Essay, Research Paper: Scarlet Letter's Roger Chillingsworth

Michael Stavropoulos
Doctor Torrance
English III
2 December 1997
The Deterioration of Roger Chillingworth

Roger Prynne is an old and lonely scholar in England dehumanized by a life of abstruse
studying. He makes the mistake of marrying a young wife. He sends his wife to America,
to the Puritan colony of Massachusetts, with instructions to live quietly until he arrives.
Due to "grievous mishaps by sea and land," and over a year's captivity by Indians, his
intended arrival was delayed. He finally arrives to discover his wife, Hester Prynne, being
publicly exposed as an adulteress. Not wanting to be associated with her sin, he announces
himself as a physician, and takes the new name Roger Chillingworth.

Nathaniel Hawthorn's novel, The Scarlet Letter is controlled by suffering that results from
sin and sin that results from suffering. In the case of Roger Chillingworth, two sins control
his destiny. His initial sin was marrying a wife a generation younger than he. Hester's
unhappiness, due to a mismatched matrimony, leads her to become an adulteress. After
Chillingworth arrives in Massachusetts and sees his wife holding the child of another man,
he slowly evolves from a man capable of love, to a man capable of (what Hawthorn
depicts as) the greatest sin in the novel: Violating the sanctity of the human heart.

Chillingworth was capable of love, and we sympathize with and approve of his desire for a
life cheered by domestic affections:

My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and
without a household fire. I longed to kindle one! It seemed not so wild a
dream,---old as I was, and sombre as I was, and misshapen as I was,---that the
simple bliss, which is scattered far and wide, for all mankind to gather up, might
yet be mine. And so, Hester, I drew thee to my heart, into its inner most chamber,
and sought to warm thee by the warmth which thy presence made there! (1196)

Nevertheless, marrying Hester was Chillingworth's first sin:

In Bishop Fuller's Holly State (which Hawthorne read in 1834) the expectations
proper to a Christian entering into holy matrimony are discussed. Much happiness
is not to be expected in marriage. One's spouse should be loved for grace
(presumably spiritual rather than physical) and goodness. A wife should not be
chosen for her beauty. There should be no great disproportion in age. (Abel 209)

Chillingworth's first sin causes Hester to be unhappy. Her initial sadness, along with the
three year absence of her husband, resulted in adultery. After his discovery, "Chillingworth
moves closer to the scaffold and imperiously bids her to name the father of her child"
(Martin 113). Chillingworth repressed his instinctive emotional response to the situation.
He was disappointed that his hope of gaining his wife's affection upon arrival was
destroyed and he hated the man who had gained that affection. "Although his anger was
understandable and forgivable, it became a fatal sin when he nourished it" (Abel 209).

Chillingworth begins to suspect that Dimmesdale is Pearl's father when Reverend Wilson
and Governor Billingham are trying to take Pearl away from Hester. Dimmesdale gives an
eloquent representation for Hester, and Chillingworth says "You speak, my friend, with a
strange earnestness" (1217). It is with this suspicion that Chillingworth begins to show
"special interest" in Dimmesdale.

When Chillingworth first appears in the community he is well received. The town needs a
doctor and the members of the town feel that it is an act of God that he arrives when
Reverend Dimmesdale is becoming ill:

that Heaven had wrought an absolute miracle, by transporting an eminent Doctor
of Physic, from a German university, bodily through the air, and setting him down
at the door of Mr. Dimmesdale's study! (1221)

The fact that Chillingworth shows a special interest in Dimmesdale helps his acceptance in
the community, but the community did not know his intentions.

Chillingworth's quest is to find out if his suspicion is, in fact, reality. In order to find this
out, he must get closer to Dimmesdale: "The mysterious illness of
Dimmesdale--mysterious to the town-- is something he says he can treat, and so he
becomes the minister's physician; he even lives with him" (Doren 150). After Chillingworth
moves in with Dimmesdale, his image in the community begins to change:

At first, his expression had been calm, meditative, scholar-like. Now, there was
something ugly and evil in his face, which they had not previously noticed . . . it
grew to be a wisely diffused opinion, that the Reverend . . . was haunted either by
Satan himself, or Satan's emissary, in the guise of old Roger Chillingworth. (1224)

While living together, Chillingworth constantly digs for Dimmesdale to release his secret,
but he will not reveal it, and his condition becomes worse. Finally, Chillingworth catches
Dimmesdale sleeping and thrust aside the vestment to discover the letter "A" upon his
chest.

Had a man seen old Roger Chillingworth, at that moment of his ecstacy, he would
have had no need to ask how Satan comports himself when a precious human soul
is lost to heaven and won into his kingdom. (1230)

With no doubt in Chillingworth's mind about Dimmesdale's relation to Pearl, his torment
toward him increases. Chillingworth is now in complete control of Dimmesdale, whose
health is deteriorating.

Hester notices the deterioration of Dimmesdale's health, and she thinks that her
faithfulness, in keeping Chillingworth's identity a secret, is to blame. When she goes to
Chillingworth and speaks to him about revealing his identity, he neither condones nor
condemns her decision. While listening to the old man, she noticed how much he had
changed over the past seven years:

It seemed to be his wish and purpose to mask this expression with a smile; but the
latter played him false, and flickered over his visage so derisively, that the
spectator could see his blackness all the better for it . . . there came a glare of red
light out of his eyes; as if the old man's soul were on fire . . . Roger Chillingworth
was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil.
(1246)

Chillingworth has made his complete transformation to evil.

When Hester finally tells Dimmesdale about Chillingworth's true identity, it is at this point
that, Hawthorne portrays, through Dimmesdale's words, that Chillingworth has committed
the most severe of the sins in the novel: Violating the sanctity of the human heart. This
new knowledge does not free Dimmesdale of Chillingworth's control. It is not until
Dimmesdale's confession to the town that he escape the control of Chillingworth.
Although Dimmesdale had gained back control, it was too late for him to gain back his
health. Without anyone to torment Roger Chillingworth dies with in a year.

In conclusion, Roger Chillingworth evolves from a man capable of love, into a devil who
is only capable of revenge. He commits two sins in the story; the result of his first sin leads
to the second: Marrying a spouse with a great disproportion in age causes his wife to
suffer; her suffering results in adultery; her adultery causes Chillingworth to suffer, and
during this suffering he transforms into a devil; he then violates the sanctity of a human
heart. Suffering results from sin and sin results from suffering.