It is a
profound lesson about himself that the Reverend learns after his forest visit withand their
child. For, while he has traversed the forest path after having decided with Hester that they
will leave the Massachusetts colony and return to England, Dimmedale has felt a sense of release
from his secret sin; this release is, however, a wicked one as he has been tempted to commit
"wild wicked things" as he encounters various members of his congregation along the
way. When he meets , she recognizes in Dimmesdale his wicked temptations and laughs at his
protestations that he has not go into the forest "to seek a potentate."
After this chance meeting with Mistress Hibbins, "the old-witch lady," the
minister wonders,
"Have I then sold myself...to the
fiend whom, if men say true, this yellow-starched and velveted old hag has chosen for her prince
and master!"
Dimmesdale concludes that he has indeed
"made a bargain very like it!" Tempted by the dream of escape, Dimmesdale has yielded
himself to "what he knew was deadly sin." His encounter with Mistriss Hibbins has,
thus, brought to light his ridicule of good and evil, his "unprovoked malignity" and
"gratuitous desire of ill."
Returning home, Dimmesdale enters the
room where he has been working on the Election Sermon. As he peruses the unfinished sermon, the
minister perceives that now, after his forest visit, he is not the same man,
But he seemed to stand apart, and eye his former self with scorful,
pitying, but half-envious curiosity. That self was gone.
Dimmesdale learns that another man has come from the forest; he is a wiser one, one
with the awareness of "hidden mysteries" which the simplicity of his former self has
not admitted. Arthur Dimmesdale fully recognizes his great sin--"A bitter kind of
knowledge that!" as he admits to himself his great hypocrisy and guilt for which he knows
he will be punished.
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