The Scarlet Letter: Secrets. We Have Them, We Hide Them, but Can We Live With Them? Deception is defined by Webster's Dictionary as the art of misrepresentation. Throughout the history of mankind, the use of deception to promote oneself to a higher level, or to hide one's past, has been a common occurrence. In the novel The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne , Chillingworth and Dimmesdale both use deception to hide secrets from each other, and from the rest of the town. Hester Prynne is the only one who knows the secrets that Dimmesdale and Chillingworth are hiding from the townsfolk. Hester has to control her de