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Arthur Dimmesdale
fictional character
Arthur Dimmesdale, fictional character, a tormented Boston minister in The Scarlet Letter (1850) by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Having fathered Hester Prynne’s illegitimate child, the bachelor Dimmesdale vacillates between the hunger for cleansing confession and the Puritan zeal fueled by his secret sin.
This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.
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