The Scarlet Letter: Chapter 11
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Chapter questions
- Question 1 · Recall
What does Dimmesdale do to punish himself in private?
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He whips himself with a bloody scourge, fasts, and keeps long vigils through the night.Reference: Chapter 11, Dimmesdale's self-punishment
- Question 2 · Recall
Who appears in one of Dimmesdale's night visions, and where does she point?
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Hester appears leading Pearl. Hester points first at the letter on her own breast and then at his.Reference: Chapter 11, the night visions
- Question 3 · Recall
What does Dimmesdale do at the end of the chapter?
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He dresses as carefully as for public worship and quietly goes down the stairs, opens the door and goes out.Reference: Chapter 11, the last paragraph
- Question 4 · Why
Why is Chillingworth about as satisfied with how things stand as with his original plan?
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Things have turned out so that he has close access to the minister's inner thoughts, which the narrator credits to Providence, so he can work on him directly.Reference: Chapter 11, Chillingworth's plan
- Question 5 · Why
Why do his congregation take Dimmesdale's confessions as signs of holiness?
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His confessions are so veiled that they hear them as evidence of unusual goodness rather than of wrongdoing.Reference: Chapter 11, Dimmesdale in the pulpit
Chapter summary
The narrator tells this chapter. The physician Roger Chillingworth had planned a revenge on Arthur Dimmesdale built on drawing out the minister's deepest guilt. The narrator says he is hardly, if at all, less satisfied with what Providence has put in his hands instead: close access to Dimmesdale's inner thoughts. Dimmesdale feels a dread and a revulsion toward his physician that he cannot explain, yet he stays friendly with him.
Meanwhile the congregation reveres him. His suffering seems to deepen his sermons, and young women of his church grow pale around him. He longs to confess from the pulpit and tries to, but his words are so veiled that listeners hear holiness. In private he whips himself with a scourge, fasts and keeps vigils, and at night he sees visions, including one of Hester leading Pearl and pointing first at her own letter and then at his breast. The narrator says only his inner anguish is real in his false life. Late one night, an inspiration offers him a moment of peace, and he dresses with care and slips out of the house.
Come back in a few days and try these 5 again before you open the answers.
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