An example of Hawthorne’s psychological realism, still more characteristic than this case of Freudian evasion so exactly described, is the method which he used to wring from Hester’s lover his secret. Dimmesdale’s character is a masterpiece of intuition. He is a hypocrite but only through timidity, and in all, a tragic and pathetic figure, one of those weak and incomplete beings who have not even the courage to lie. Hawthorne dealt several times, and very successfully, with the study of warped or incompletely developed personalities. Clyfford Pyncheon in “The House of the Seven Gables,” and Donatello in “The Marble Faun,” are examples, and one might add to these the young women--so numerous in his novels--emotionally distressed in the face of evil. A victim, like Hester, of social conventions, but less courageous than she, less sure of himself in passion, Dimmesdale lacks very little to become the American Tartuffe. But he is saved by Hester, who exorcises him at the end, and rescues him from repression. The minister’s open confession on the pillory is an admirable scene. It has its counterpart in “The Marble Faun” in which the candid Hilda, unable to bear any longer the secret of the crime of which she was an involuntary witness, enters a confessional at St. Peter’s and, regardless of her Puritan heritage, reveals everything to a priest. Dimmesdale’s puritanical confession on the pillory is of the same nature. It is an explosion of craving and of repressed passion. From the viewpoint of modern psychology this scene is natural and scientific.