Character Analysis of Roger Chillingworth in the Scarlet Letter

Roger Chillingworth in Scarlet Letter

As his name suggests, Roger Chillingworth in Nathaniel Hawthorne's A Scarlet Letter comes across as a cold-hearted character. Early in the novel, Chillingworth is depicted as a neglectful husband, whose unfulfilled promise to join his wife in the New World led Hester to commit adultery. However, as The Scarlet Letter progresses, Roger Chillingworth becomes more of a pitiful character than an evil one. Chillingworth is physically deformed; his shoulders are unnaturally stooped. Once he realizes Hester is pregnant with another man's child, he is bent on seeking revenge. Chillingworth devotes his power and attention to the degradation of his wife and her lover, using his status as a doctor to assume a mask of respectability. However, his efforts are in vain. The town sees Chillingworth for the leech that he is. Roger Chillingworth is the cold-hearted, nefarious man that Hawthorne paints him out to be, because he favors revenge over truth, justice, and forgiveness. However, Chillingworth thinks, acts, and feels out of pain and jealousy, for he feels his wife has betrayed him. Although Roger Chillingworth is the embodiment of evil in Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter, he also evokes pity, as he has no inner strength.

Roger Chillingworth is first presented as a bad husband. Before he even appears physically on the scene, his character is determined to be at least emotionally distant and evasive. When Hester first suspects that the man clad in "a strange disarray of civilized and savage costume" is her continental husband, he shivers in disgust. His physical deformity reflects the degraded character Hester has in mind: "at the first instant of perceiving that thin visage, and the slight deformity of the figure, she pressed her infant to her bosom, with so convulsive a force that the poor babe uttered another cry of pain," (Chapter 3). Chillingworth's deformed shoulders belie his identity. Hawthorne effectively portrays Chillingworth as a monstrous character who evokes fear and trepidation in the heart of Hester and consequently, her baby Pearl. It would also seem that Chillingworth is as ashamed or secretive about his identity as Hester is, for he changed his name. Chillingworth recognizes Hester and instantly knows that Pearl is not his baby. While it is understandably that he would be jealous, it is hard to sympathize with a man who neglected his wife for so long and failed to keep a promise that he would follow her to America.

When Chillingworth visits Hester in prison, it becomes apparent that the man is bent on revenge above all else. He is not concerned with amending his wrongs or caring for his wife, regardless of her adultery. Instead of confronting the real issue of his pain and jealousy, Chillingworth turns immediately toward revenge. Chillingworth's revenge is not fleeting; his is a serious and dangerous vengeance that evokes fear and shudders in Hester Prynne. She reacts "with strongly marked apprehension into his face...not precisely a look of fear, yet full of doubt and questioning, as to what his purposes might be," (Chapter 4). Obviously Hester feels that Chillingworth is capable of true evil. She does not feel guilty about betraying him so much as she fears the consequences of his anger. His revenge, Hester knows, is the source of potential evil. As the novel progresses, Chillingworth's role in Dimmesdale's downfall becomes apparent.

Chillingworth, however, is also set up as a pitiful man, who "just emerging from the perilous wilderness, beheld the woman, in whom he hoped to find embodied the warmth and cheerfulness of home, set up as a type of sin before the people," (Chapter 9). Were it not for his consequent manipulation of both Hester and Dimmesdale, Chillingworth would be a more sympathetic character. However, he becomes the embodiment of evil. His anger becomes evil: "At first, his expression had been calm, meditative, scholar-like. Now, there was something ugly and evil in his face," (Chapter 9).