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Metaphor
Explanation and Analysis—Pedestal of Shame:
The scaffold is a metaphor at once for shame and truth-telling. In Chapter 3, when Dimmesdale tells Hester that she ought to reveal Pearl's father to the public, he uses a metaphor to call the scaffold a "pedestal of shame:"
["...B]elieve me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so than to hide a guilty heart through life.["]
Dimmesdale metaphorically suggests that the entire scaffold is constructed out of Hester's shame. She rises up before the public not just because she is standing on a physical platform, but because her shame makes her stand out like a sore thumb. Dimmesdale, knowing that he is Pearl's father, imagines that having his identity revealed publicly would instantly place him next to Hester on the pedestal of shared shame. Dimmesdale believes he is rejecting public shame in favor of private guilt, which he suffers in secret and isolation. He imagines that it would be better to be shamed publicly than to suffer alone from guilt, but he can't bear to mount his own "pedestal of shame" without being named by Hester.
Over the course of the novel, Dimmesdale comes to realize that the scaffold is not made out of shame, but rather out of the truth. In Chapter 23, Dimmesdale asks Hester to help him onto the scaffold so that he can reveal to all that he is Pearl's father:
["]Come, Hester, come! Support me up yonder scaffold!”
Dimmesdale's decision to reveal himself has come slowly, and it is driven by a desire to stand with his family (Hester and Pearl) in public. Dimmesdale has held his secret in his heart for seven years, and it has driven him deeper into isolation from his community. He still gives sermons, but they make him feel more cut off from his community because he knows that he is a hypocrite. Although it has long been his impression that he is saving himself from public shame by living in perpetual private guilt, Hester has not been consumed by shame. She has suffered social consequences for adultery, but her openness about what she has done allows her shame to evaporate. For instance, the scarlet letter comes to be devoid of so much meaning over the years. Some people come to wonder why she even wears it.
When Dimmesdale asks Hester to help him onto the scaffold, he has finally come to the realization that standing there seven years ago is what has allowed Hester to heal from the shame of adultery. He is asking her, at last, to help him onto a pedestal of truth-telling. He stood there once before with her and Pearl, under the cover of night, and he is finally ready to stand there when the whole town can see him. By the end of the novel, then, the scaffold is not a pedestal of shame so much as a pedestal where shame can be cured through public honesty.
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