Free Essay - Rev. Arthur Dimmesdales Double-talk in The Scarlet Letter :: Scarlet Letter essays

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 and Terence Martin have written that Hester "seduced" Dimmesdale in the forest,(2) and Darrel Abel argues that "Dimmesdale could not resist Hester," for in entering the forest "Hester means to persuade Dimmesdale to elope with her and Pearl," and Dimmesdale agrees to the elopement "a fter only a feeble show of conscience."(3) The forest scene is crucial in the narrative of The Scarlet Letter, and a proper understanding of what happens in the forest is necessary for any interpretation of Dimmesdale's last days of life and his final "confession." I will argue in this paper that the reading of the forest scene sketched above is mistaken; that in fact it is Arthur Dimmesdale and not Hester Prynne who is the "activating agent"(4) in the forest, increasing Dimmesdale's culpability for his most serious fall. Previous critics seem to think that Dimmesdale's much-vaunted skill as a speaker abandons him when he enters the forest with Hester, but I will show that Dimmesdale talks Hester into talking him into fleeing, and so Dimmesdale's gravest sin cannot be laid at Hester's feet at all.