Scarlet Letter Bewilderment at the Hands of Sin
"No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally becoming bewildered as to which may be true. In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, this quote applies to the two main characters of the novel. It applies to Arthur Dimmesdale in a literal way; he clearly is not the man that he appears to be, and the guilt that goes along with such deception consumes him and, in the end, is the cause for his demise. The quote also applies to Hester Prynne, but in quite a different way. It was not her choice to wear the face that she was forced to wear, but the scarlet letter on her bosom determined how people saw her and, in turn, how she was expected to feel about herself. At first, however, Hester did not consider the sin which she committed as blasphemous and horrible as the people of Boston did, but she was forced to wear the face of an evil doer. For both Hester and Arthur, it was true that they could not live their lives concealing their true emotions. Arthur literally could not live with it, while Hester changed the way she felt on the inside to correspond to her guilty image.
Hester lost her spirit as well, but she dealt with the in a completely different way. ur Dimmesdale was pleading for Hester to reveal the name of the man with whom she had an affair, it was clear that a part of him actually wanted everyone to know that it was he who was the guilty one. "Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him; for, believe me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high place...better were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through life,"(47). When this plea is made, it at first glance appears to be quite ironic. The actual man who committed the crime is trying to convince his accomplice to do him in. However, this statement shows that Arthur was not simply a confused man; it was much more extreme that that. Instead of completely giving up all hope, Hester decided that the people of Boston were right in labelling her and placing the "A" on her. She did not, at first, think that what her and Arthur did was evil. In fact, she labels their act as having been holy and completely unprofane. However, at some point in her life, she decided that what they did in fact was a sin. She did not start seeing herself as a bad person, and neither did the townspeople because they eventually took the "A" on her chest to stand for "Able". What she did do was give up her dreams and goals of leading a revolution to make people see women and the world in a new way. When she internalized what the "A" had stood for throughout all of those years, and what the townspeople truly thought of her and especially of what she had done, she abandoned her hopes for influencing the way others thought and realized the "impossibility that any mission of divine and mysterious truth should be confided to a woman stained with sin, [or] bowed down with shame,"(180). Hester admitted to having committed a true sin and, therefore, being filled with shame and remorse for what she and Arthur and done. He was "bewildered to the point where a part of him really wanted Hester to let the whole town know that it was he who was the guilty one. Whether he meant to or not, Arthur
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Approximate Word count = 1415
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
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