Chillingworth’s Revenge

Humans often confuse justice with vengeance, and Roger Chillingworth, the antagonist from the novel, The Scarlet Letter, written by Nathaniel Hawthorne, is one of them. Most call him a villain, but he was just a hurt man trying to seek for something to hold on to after his wife cheated on him. He set his goal on finding Hester’s lover and finish him off, after all, they had both suffered because of him. This unknown man, to all but Hester, was his wife’s lover; they had a child together, and he never dared to show his face, not until his final moments. Arthur Dimmesdale never admitted his sin publicly and let Hester suffer by herself, he never went through the ignominy she did. So it was Roger Chillingworth’s job to avenge himself and Hester, get justice for them both, but he confused justice for revenge. A fair justice would have been to confess his true identity as Hester’s husband and let fate do the rest; instead, he chose to keep his identity a secret and torture Dimmesdale until it was all that mattered to him and was consumed by his own punishments.

In the start of the novel, the first time Chillingworth appears is when Hester is being publicly shamed for her sin. Her husband was believed to be dead, she was carrying a baby in her arms, and while her lover would not reveal himself–and neither would she say his name–she saw the man that was supposedly dead, Roger Chillingworth, her ex-husband: “At his arrival in the market-place, and some time before she saw him, the stranger had bent his eyes on Hester Prynne” (Hawthorne 55). Having been gone for, at least, more than a year, Chillingworth comes back to his wife, just to find her holding the baby of another man in her arms. Said man remained unpunished for his crime however. This made Chillingworth not want to harm Hester or Pearl, at least not directly, but the man his wife had once been with. Hester, who was still unwilling to reveal her lover’s identity, promised to keep Chillingworth’s identity a secret, too. After making that promise she asks Chillingworth: “‘Art thou like the Black Man that haunts the forest round about us? Hast thou enticed me into a bond that will prove the ruin of my soul?’ ‘Not thy soul,’ he answered, with another smile. ‘No, not thine!’” (Hawthorne 69). This is where Chillingworth’s revenge starts. He is keen on finding his ex-wife’s lover to torture him for what he did to him. Hester is scared that he will drag her and her already blackened soul with him, scared that she will have to suffer more for this sin. Chillingworth also states that this man’s life would be his, and only his, to deal with: “‘Recognize me not, by word, by sign, by look! Breathe not the secret, above all, to the man thou wottest of. Shouldst thou fail me in this, beware! His fame, his position, his life, will be in my hands. Beware!’” (Hawthorne 69). All that is of Hester’s lover will be his. No matter what it takes, Chillingworth will find this man and torture him until his last breath, and Hester, nor anyone else, can stop him. He will find him, and when he does all of his will be Chillingworth’s to destroy.

 Skipping a few years after Hester’s ignominy, his story continues. Chillingworth still hasn’t found her ex-wife’s lover; nonetheless, is still motivated to discover the sinner. His suspicion rises towards an important figure in the Puritan society, the clergyman and minister: Arthur Dimmesdale. Chillingworth befriends him and promises him to heal him of his illness, as he was a physician. To find a cure for Dimmesdale, they must both live together under the same roof, that was his excuse. Here is when his revenge finally begins taking action. He tortures Dimmesdale psychologically, constantly asking him questions about his mysterious affliction and reminding him of what he, most probably, did: “‘Then why not reveal them here?’ asked Roger Chillingworth, glancing quietly aside at the minister. ‘Why should not the guilty ones sooner avail themselves of this unutterable solace?’” (Hawthorne 119). Questions like these, which Chillingworth constantly asked his patient, would make Dimmesdale feel guilty. His already all-consuming guilt, that was transforming Dimmesdale to nothing but a shell of a man, would grow more and more as time went, leaving him with no salvation. Dimmesdale’s body language to these questions, like how he would be “Griping hard at his breast, as if afflicted with an importunate throb of pain” gave away the guilt he felt as a sinner. Dimmesdale, a man that was so untrusting and cautious of everyone surrounding him, so much that he couldn’t see his biggest threat before his eyes: old Roger Chillingworth.

Compared to his kindness at the townspeople at his arrival his whole persona changed drastically. The old man’s once calm and relaxed face only showed his malice through his features. The person the townspeople believed was their savior, Chillingworth, sent from above to help them, started to look more and more corrupt. They believed he was taken by the Black Man, or that he was some reincarnation of evil that was living with their minister. The community speculated that Dimmesdale’s bad health was worsening because of Chillingworth, and they weren’t wrong. The more time they spent together, the more Chillingworth manipulated Dimmesdale: “So Roger Chillingworth–the man of skill, the kind and friendly physician–strove to go deep into his patient’s bosom, delving among his principles, prying into his recollections, and probing every thing with a cautious touch, like a treasure-seeker in a dark cavern” (Hawthorne 111). He did just that, digging and digging for knowledge of his ex-wife’s lover, torturing the clergyman and putting him through an insufferable misery, all to find out the letter A on his bosom when the minister was sleeping. This was the last confirmation he needed to know if Arthur Dimmesdale was truly Hester’s lover. 

What happened next to this morally grey character is that he became so obsessed with his vengeance that whatever was left of him had disappeared. He started to torment both Hester and Dimmesdale with his presence. He followed them wherever they’d go, listening to their conversations, the few they had, plotting against them. After the two lovers not interacting with each other for seven long years, they had finally talked, but an uninvited guest was listening to their conversation: “All the time that he gazed upward to the zenith, he was, nevertheless, perfectly aware that little Pearl was pointing her finger towards old Roger Chillingworth, who stood at no great distance from the scaffold” (Hawthorne 141). The physician was unsatisfied with his revenge. Dimmesdale’s bad state was not enough. He needed to do more, and to do more he needed to know more. Even if he lived with the minister, Dimmesdale wouldn’t trust Chillingworth anymore. He hated the physician, but he couldn’t seem to get rid of him. The man appeared to know all of their plans and conversations with each other, he knew of their plan to escape to Europe and took matters into his hands: “‘That this physician here–Chillingworth, he calls himself–is minded to try my cabinfare with you? Ay, ay, you must have known it; for he tells me he is of your party, and a close friend to the gentleman you spoke of’” (Hawthorne 215). After talking with Hester on the beach, the conversation they had was about Hester revealing his identity to Dimmesdale. Chillingworth became eager to know more, he questioned if Hester had truly broken her promise and revealed his secret to the minister. It’s not known if Roger Chillingworth had followed the family in the forest and listened to their plans, or perhaps he had heard from somebody else from the ship, but he was going with them to Europe either way. They couldn’t escape him, and no matter where they’d go, Chillingworth believed he would find them. This impacted Chillingworth, too. His malice and dissatisfaction of his revenge eventually took a toll on him, making him care only for the two people who had, in a way, betrayed him, until he had nothing left, not even himself, to rely on. 

After Dimmesdale’s death, the old man had nothing left. He had no friends, or colleagues, or family to care for him. His desperate but ironic attempt to save Dimmesdale from dying was useless, the only thing that was left of Roger Chillingworth was an empty shell of the man he used to be. “All his strength and energy-all his vital and intellectual force-seemed at once to desert him; insomuch that he positively withered up, shrivelled away, and almost vanished from mortal sight, like an uprooted weed that lies wilting in the sun” (Hawthorne 238). Vanished from everyone else, Chillingworth was left to die a year later after Dimmesdale, his revenge unfinished. The clergyman’s death took all that was left of Chillingworth with it, leaving him to rot and disappear a year later. Chillingworth’s character could be an example of what revenge does to one and how it’s linked to justice. What he thought was fair and just turned out to be just as harmful for him.

Roger Chillingworth, a misunderstood character, was so deep in his revenge that he ended up destroying both Dimmesdale and himself. His story can be interpreted as what happens when justice is confused with vengeance, one is fair and the other is pure evil and pay-back. Humans confuse these two things because it is thought that it’s only fair to get back at someone who hurt them in any way, an eye per eye situation. So to speak, justice does not exist, not to everyone and it is not a fair thing either, but if justice isn’t fair, then what is? The answer is nothing, because to do what’s just people must hurt others in the way, and since justice comes with fairness then it is not fair either, so what’s left is what is seen as revenge. Is it really a bad thing to give the same to someone who harmed you? Justice is not fair a lot of the time, but if it is not fair then it’s called revenge. This is what happened to Chillingworth, doing what he thought was just destroying himself, too. He had nothing else after Dimmesdale died, because the revenge he had planned for Arthur was the only thing he had left when the minister was alive. He was left to die with nothing but himself, not even his incomplete revenge.