When Mr Dimsdale revealed the scarlet letter to the towns people, because of their Puritan beliefs, they felt that even though he committed a sin, God still had mercy upon sinners because even ministers such as
Mr Dimsdale have the ability to sin. They state this when they say "Mercy which looks down, and repudiate more utterly the phantom of human merit, which would look aspiringly upward. Without disputing a truth so momentus, we must be allowed to consider this version of Mr. Dimsdale's story as only an instance of that stubborn fidelity with which a man's friends-and especially a clergyman's-will sometimes uphold his character; when proofs, clear as the mid-day sunshine on the scarlet letter, establish him a false and sin-stained creature of the dust." (212)
Brielle Roberts
Sarah Lopez
Yes, this is a tricky and dense quotation and I think you have done an excellent job of analysis here. One of the central themes of this novel is Mercy v. Justice and herein we see that, although God is all powerful in the Puritan mind, mercy can trump justice in the minds of the onlookers in the final scene.
ReplyDeleteAnother place this is exhibited, is when we see the mercy granted to Hester during the opening scene. When she is on the scaffold, the Magistrates call on her to reveal the guilty party and if she does they will remove her letter. They are willing to bargain with her justice here and show her mercy—indeed they seem to want to show her mercy. And in the end, they do grant her a softer punishment than others who have committed the same offense. See Kristen Boudreau's "Hawthorne's Model of Christian Charity" and the reference to Mary Latham and James Britton's execution in 1644 (Boudreau 347. Since the novel is set from 1642-1649, Hester's arrival at the scaffold would be right around the time that a real execution over adultery occurred in Salem.
At the end of the novel, onlookers (according to the narrator) are able to overlook the obvious crimes by Dimmesdale and 'chalk' this one up as a God striking down one of his own to prove the "phantom" that is "human merit" (212). In other words, even those who have achieved success can be 'struck down' by the wrath of God, if for no other reason than to prove who is really in charge and to humble those who have risen in stature. The narrator seems also to be implying that people are able to overlook the fallibility of men as "good" as this Reverend. Thus mercy and justice are constantly at battle in the Christian mind...and, as we see here in this novel, the Puritan mind.