Meggie Slaughter
Mrs. Schneiderman
English B3
28 April 2013
Dimmesdale’s Masks
While Hester Prynne stands candidly upon the scaffold, displaying her sins and secrets
openly, Dimmesdale hides. He cowers behind a mask, which is decorated with a “white, lofty,
and impending brow, large, brown melancholy eyes,” and “tremulous” lips (Hawthorne 46).
With this mask of pious self-restraint, Reverend Dimmesdale is charming, compassionate, and an
exemplar citizen. But below this mask is another face, one of sin, weakness, and grief. With this
face Dimmesdale committed a moral crime by having an affair with Hester Prynne. Through
detailed characterization and a precise use of titles and names, Hawthorne creates two conflicting
manifestations of the same man: the saintly, charismatic Reverend Dimmesdale and the
indecisive, emotional Arthur Dimmesdale.
Throughout the novel, Hawthorne refers to Dimmesdale almost exclusively as minister,
Reverend, Master, or Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale. Reverend Dimmesdale is characterized as a
dedicated minister, a charismatic man, and a role model for the Puritan society. Many Salem
citizens declare that the minister’s pure and refreshing ideas “affected them like the speech of an
angel” (46). The flattering language used to describe Dimmesdale elevates him to a saint-like
status. In fact, his followers often refer to him as “the mouthpiece of Heaven’s messages of
wisdom, and rebuke, and love” (98).
However, this initial characterization of Dimmesdale conflicts directly with his
personality during subsequent chapters. These deviations from Dimmesdale’s original
Slaughter 2
characterization are indicated through the use of his full name, Arthur Dimmesdale. The first
occasion where the minister is referred to by his full name is during Roger Chillingworth’s
examination of Dimmesdale’s sickness, shortly after Chillingworth becomes the minister’s
medical adviser. Deeming the sickness a spiritual disease, the physician scrutinizes his patient’s
character, finding that “In Arthur Dimmesdale, thought and imagination were so active, and
sensibility so intense, that the bodily infirmity would likely have its groundwork there” (85).
Roger Chillingworth uses Dimmesdale’s true name only after this extreme investigation of the
reverend’s soul.
Through his prying and probing of the minister’s personality, Chillingworth discovers
another facet of Dimmesdale’s personality. Arthur is nervous, secretive, and overly emotional.
Under Roger Chillingworth’s questioning, Arthur Dimmesdale attempts to act indifferently, a
common evasive tactic he uses whenever a topic “agitated his too sensitive and nervous
temperament” (91). However, when Dimmesdale’s physician demands to learn his secrets, the
minister reacts with a ferociousness that surprises even him. After the incident, Dimmesdale
anxiously ponders “the violence with which he had thrust back at the kind old man” (94). Even
Dimmesdale is startled at the drastic shift his temperament.
Later, the transformation of Dimmesdale’s personality becomes even more pronounced.
After spotting him in the forest, Hester Prynne calls out “Arthur Dimmesdale!” (129). During his
private meeting with Hester, Arthur reveals his greatest secrets, sins, and desires. Throughout the
meeting, he becomes more emotional and uncertain in his beliefs. His excessive distress
eventually causes him to cry out, “Think for me Hester! Thou art strong. Resolve for me!” (134).
His character becomes so weak and reliant on Hester that he can no longer think for himself.
Slaughter 3
In addition to becoming weak-willed, Arthur loses his faith and purity. Worrying about
his future, Dimmesdale exclaims that he is “an unfaithful sentinel, whose sure reward is death
and dishonor, when his dreary watch shall come to an end!” (135).Once a devout and honorable
Puritan, Arthur Dimmesdale has fallen from his status as minister. Every quality that once
formed Reverend Dimmesdale vanishes as he speaks with Hester. Arthur Dimmesdale is no
longer a strong minister and an inspiration to the Puritans. He has torn off his reverend’s mask in
exchange for another.
After the forest meeting with Hester Prynne, Dimmesdale returns to town, leaving the
mask of Arthur Dimmesdale behind. Throughout the rest of the novel, Dimmesdale is never
referred to by his full name again. Even as he stands on the scaffold at the end of the novel, with
his secret bared to the entire town, the narrator labels him with the title of Reverend. Generally,
when Dimmesdale shows the piety of his character, he is called Reverend Dimmesdale and when
he reveals his secrets, he is called Arthur Dimmesdale.
Although it may seem as if Dimmesdale represents the qualities of Arthur Dimmesdale as
he stands on the scaffold with Hester, the courage and devotion he expresses is actually more
representative of Reverend Dimmesdale. After all of his sinful actions and thoughts, Dimmesdale
has a bout of clarity on the scaffold. Hester doubts Dimmesdale’s sanity, but he insists for her to
let him “do the will which [God] hath made plain before my sight” (172). Dimmesdale finds new
faith in his God, purges himself of his guilt, and absolves his sin by revealing his secret, before
dying from his sickness on the scaffold.
Even in the eyes of the townspeople, Dimmesdale continues to hold a holy status after his
death. Some highly respected members of the audience on the day of his death felt that Reverend
Dimmesdale came on the scaffold that day “to impress on his admirers the mighty and mournful
Slaughter 4
lesson, that, in the view of Infinite Purity, we are all sinners alike” (177). Despite seeing the
adulterous A on his chest, the indisputable proof of Dimmesdale’s sin, some witnesses of
Dimmesdale’s death refuse to acknowledge the sin’s existence. Since Dimmesdale committed his
life to helping and teaching others, he dies as a saintly minister and a role model to others.
Dimmesdale is a man of two masks. One, the Reverend Dimmesdale, is a virtuous victim
of a fatal sickness. The other, Arthur Dimmesdale, is an unfaithful and foolishly emotional
sinner. But neither face shows the character of the real man behind the masks. Arthur
Dimmesdale committed a sinful act and therefore could never attain the purity of Reverend
Dimmesdale. However, Reverend Dimmesdale was also a positive influence on his followers,
making him too reputable to descend eternally to the moral level of Arthur Dimmesdale.
Alone, neither personality shows Dimmesdale’s complete personality, but together, they
provide valuable insight to the reality of his character. Reverend Dimmesdale is the man’s
conscience. He is the ideal Puritan, with a strict moral compass and powerful self-restraint. The
minister’s religious code causes him guilt and restricts impulsive behavior. In essence, the
Reverend Dimmesdale embodies the Freudian concept of the superego.
In the late 1800s and early 1900s, psychologist Sigmund Freud established the theory of
psychoanalysis, which splits the mind into three sections: the superego, the id, and the ego. The
superego represents a person’s moral compass, the id represents their aggressive basic drives and
desires, and the ego represents their conscious mind (Meyers 294-295). In the Scarlett Letter,
Dimmesdale is a perfect example of the struggles between the superego, id, and ego.
If Reverend Dimmesdale represents the superego, then Arthur Dimmesdale must
represent the id. Arthur has little impulse control, which leads to his forbidden relationship with
Hester Prynne. He is unable to control his desires and emotions, enabling him to take part in a
Slaughter 5
relationship which goes against his morals. Arthur Dimmesdale also tends to be highly emotional
and aggressive. For example, when Roger pushes him to tell his secret, he reacts violently and
irrationally (Hawthorne 94).
The struggle between Dimmesdale’s superego and id takes place throughout the entire
story. One obvious example is the scene after Dimmesdale meets Hester in the forest. As he
walks back into town, he realizes that he feels “incited to do some strange, wild, wicked thing or
other, with a sense that it would be at once involuntary and intentional” (149). Here, Arthur
Dimmesdale’s id is compelling the minister to act on impulse and to ignore his moral compass.
Reverend Dimmesdale’s superego reacts strongly to these impulses, creating guilt and causing
the minister to realize that his choice in the woods “had stupefied all blessed impulses” in his
mind (152). The guilt caused by his superego here, and in the rest of the book, eventually leads
Reverend Dimmesdale to share his secret on the scaffold.
In Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis, the ego should be the component of the mind that
balances the desires of the id and the moral demands of the superego. However, Dimmesdale is
rarely able to reconcile his two sides. Dimmesdale embodies one extreme or the other, but his
ego never manages to balance the two. It may be this instability which leads to Dimmesdale’s
madness. One explanation the narrator gives the readers for the sign on the minister’s chest is
that he punishes himself for his sin “by inflicting a hideous torture on himself” (176). First,
Dimmesdale’s ego fails to consider the potentially disastrous outcome of his id’s desire to have a
relationship with Hester. Then, his ego fails to deal with his guilt in a practical, nonviolent
manner. Instead, the superego forces Dimmesdale to extreme punishment, compelling him carve
an A into his chest to deal with the guilt.
Slaughter 6
The disproportionate power of the superego and id in comparison to the ego doesn’t seem
to be uncommon in Puritan society. As seen in the novel, the Puritans of Salem tend to have an
extremist notion of morality. Nearly every desire, whether it is sexual, material, or otherwise, is
seen as sinful. The id is condemned in their society, despite the fact that the basic drives of the id
are necessary for survival. The Puritans also tend to strive for the ideal self, the main goal of the
superego, despite the impossibility of obtaining it. In this way, the struggle between the ideals of
Reverend Dimmesdale and the desires of Arthur Dimmesdale represent of the conflicts found in
Puritan society.
Between the two masks of Reverend Dimmesdale and Arthur Dimmesdale stands a
broken ego. This ego is the true Dimmesdale, a weak man with no control over his warring
ideals and desires. His id, Arthur Dimmesdale, forces him to commit crimes against his religion
to satisfy its constant cravings. His superego, Reverend Dimmesdale, pushes him to become the
ideal person, causing him unbearable guilt for the sins he has committed.
The weakness of Dimmesdale’s ego is the outcome of his oppressive religion, which
demands an unattainable perfection from its followers. The societal pressures placed on
Dimmesdale forces his suppressed id to go to severe measures to satisfy its desires. The strict
moral compass which Dimmesdale shares with the Puritan ideology enhances the feelings of
guilt caused by the superego. Hawthorne’s careful characterization of Dimmesdale and his use of
significant titles and names demonstrate the repressed id and overinflated superego of Puritan
society. Using this character, Hawthorne makes a profound commentary on the nature of the
Puritan religion and its effect on its followers. The clash of Reverend Dimmesdale and Arthur
Dimmesdale drives the conflict of the Scarlet Letter, while also symbolizing the unavoidable
clash between idealism and human desire in the Puritan religion.
Slaughter 7
Works Cited
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1994. Print.
Myers, David. Psychology in Everyday Life. New York: Worth Publishers, 2012. Print.