The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (Character of Roger Chillingworth)

 

The Scarlet Letter

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

(Character of Roger Chillingworth) 

Roger Chillingworth is a mixture of ‘chill’ and ‘worth’. He is a cold-blooded villain who destroys the human soul. His worth is that he has been betrayed by Hester and Dimmesdale, yet he sins more than he is sinned against. He betrays the sanctity of the human heart more as Hester and Dimmesdale never did.

His presence suggests the Desert. The fire in his laboratory and his blue eyes suggest that he is connected with hell. His cold efficiency and sceptical mind are in opposition to the conventionalized Puritan religious morality. His sin is that he is not sufficiently detached or scientific. His systematic destruction of the minister’s soul owes its inspiration to a motive of revenge. He is a man who was good and who has fallen. He provokes hatred and dislike. Yet, he is indispensable to the village. As Dimmesdale is a hypocritical minister, Chillingworth is a hypocritical physician and friend. In his role of friends and physicians he does more than good to Dimmesdale.

He is the wronged husband who may exact his revenge by Elizabethan standards. Hester admits his goodness and generosity in the past. The passion of revenge has made him a villain. His goodness in the past can be gauged by his generosity in leaving all his considerable property to his enemy’s child, Pearl. As Hester is identified by her scarlet letter and the minister by his hand on his heart, so the physician is identified by his stoop and his hunch-back. His monomaniac revenge comes to engross his complete being so much so that he cannot live without his enemy Dimmesdale. He tries to stop Dimmesdale with promises of a happy future. But when he fails in his effort he dies within a year of the minister’s death, following him even in death.