wholesome, cup that is now presented to thy lips”
things would have been infinitely better for everyone. Hawthorne 1962:47
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xlii Everyone Hester Prynne loves, she does in a hypocritical way. She loves Pearl enough
to sacrifice to feed and clothe her, but she does not love Pearl enough to give her a father. Hester loves Dimmesdale, but she does not love him enough to expose his sin
publicly, and she conceals her knowledge of Chillingworth. Either you love something whole-heartedly, or you don’t. Hawthorne might have portrayed Hester in a more
favorable light then the other characters, but still she should have to wear a scarlet letter. The second character, Arthur Dimmesdale . Dimmesdale says very near the
beginning of the book “What can thy silence do for him, except to tempt him---yea, compel him, as it
were---to add hypocrisy to sin? ” Hawthorne 1962:47
He knows what will happen to him if he endures his sin in private, but he is too weak at this point in the book to admit it. The tapestries of biblical adultery, which are found in
Arthur’s room are hypocritical. These are supposed to help him atone for his sins by making him feel guilty, but he feels no better. Arthur goes and preaches every week on
how bad sin is, and how he is the worst sinner of them all. These partial confessions just make him more of a hypocrite. Dimmesdale knows how the parishioners will interpret
these confessions, he is not blind to their looks of adoration. Dimmesdale enjoys being viewed as a saint, when he knows he is a truly a sinner.
The years of torture the minister receives, are brought on by his own doing. If his supposed commitment to the community had stopped him from admitting his sin, he
would have not been tortured. His love of the community is very similar to Hester Prynne’s love of Pearl. Dimmesdale only loves his community enough to preach in it,
but he is preacher harboring a great sin, and so he cannot truly guide his community
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xliii spiritually. Dimmesdale’s and Hester’s love are alike in their limitations. While
Dimmesdale does speak up for Hester keeping her Pearl “Truth in what Hester says, and in the feeling which inspires her God gave her the
child, and gave her, too, an instinctive knowledge of its nature and requirements,---both seemingly so peculiar,---which no other moral being can posses. And, moreover, is
there not a quality of awful sacredness in the relation between this mother and this child.”
Hawthorne 1962: 45 The scene at the scaffolding at night is a truly disgusting scene of hypocrisy. Arthur
seizes the opportunity to go up on the scaffolding and feel better about his sin, but when he sees a fellow man of the cloth walking by, he cowers. Would it not have been better
to have his sin revealed? Then when Hester and Pear stand with him Pear asks “Wilt thou stand here with mother and me, to-morrow noontidep 105 The minister is given
another chance to redeem himself, but he cowers yet again Dimmesdale is selfish, he tries to atone in private, by whipping himself and
fasting. This accomplishes nothing, he knows in his heart that no punishment in private will get him forgiveness from the lord. Yet he continues his practices of private
punishment, so he temporarily feels better about himself. Another occurrence of hypocrisy was when Hester finally revealed the true identity of Rodger Chillingworth.
Dimmesdale was overcome with anger, how could Arthur have been mad? Hester had finally conquered her weakness of character, and told him the truth.
Dimmesdale could only see that she had been harboring a terrible secret in her heart. After that, the agreement to run away to the Old World was another instance of a
character weakness of Arthur. He had not atoned for his sins, but he would still run Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter is the ultimate incarnation of hypocrisy. He
represents how the Puritan ideals had been twisted into something that reeked of hypocrisy. Dimmesdale pretended to be a good, just, and wise minister, in reality, he
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xliv was a bad, unjust, and foolish. Dimmesdale recognizes the danger of hypocrisy, but his
character is too weak to avoid the pitfall of hypocrisy. The third character of Roger Chillingworth is a man who at one point was
guided by intellect, and not his emotions. He pretends to be Dimmesdale’s friend, but inflicts grievous wounds upon the reverend. At the beginning of The Scarlet Letter
Rodger returns to his wife, only to find her being publicly condemned for adultery, his emotions began to take over. At that point, his only goal in life is revenge. When he
eventually figures out who Hester’s lover was, he begins to torture Dimmesdale in such a way that he does not know he is being tortured. Chilingworth’s emotions rule him, his
single-minded pursuit of revenge overtakes him. He is supposed to be a scholar, a man of reason. Revenge for the betrayal of
Hester is the driving force in his life. The actual torture he inflicts is purely mental, and is successful in breaking Dimmesdale’s body and soul down. During one instance
Chillingworth sees what he has become “The unfortunate physician, while uttering these words, lifted his hands with a look of horror, as if he had beheld some frightful shape,
which he could not recognize, usurping the place of his own image in a glass. It was on of those moments---which sometimes occur only in the interval of year---when a man’s
moral aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind’s eye. The Puritan society itself was a lesson in hypocrisy. Supposedly, they were firm
believers in the Bible, but the Bible advocates forgiveness and toleration. The whole society’s basis was on religious enlightenment. Yet, why was it that the first thing that
was to be built in Boston was a prison? Why is the first building thought of a place of punishment? Another example of religious hypocrisy happened early in the book.
Hawthorne described some gossiping housewives that were talking about Hesters
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xlv punishment. Each one of the housewives was advocating harsher punishment for Hester.
“The magistrates are God-fearing gentleman, but merciful overmuch,that is the truth,” added a third autumnal matron.
“At the very least, they should have put the brand of a hot iron on Hester Prynne’s forehead. Madam Hester would have winced at that, I warrant me.”
Hawthorne 1962: 36
Religion is often the source of much hypocrisy. A great example of
Hypocrisy is the major theme in The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne’s work was meant to highlight the hypocrisy in Puritan society, and in the people that make up the society.
The Scarlet Letter was meant to expose just how much of a sin hypocrisy is, and just how it causes so much pain and suffering
. The hypocrisy of puritan in this novel is so clear. Hawthorne, in his opinion
toward puritan by describing the main character, Hester Prynne as a victims by the puritan‘s norm and law. This critical novel really address to Puritans whether they
treated a sinful man very cruel, treated cunningly. They can not tolerate the human weaknesses.
As clergyman wrote in the early seventeenth century, in Jim Cullen’s book The American Dream “not because you are purer than other man… but because you think
yourself to be purer.” Cullen 2003: 11 Quotation above is also supported by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.
As the writer pay attention to the Puritan behavior, they think that they are pure than other. So they treated Hester prynne poorly and punish her because of her sin, she has
committed adultery, and she can’t tell who is the father of her baby. Hester is released from prison and finds a cottage in the woods, near the
outskirts of the city, to set up her new life. Hawthorne comments on the fact that she
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xlvi does not avail herself of the opportunity to escape to a new life without shame in some
other city. He remarks that often people are irresistibly drawn to live near the place where a great has occurred. He further comments that even if that is not the reason,
Hester may have been inclined to remain in Boston because her secret lover still lived there.
Hester Prynne’s term of conferment was now at an end. Her prison door was thrown open, and she came forth into the sunshine, which falling on
all a like, seemed, to her sick and morbid heart, as if meant for no other propose than to reveal the letter on her breast. Hawthorne 1962: 67
Hester’s skill at needle work, earlier shown in the fine way that she displayed the Scarlet letter, allows her to maintain a fairly stable lifestyle. However her reputation
as an out cast and loner causes a certain our to be cast around her. Thus, Hawthorne points out that young children often crept up to her house to spy on her while
worked. He also comments that in spite of her excellent needlework, she was never called upon to make a bridal gown due to her reputation.
She possessed an art that sufficed, even in a lard that afforded comparatively little scope for its exercise, to supply food for her thriving infant and herself it was
the art then, as now, almost the only one within a woman’s grasp of needle- work Hester’s social life is virtually eliminated as a result of her shameful history. She is
treated to poorly that often preachers will stop in the streets and start to deliver a lecturer as he walks by.
The days of the far off future to take up and bear along with her, but never to fling down ; for the accumulating days, and added years, would
pile up their misery upon the heap of shame. Thorough out them all, giving up her individuality, she would become the general symbol at
which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman’s frailty and sinful passion.
Hawthorne 1962: 68
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xlvii From the quotation above, show us Hester’s trials. She has to faces her punishment,
because of her guilty and she treated poorly. Hawthorne, emphasis the hypocrisy of the Puritans in his novel. And if we pay attention to bellow quotation:
Continually, and in a thousand other ways, did she feel the innumerable throbs of anguish that had been so cunningly contrived for her by the undying, the ever active
sentence of the Puritan tribunal. Clergyman paused in the street to address words of exhortation, that brought a crowd, with its mingled grin and frown, around the poor,
sinful woman. If she entered a church, trusting to share the Sabbath smile of the Universal Father, it was often her mishap to find herself the text of the discourse. She
grew to have a dread of children; for they had imbibed from their parents a vague idea of something horrible in this dreary woman, gliding silently through the town, with
never any companion but one only child. Therefore, first allowing her to pass, they pursued her at a distance with shrill cries, and the utterance of a word that had no
distinct purport to their own minds, but was none the less terrible to her, as proceeding from lips that babbled it unconsciously. It seemed to argue so wide a diffusion of her
shame, that all nature knew of it; it could have caused her no deeper pang, had the leaves of the trees whispered the dark story among themselves,- had the summer breeze
murmured about it,- had the wintry blast shrieked it aloud Another peculiar torture was felt in the gaze of a new eye. When stranger looked curiously at the scarlet letter, - and
none ever failed to do so, they branded it afresh into Hester’s soul; so that, oftentimes she could scarcely refrain, yet always did refrain, from covering the symbol with her
hand. But then, again, an accustomed eye had like wise its own anguish to inflict. Its cool stare of familiarity was intolerable. Hawthorne 1962: 78
If we pay attention to the statement above, we may know exactly about the puritan is. Hawthorne puts it,” gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in
other hearts.” This is interesting because many of the people Hawthorne accuses of hypocrisy as regards The Scarlet Letter are, “a venerable minister or magistrate, “
people who are viewed as models of “ piety and justice.” Therefore, Nathaniel Hawthorne by the end of the story as a conclusion, he
wrote: After exhausting life in his efforts for man kind’s spiritual good, he had made
the manner of his death a parable, in order to impress on his admires the ,mighty and mournful lesson, that, in the view of Infinite Purity, we are sinners all alike. It was to
teach them, that the holiest among us has but attained so far above his fellows as to discern more clearly the Mercy which looks down, and repudiate more utterly the
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xlviii phantom of human merit, which would look aspiringly upward. Without disputing a
truth so momentous, we must be allowed to consider this version of Mr. Dimmesdale’s story as only and instance of that stubborn fidelity with which a man’s friends – and
especially a clergyman’s- will sometimes uphold his character; when proofs, clear as the mid-day sunshine on the scarlet letter, establish him a false and sin- stained creature of
the dust. Hawthorne 1962: 121]
From the above quotation, we can see the easily the hypocrisy of the Puritans.
Nathaniel Hawthorne, drawing Mr. Dimmesdale’s suffering. Mr. Dimmesdale makes his death surprisingly, so he can shows to the Puritans whom they recognize their- self a
as a pure person. But in fact, nobody is perfect. “ we are sinners all alike” Mr. Dimmesdale teach them “that the holiest among us has but attained so far above his
fellows as to discern more clearly the Mercy which looks down”.
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CHAPTER IV CONCLUSION AND SUGESTION
4.1 Conclusion
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