Leading a double life, Dimmesdale is irrevocably doomed to his collapse. His torture is more psychological than physical as there is so weighty a load of guilty conscience on him because all his principles are Puritanical which, most to his remorse, he has violated. He reveals to Hester:
Were I an atheist, –a man devoid of conscience, –a wretch with coarse and brutal instincts,–I might have found peace, long ere now but, _ whatever of good capacity there originally was in me, all of God??s gifts that were the choicest have become the ministers of spiritual torment. Hester, I am most miserable! (P.229)
As for Hester Prynne, the tragedy goes in large account into women??s role in the Puritan community. Early in the ??Custom House??, Hawthorne hints at the women??s status by writing about the office room: ??this is a sanctuary into which womankind, as very infrequent access??(P.22). It is then not hard to infer that the responsibility that women were expected to share was no more than guarding the household and making compliance with whatever regulations and disciplines the Puritan society has imposed on them. Hester??s transgression, therefore, is viewed by the Puritans as the sin of a woman??s frailty. When Hawthorne makes a sharp contrast between Hester??s graceful endurance of the scaffold punishment for her disgrace and the women spectators?? unrefined manners, we know he is not going to share the general morality of the Puritan New England which catalogues the adultery sin of the most unpardonable. Undoubtedly then, as Richard Chase declares, The Scarlet Letter has a feminist theme. In her lonely life, Hester becomes a radical. She believes that at some brighter period, a new truth will be revealed and that the whole relation between man and woman will be established on a surer ground of mutual happiness. She even comes to think in feminist rhetoric, and we can hear her talking firmly about ??the whole relation between man and woman??(P.311). Nevertheless, Robert E. Spiller would rather define the tale as a ??Greek tragedy?? because Hester Prynne is ??the woman of earth who has defied man-made law and has risen to heroic statue through the tragic flaw that must at last destroy as well as ennoble her.??
The Scarlet Letter??A hymn to the moral growth of Hester and her lover
In The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne is at his best in treating the old problem of sin. All his life, he seems to be haunted by his sense of sin and evil in life, which naturally leads to a blackness of vision in his works. In The Scarlet Letter he studies sin only to ask whether some forms of conduct called sin may after all be innocent or even virtuous, and whether some popular virtues may not be, in some cases at least, great wrongs.
On the part of Hester and Dimmesdale, Hawthorne obviously thinks that sin educates rather than degrades them. Hester??s life eventually acquires a real significance when she reestablishes a meaningful relationship with her fellow humans Dimmesdale??s ultimate revelation purges his soul. One feels that he dies to go to heaven, and that he is too good for a world which cannot accommodate him. As for Chillingworth, the real villain, the sin is unpardonable–the violation of the human heart. There is every reason to assert that what Hawthorne means here is an admonition that every one has the responsibility of examining his own motives and actions in the minutest detail, and should confess his sins and strive for salvation by doing good. Although it is salient that Hawthorne condones sin in this book, The Scarlet Letter is not a praise of a sinning Hester Prynne and her lover, but a hymn to their moral growth when sinned against.