“That Self Was Gone!” The Transformations of Arthur Dimmesdale in the Scarlet Letter: A Psychoanalytic Perspective

After his fateful encounter with Hester in the forest and nightmarish walk through town, Arthur Dimmesdale finally reaches his study where he experiences relief and refuge amongst his familiar surroundings. At the same time, he becomes aware of a momentous internal change that has decisively transformed him since he left his dwelling two days earlier:

Here he had studied and written; here, gone though fast and vigil, and had come forth half alive; here, striven to pray; here, borne a hundred thousand agonies! […] He knew it was himself, the thin and white-cheeked minister, who had done and suffered these things, and written thus far into the Election Sermon! But he seemed to stand apart, and eye this former self with scornful, pitying, but half-envious curiosity. That self was gone! Another man had returned out of the forest; a wiser one; with a knowledge of hidden mysteries which the simplicity of the former never could have reached. A bitter kind of knowledge that! (Hawthorne, 1850/1962, pp. 222-223, emphasis added)

The reader's curiosity is aroused by these remarkable assertions: what is the knowledge, which hidden mysteries and what is the wisdom that Dimmesdale has acquired? What of himself, viewed as he is “standing apart” does he see? Who is this new man? The narrator, who has spared the reader no detail of Dimmesdale's mental deterioration, is silent as to the mental processes involved in this transformation. Although this change is not expressed in words, it is revealed in The Reverend's subsequent actions: the dismissal of Chillingworth as his physician, the delivery of an inspired and authentic Election