Hester is treated like a pariah, yet Arthur Dimmesdale (who is her lover) is not. Dimmesdale as the village minister is obliged by nature and his religion to love the truth and detest the lie. This obligation sets the scene for the internal torment he experiences from the moment Hester appears with Pearl at the prison door. He loathes his miserable polluted self and wants to set his guilty conscience right. He torments his own mind with this guilt and attempts to rectify his lies, not only for the internal damnation he experiences, but also because of the adoration he experiences from members of his congregation. He knows that the public veneration is based on a lie and he is wracked with guilty torment. Ultimately, Arthur Dimmesdale is exposed in a scene filled with drama and angst. Standing below the scaffolding his parishioners turn a blind eye to his naked sin which truly exposed him for “a false and sin-stained creature of the dust”(Hawthorne 224). Hester Prynne is not granted such a reprieve in her life and is relegated to maintaining her sin with her held up as no eye was ever turned away from her
Hester is treated like a pariah, yet Arthur Dimmesdale (who is her lover) is not. Dimmesdale as the village minister is obliged by nature and his religion to love the truth and detest the lie. This obligation sets the scene for the internal torment he experiences from the moment Hester appears with Pearl at the prison door. He loathes his miserable polluted self and wants to set his guilty conscience right. He torments his own mind with this guilt and attempts to rectify his lies, not only for the internal damnation he experiences, but also because of the adoration he experiences from members of his congregation. He knows that the public veneration is based on a lie and he is wracked with guilty torment. Ultimately, Arthur Dimmesdale is exposed in a scene filled with drama and angst. Standing below the scaffolding his parishioners turn a blind eye to his naked sin which truly exposed him for “a false and sin-stained creature of the dust”(Hawthorne 224). Hester Prynne is not granted such a reprieve in her life and is relegated to maintaining her sin with her held up as no eye was ever turned away from her