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Boston, Massachusetts Bay Colony On Election Day, just after the sermon, the question that lingered in everyone’s mind after Hester Prynne’s scandal was answered. That question: Who was her fellow sinner? In the most shocking turn of events that this colony has ever seen, that person was revealed to be none other than the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. Dimmesdale ascended the church scaffold and told all. Now that we know the full story let’s take a look at what transpired. When Hester was accused of adultery she refused to reveal the man who had joined her in this offense. Dimmesdale at first could not give himself up, but the guilt began to be too much for him he cried at to the people while upon the scaffold: “People of New England ye, that have loved me!...behold me here, the one sinner of the world! At last!—at last!—I stand upon the spot where, seven years since, I should have stood; here, with this woman, whose arm sustains me, at this dreadful moment, from groveling down upon my face! Lo, the scarlet letter which Hester wears! Ye have all shuddered at it! Wherever her walk hath been,—wherever, so miserably burdened, she may have hoped to find repose,—it hath cast a lurid gleam of awe and horrible repugnance round about her. But there stood one in the midst of you, at whose brand of sin and infamy ye have not shuddered!” Roger Chillingsworth, the man thought to be the personal physician and friend of Dimmesdale, was revealed to be a secret tormentor of the Reverend. A conversation between him and Hester was revealed in which he stated: “With the superstition common to his brotherhood, he fancied himself given over to a fiend, to be tortured with frightful dreams, and desperate thoughts, the sting of remorse, and despair of pardon; as a foretaste of what awaits him beyond the grave. But it was the constant shadow of my presence!—the closest propinquity of the man whom he had most vilely wronged!--and who had grown to exist only by this perpetual poison of the direst revenge! Yea, indeed!—he did not err!—there was a fiend at his elbow! A mortal man, with once a human heart, has become a fiend for his especial torment!“ (Pg. 155) Through the course of events it was also revealed that Chillingsworth was the presumed dead husband of Hester Prynne. She had agreed to keep this secret in exchange for Roger’s leaving alone Dimmesdale, though unknown at the time: “Breathe not the secret, above all, to the man thou [know] of. Shouldst though fail me in this, beware! Hiss fame, his position, his life will be in my hands.” Hester was visibly shaken by Dimmesdale’s death. She had grown to love him and even spoke of their possible meeting in the afterlife: “Shall we not meet again?” whispered she, bending her face down close to his. “Shall we not spend our immortal life together? Surely, surely, we have ransomed one another, with all this woe!” (Pg. 229) This truly is the most scandalous thing to ever occur within these colonies. <(From Top to Bottom: Arthur Dimmesdale, Hester Prynne, and Roger Chillingsworth)
