Hawthorne's Dimmesdale: A Small Man Gone Wrong

Abstract

W HILE it is true that an artistic masterpiece is capable of being many different things to different men, it is patently not true that all interpretations are equally sound. Moreover, the fact that our critical judgments are of necessity subjective to some extent has opened the gate to all sorts of interpretations of the artist's intentions and, in turn, the meaning of the work of art. These statements doubtless smack of the truism; but they are worth repeating over and over, and then defending in our evaluations, or re-evaluations, of individual works.