Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Dimmesdale’s Personality in The Scarlet Letter

Abstract

Nathaniel Hawthorne is generally acknowledged as the pioneer of psychological novel and romantic novel in the American literature history. He was adept at applying psychological description and wonderful imagination to lead the readers into the realistic and virtual world. His lengthy masterpiece The Scarlet Letter leaves readers deep impression for its pathetic and tragic plot, supernatural description of nature, rendering of the mysterious atmosphere as well as meticulous psychological description, of which the most poignant part is the description of the minister Dimmesdale’s psychological activities. Studies on The Scarlet Letter mainly focus on the theme of the novel from the social background and story structure, analysis of the symbolic meaning of the letter “A” in the perspective of symbolism, Hester Prynne’s feminist consciousness and characteristics of the heroine. And there also are scholars analyzing women’s pursuit for love and marriage under the background of that time. This thesis aims to interpret the hero Dimmesdale’s complex and contradictory personality from the angle of the Freudian Psychoanalytical approach, trying to explore the internal reasons for his hiding guilt and being the prey for religion.

The thesis consists of three parts. Part one briefly introduces the novel The Scarlet Letter and the author Nathaniel Hawthorne, his life and writing style. Part two deals with Freudian Psychoanalytical approach, including defense mechanism and the Freud’s structural model of psyche. Part three focuses on psychoanalytic interpretation of Dimmesdale’s personality and finally the thesis gets to the conclusion that according to Freud’s Psychoanalytical approach, Dimmesdale’s tragedy was caused by his failure to coordinate the relationship between id, ego and superego.

Key Words: The Scarlet Letter; Freudian psychoanalytical approach; Dimmesdale; personality