D.Dimmesdale’s attitude toward his sin

In The Scarlet Letter, Dimmesdale and Hester commit the same sin but they suffer the different punishment and have the different attitude toward it. Since religion was such a key point of their lives, anyone who did disobey their god was looked down upon. What made religion ironically in this story is that the difference between people’s attitude towards the reverend and Hester.The reverend who had committed the same sin still own high reputation but Hester was looked down upon severely. Dimmesdale said “before the judgment-seat, thy mother, and thou, and I, must stand together! But daylight of this world shall not see our meeting!”[9](P129)The reverend knows his sin and wants to be punished with Hester and Pearl, yet not until what he calls judgment day. The Puritans are intolerant of anything they consider to be evil. Their community, Boston, is an experiment, where the Christian world is watching with interest—so intolerance of evil must be their watchword. Hester is forced to openly accept her shame. Dimmesdale, her lover, is able to avoid public shame. But when Dimmesdale appeared again, it seemed that he was suffering from poor health. One reason might be that he labored long and hard at his religious duties, but another—more important—reason was probably that he was plagued by his conscience, the knowledge of his hypocrisy. And it is very ironical that as a Puritan authority to determine others’ sin, Dimmesdale himself is a sinner who has committed adultery. But he is an intransigent Puritan and nothing can make him change-not even death. He becomes the embodiment of Puritanism, follows more closely than any philosophy that his relationship with God matters more than anything else, and that he must only answer to God. Hawthorne uses Dimmesdale as a symbol of Puritanism. He picks up and exaggerates the flaws in Puritanism and makes them become Dimmesdale’s characteristics. Dimmesdale feels that God will punish him for his sin and that he need only answer to God for his sin, so he keeps it as a secret. He tries to live a life as if nothing has changed, but his guilt weakens him and ends him in death. “At the end of the novel, he died tragically in confession and atonement and became a victim in religious monasticism. The restraint from religion in human nature not only wrecks the god-people like Hester but also ruins the devout clergies like Dimmesdale.”[10] (48) He is the victim of the Puritan society. And another aspect of Puritanism is the source of God’s will. It is in the Bible. The Puritans distrust nature as a guide for behavior, which just explain why Hester and Dimmesdale feel free in the forest during their talk. University trains clergymen such as Dimmesdale and Wilson from Cambridge, England are highly respected, for they are well able to interpret the meaning of the Bible. David, Bathsheba, and Nathan the prophet are not exactly representative of the Christian virtues of fidelity emphasized by the Puritans.

E.The confession in the Puritan society

In addition, the Puritans greatly view the value of confession. The first members of the Boston Puritan church are required to make a public acknowledgment of their sins. Later, the new members of the Puritan group are allowed to confess their sins in the privacy of the minister’s study. How Hester’s scarlet symbol must delight her viewers, for she is constantly confessing

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