Skip to content Home Social studies How does Chillingworth deal with his guilt? Social studies. Ben Davis August 20, How does Chillingworth deal with his guilt? Why does Chillingworth want to keep his identity a secret? What is Chillingworth secret in The Scarlet Letter? Who was the worst sinner in Scarlet Letter? Why is Chillingworth evil? Even if he was originally a scholar, Chillingworth managed to study about medicine and herbs, and also uses them as black magic to torment Dimmesdale and to keep him alive in order to achieve his vengeance on him.
Because of Chillingworth's ruthless acts of revenge, he may often be compared to the Black Man or the Devil. He couldn't connect with anyone in his youth and only wants to cause self-inflicted torture on Dimmesdale. He also made sure his victim never escaped from him, especially when he attempted to board the ship leaving Boston where Hester and Dimmesdale were in.
His appearance and personality make him ominous to everyone; even to his young wife Hester. In death, Chillingworth's satanic attitude, however, has subsided. Roger Prynne grew up in England. As an adult, he studied alchemy and became a scholar. He married a younger woman named Hester Prynne and moved to Amsterdam with her.
After the establishment of the Boston Colony, Prynne send his wife ahead as one of the emigrants, while he stayed behind in Amsterdam to finish with his affairs and would join her soon. He ends up leaving her alone in Boston for 2 years and hardly stays in touch with her.
He eventually boards a ship to Boston but had been shipwrecked at sea and when he does arrive in America, he is captured and held hostage by the Native Americans. At some point, he may had escaped and to protect his true identity, he changes his surname to Chillingworth. Chillingworth enters Boston disguised in Native American clothing. He goes to the marketplace and stands behind a crowd, where he sees Hester standing on top of the town scaffold with her baby in her arms, being publicly shamed for adultery.
He is shocked to see her, and when they look at each other, he places his finger to his lips and makes a gesture to keep her quiet. He asks a stranger in the crowd about Hester's crime and identity, and claimed that he had been a prisoner by the Natives before arriving in Boston. The man is surprised that Chillingworth hasn't heard of Hester's sin and the former scholar hears about her history even though he may had already knew about it following his marriage to her. He asks the man again who the baby's father is, but he says that the father's identity is unknown, and thinks that Hester's husband has come to Boston for investigation.
The stranger also notes that Hester didn't receive the extremity of righteous law, which would have her executed. Chillingworth predicts that the identity of Hester's lover will be revealed, and repeatedly says, " He will be known!
After Hester is taken back to her cell, the prison guards allow a doctor to come in and help her. Chillingworth poses as a physician and visits Hester in her prison cell.
He calms her crying baby by giving her some medical treatment and offers his wife a sedative. The two of them talk, with Chillingworth forgiving his wife for betraying him and scolding himself for thinking he could make her happy. He asks her to reveal who the father is, but Hester refuses. He then tells her that he will find out who the father is himself, and he makes her swear an oath that she will not reveal to anyone her husband's identity.
Chillingworth, along with the local minister Arthur Dimmesdale and John Wilson, arrive at the Governor's house. While he was a captive of the Indians for "upward of a year," he did not judge them as heathens and infidels, and, unlike the Puritans, he did not seek to convert them.
Instead, as the scholar, he studied their knowledge of herbs and medicines to learn. He has, indeed, spent his life as a lonely scholar, cutting himself off when necessary in the quest for knowledge from the world of other men. This study of herbs and medicines later links his work to the "black medicine" and helps him keep his victim alive. Hawthorne further develops this "other world" involvement — whether fate or predetermined by some higher power — when he describes the physician's appearance as being just in time to "help" Dimmesdale.
The Puritans believed that the hand of God, or Providence, was in every event. So Hawthorne skewers their belief in mentioning Chillingworth's arrival when he states, "Individuals of wiser faith, indeed, who knew that Heaven promotes its purposes without aiming at the stage-effect of what is called miraculous interposition, were inclined to see a providential hand in Roger Chillingworth's opportune arrival.
When Chillingworth arrives in the colony and learns of Hester's situation, he leaves her alone nearly seven years as he single-mindedly pursues Dimmesdale. He does, however, see his role in her downfall. Because he married her when she was young and beautiful and then shut himself away with his books, he realizes that their marriage did not follow "the laws of nature. He now realizes that from the moment they met, the scarlet letter would be at the end of their path.
His love of learning and intellectual pursuit attracts Dimmesdale. In the New World, men of learning were rare. Hawthorne says, "there was a fascination for the minister in the company of the man of science, in whom he recognized an intellectual cultivation of no moderate depth or scope; together with a range and freedom of ideas that he would have vainly looked for among the members of his own profession.
In Chillingworth, Hawthorne has created the "man of science," a man of pure intellect and reason with no concern for feelings. Notice the "chilliness" of his name. In Chapter 9, Hawthorne describes the scarcity of Chillingworth's scientific peers in the New World: "Skillful men, of the medical and chirurgical profession, were of rare occurrence in the colony. Anyway, I am in full agreement with you. I always wondered about that bit and it makes perfect sense—in fact is what I assumed no idea what my teacher taught, she was a gym teacher who took over an English class, not the best sort.
Every time I read it, I wonder about something else. Thanks for stopping by my blog. Hi Becky! You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Google account.
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