With Dimmesdale's confession in the third scaffold scene
of The Scarlet Letter, the spiritual triangle is completed for
Hester, Pearl, and the minister, while the devilish Roger Chillingworth, who attempts to
stop Dimmesdale, is defeated. Rather than dying for others' sins as Christ did,
Dimmesdale dies for his; however, in so doing, like a Christ, he does ask God's
forgiveness for Chillingworth's sin ["forgive them Father....], and he allows Pearl to
become fully human as she kisses his lips, then weeps in true human
compassion.
This kiss of Pearl is highly symbolic,
for hitherto Pearl has washed away Dimmesdale's kiss at the brook because the minister
"was not true," she now returns her father's kiss, symbolizing her acceptance and
forgiveness. Moreover, this action of Pearl transforms her from a "sprite" and "imp"
into a human being who sheds tears for the first time in the narrative. That she is no
longer a symbol of Hester's and Dimmesdale's sin is evinced in Hawthorne's narration, "A
spell was broken."
For her sin of adultery, Hester has
already been redeemed by her full admission of the sin (she embroiders a
brillant A and performs good deads). Still, Hester's sin of having
allowed Roger Chillingworth to "violate the sanctity of the human heart" has, at last,
been revealed so that she, too, can "be true" as Hawthorne urges in his statement of
theme in the Conclusion. And, so, she is finally truly
redeemed.
After the final scaffold scene,
Chillingworth
...withered up, shrivelled away, and almost
vanished from mortal sight, like an uprooted weed that lies wilting in the
sun.
If Chillingworth is
redeemed at all, it is in finding some humanity in himself by bequeathing his property,
both in England and in Massachusetts, to Pearl. Thus, his hatred is converted to love,
expelling his sin, just as sin is expelled in Dimmesdale, Hester, and Pearl as the
incarnation of her parents' sin.
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