The Scarlet Letter: whose story is it, Dimmesdale's or Hester's?

Question

and why?

Answer 1

Both. "The Scarlet Letter" chronicles how guilt and hypocrisy ruin Arthur Dimmesdale's physical, mental, and moral health, and how he tries to atone for his sins. It also shows how Hester Prynne's innocence and forebearance make her a stronger person, a woman of character. And both Hester and Dimmesdale wear the scarlet letter A for adultery -- except hers is made of cloth and can be removed, while his is embedded in his very flesh.

Answer 2

The Scarlet Letter is the story of both Hester and Arthur Dimmesdale. The letter is made visible in direct connection to both characters: Hester in the letter so meticulously and gloriously applied to the bodice of her gowns as well as in her daughter, the living, breathing scarlet letter as headstrong as her mother's perceived sin. Hester and Dimmesdale as they stand together with Pearl between them (and innocently asking if the preacher will be with them when they must stand again in daylight) as the comet flew across the sky with the appearance of that same scarlet letter. Dimmesdale, finally, as he tears his shirt open on the platform of the pillory in his dying acknowledgement of his sin and exposure of the Scarlet Letter carved into his chest.

Both of these characters have individual stories that are joined by the scarlet letter which unites the two indiviual stories into one.

Answer 3

Hester

Answer 4

The scarlet letter goes onto Hester. It is her story.

Answer 5

Excellent question. Despite the point of view, a good case could be made for it being Dimmesdale's.

Answer 6

Both are important, but we know more of Hester's actions and feelings.

Answer 7

i've got faith that the actual society is the antagonist. the author of this e book had a bent to speak out against social issues, and to him the way society treats some human beings became between the matters to be dealt with.

Answer 8

1

Answer 9

hesters point of view

Answer 10

Tough Choice - a case could be made for its being either character's story:

"THE SCARLET LETTER: HESTER PRYNNE

Hester Prynne is one of the most enigmatic characters in all literature. As the wearer of the scarlet letter, she may be expected to possess some definitive insight available to no one else. Yet her final word on the subject is "I know not. I know not."
Is Hester a glorious heroine, standing up to an unduly repressive society in the name of love and freedom? Or is she a sinner who has broken a basic and sacred law? And if she is a sinner, does sin lead her in the direction of evil or of good?
Let's look at Hester from a number of different viewpoints:
1. Hester is a magnificent woman fighting for her natural rights to love and freedom. To know what Hawthorne means by his heroine, you have only to look at her. With her flashing eyes, her rich complexion, and her abundant hair, she stands for what a real woman should be beside a crowd of tight-mouthed Puritans.
It is true that during the years of her punishment, Hester tries to subdue her spirit and sensuality, hiding it all (with that wonderful hair of hers) beneath a sad cap. But she can't do it. One breath of fresh air, one ray of sunlight, one moment alone with her lover in the forest, and she is herself again, reaching passionately for a life of freedom and fulfillment.
2. Hester Prynne, if not the out-and-out criminal the Puritans believe her to be, is still a woman who has deeply sinned. She is, after all, guilty of adultery--no small matter, even today.
As Hester herself admits, she has irreparably wronged her husband. And so she bears some responsibility for the corruption of Chillingworth's soul.
She has also shattered Dimmesdale's peace. She has lured the minister--admittedly, with his full cooperation--from the straight and narrow path of orthodoxy, where it was surely in his interest to stay.
3. Hester is, indeed, a sinner. But her sin is a cause not of evil but of good. Suffering disciplines Hester, so that she grows strong. Sorrow awakens her sympathies, so that she becomes a nurse.
In fact, the best deeds of Hester's life come about through her fall from grace. Her charity to the poor, her comfort to the broken-hearted, her unquestioned presence in times of trouble are the direct result of her search for repentance. If Hester had not sinned, she would never have discovered the true depths of tenderness within herself.
4. Hester is neither a heroine nor a sinner, but something in between. She is a flesh-and-blood woman in tragic circumstances, trapped in a loveless marriage and in love with another man. Whichever way she moves, there is bound to be a sacrifice of some vital part of herself, either her honor or her deepest need.

THE SCARLET LETTER: ARTHUR DIMMESDALE

Dimmesdale is a coward and a hypocrite. Worse, he is a self-confessed coward and hypocrite. He knows what he has to do to still the voice of his conscience and make his peace with God. He simply cannot bring himself to do it.
Dimmesdale is somewhat pale and weak from the first moment we see him. And he grows paler and weaker by the minute, as he lives ridden with guilt, a guiltmonger by his side. By the time the minister comes to the forest, he barely has the strength to throw himself down on the leaves in the hope that he can lie there forever. He lacks the will even to wish to live or die.
When we read such a description, we cannot help wondering what Hester ever saw in the man.
Yet there is a presence in the minister that demands a live audience and knows how to sway one. We see it in his eyes--large, brown, and melancholy--which seem to search out men's souls. We hear it in his voice--sweet, deep, broken--a finely tuned instrument for touching women's hearts.
Were Dimmesdale just a little stronger, a little more energetic, we would say he has charisma. And probably, in his own time and place, he did. Ministers were the Puritan culture's heroes. Hester would have met Dimmesdale first as the revered idol of the community, the object of worshipping glances from every girl in sight.
We sense in Dimmesdale this split between his private and his public self, his purity and his passion. We wonder, was the split always there?
To some extent, Dimmesdale's story is the story of any sensitive young man's initiation into sexuality, especially in a society that treats sexuality with ill grace. But his problem is enormously complicated by the fact of Hester's marriage (for him no technicality), and by his own image of himself as a cleric devoted to higher things. Unlike other young men, Dimmesdale cannot accept his loss of innocence and go on from there. He must struggle futilely to get back to where he was.
By the time we meet Dimmesdale, he has lost (if he ever had it) the simplicity of an earlier time. He has bitten into the apple and destroyed his old sense of oneness with God. The split in the man's nature is deepened by his situation. If he wishes to continue in his ministerial role, he must bury his sensuality and wrap himself up in a cloak of sanctity. He must wear one face for the world, another for himself.
What happens to a man who struggles to hide a terrible sin in the depths of his heart, but who believes profoundly in a God that sees and loves the truth? That is a question Hawthorne surely asked himself in creating the character of Arthur Dimmesdale.
If the minister is a brilliant study in guilt, it is because he believes with all his soul that his sin is terrible, and that a concerned, personal God is watching every move he makes.
Torn between the desire to confess and atone and the cowardice which holds him back, Dimmesdale goes a little mad. He takes up some morbid forms of penance--fasts and scourgings--but he can neither whip nor starve the sin from his soul. In his agony, he staggers to the pulpit to confess, but his words come out as generalized, meaningless avowals of guilt.
Dimmesdale knows what he is doing, of course. "Subtle, but remorseful, hypocrite," he is nothing if not self-aware. But the dark stain he perceives on his soul is spreading now, sapping the meaning from life, the strength from his will.
By the time the minister meets Hester in the forest, he is ripe for an invitation to flight. Perhaps flight is the only way out. And anyway, he wonders, for a moral wreck like himself, what does it really matter whether he goes or stays?
If he stays, there is Chillingworth, whose gloating eye he does not know how to escape. There is duty, too, that endless round of tasks he has always gone about without complaint. But the tasks seem hollow now, since (as he believes) he is unfit for his office, since his actions are no longer informed by any sustaining faith.
If he goes, there is Hester and the dream of love he has not permitted himself for so long. A glowing face in the firelight and an embrace (has he not just felt it?) that is like an infusion of strength. There is England, too, with the sweet, deep-sounding bells of Cambridge, and the winters soft after New England's penetrating cold. And minds of his own calibre! The chance, after nine or ten years, to really talk!
Dimmesdale nearly buys the shining vision of a new life that Hester holds out to him in the woods. And yet, with his last ounce of strength, he rejects it. He crawls to the scaffold--and confession--instead.
Is Dimmesdale right to choose confession over escape; the shreds of his religious belief over Hester and love? Your answer will depend on your own definition of the good life, and on where you think Dimmesdale has been headed all along.
Some readers believe that Dimmesdale's decision is the only possible ending to his long and tortuous struggle to return to God. Others see it as a desperate flight from his true, but never acknowledged, self.
Let's look at the second argument first. According to this view, Dimmesdale found out something essential about himself when he fell in love with, and made love to, Hester Prynne. He found out he was not a pure, ethereal scholar-priest, but a man with a man's heart and a man's desires. What should he have done about it? What all men do, when they are ready to grow up. Accept responsibility for a wife and child. Marry the woman (or live with her, in this case) and keep a roof over her head.
The first argument runs somewhat differently. The real Dimmesdale (it goes) is no lover at all, but a Puritan minister from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. In Hester's arms, he may have yielded temporarily to the claims of the flesh. But he never altered his basic commitment to the spirit, and to God. The point is not whether we believe that Dimmesdale's love for Hester is sin. The point is that he believes it, with all his heart. There is only one way he can expiate that sin. And that is to stand on the scaffold and confess.
The chilling fact about either argument is that it leaves half of Dimmesdale out. The flesh has to go or the spirit. There is no way of integrating both. Dimmesdale is given a stark choice, and he is given it by Hawthorne: To deny love and desire (and their consequent human commitments) in the only final way possible, in death; or to live, and submerge his finer qualities in a life too closely tied to earth."