Dimmesdale's Collapse and the Covering That Cannot Hold From Inside

The Argument

Two Coverings Tested Against the Same Sin

Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale share the same sin and are given, by Hawthorne, opposite coverings for it. Hester's is imposed publicly and immediately – the scarlet letter fixes her sin to her body before the community's eyes, a covering assigned to her without her consent, in the shape identified elsewhere in this archive with Gilman's confined narrator. Dimmesdale's covering is self-built and interior: his reputation, his eloquence, his private acts of penance conducted in secret, none of which reach anyone but himself, and none of which relieve the weight he carries.

Hawthorne stages Dimmesdale's slow physical and spiritual disintegration as the direct consequence of a covering that cannot hold from inside – the fig-leaf apron of Genesis 3:7, sewn by the guilty party for the guilty party's own use, addressed to no one and answerable to no one but the self. His confession on the scaffold in the novel's final scenes functions as the only moment his covering and Hester's converge: both stand exposed together, and only then does Dimmesdale's weight lift, immediately preceding his death.

Read against the Genesis argument, Hawthorne's novel demonstrates the fig-leaf apron's failure across an entire novel-length case study rather than the three verses Genesis allots it: a covering built by the guilty party, for the guilty party, addressed to no outside authority, does not hold under sustained narrative pressure, regardless of how long the pressure is deferred.

Supporting Text

The Novel's Own Terms