The Scarlet Letter: A Romance -Section 09 - Pearl

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Dream Adio Books presents section nine of The Scarlet Letter
by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Chapter six. Pearl. We have as yet
hardly spoken of the infant, that little creature whose innocent
life had sprung, by the inscrutable decree of Providence, a
lovely and immortal flower out of the rank luxuriance of

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a guilty passion. How strange it seemed to the sad
woman as she watched the growth and the beauty that
became every day more brilliant, and the intelligence that threw
its quivering sunshine over the tiny features of this child,
her pearl. For so had Hester called her not as
a name expressive of her aspect, which had nothing of

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the calm, white, unimpassioned luster that would be indicated by
the comparison. But she named the infant pearl as being
of great price, purchased with all she had, her mother's
only treasure. How strange, indeed, Man had marked this woman's
sin by a scarlet letter, which had such potent and

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disastrous efficacy that no human sympathy could reach her, save
it were sinful like herself. God, as a direct consequence
of the sin which Man thus punished, had given her
a lovely child whose place was on that same dishonored Bosom,
to connect her parent forever with the race and descent
of mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul in heaven.

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Yet these thoughts affected hester Prynne less with hope than apprehension.
She knew that her deed had been evil. She could
have no faith therefore that its result would be good.
Day after day, she looked fearfully into the child's expanding nature,
ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity that
should correspond with a guiltiness to which she owed her being.

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Certainly there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape,
its vigor, and its natural dexterity in the use of
all its untried limbs, the infant was worthy to have
been brought forth in Eden, worthy to have been left
there to be the plaything of the angels after the
world's first parents were driven out. The child had a

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native grace, which does not invariably coexist with faultless beauty.
Its attire, however, simple, always impressed the beholder as if
it were the very garb that precisely became at best.
But little Pearl was not clad in rustic weeds. Her mother,
with a morbid purpose that maybe better understood hereafter, had

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bought the richest tissues that could be procured, and allowed
her imaginative faculty its full play in the arrangement and
decoration of the dresses which the child wore before the
public eye. So magnificent was the small figure when thus arrayed,
and such was the splendor of Pearl's own proper beauty
shining through the gorgeous robes, which might have extinguished a

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paler loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance
about her on the darksome cottage floor. And yet a
russet gown, torn and soiled with the child's rude play,
made a picture of her just as perfect. Pearl's aspect
was imbued with a spell of infinite variety in this

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one child. There were many children comprehending the full scope
between the wild flower prettiness of a peasant baby and
the pomp in little of an infant princess. Throughout all, however,
there was a trait of passion, a certain depth of hue,
which she never lost, And if in any of her
changes she had grown fainter or paler, she would have

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ceased to be herself, it would have been no longer Pearl.
This outward mutability indicated, and did not more than fair express,
the various properties of her inner life. Her nature appeared
to possess depth too, as well as variety. But or
else Hester's fears deceived her. It lacked reference and adaptation

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to the world into which she was born. The child
could not be made amenable to rules. In giving her existence,
a great law had been broken, and the result was
a being whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but
all in disorder or with an order peculiar to themselves,
amidst which the point of variety and arrangement was difficult

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or impossible to be discovered. Hester could only account for
the child's character, and even then most vaguely and imperfectly,
by recalling what she herself had been during that momentous
period when Pearl was imbibing her soul from the spiritual
world and her bodily frame from its material of earth.

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The mother's impassioned state had been the medium through which
who were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of
its moral life, and however white and clear, originally they
had taken the deep stains of crimson and gold, the
fiery luster, the black shadow, and the untempered light of
the intervening substance. Above all, the warfare of Hester's spirit

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at that epoch was perpetuated in Pearl. She could recognize
her wild, desperate, defiant mood, the flightiness of her temper,
and even some of the very cloud shapes of gloom
and despondency that had brooded in her heart. They were
now illuminated by the morning radiance of a young child's disposition,

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but later in the day of earthly existence might be
prolific of the storm and whirlwind. The discipline of the
family in those days was of a far more rigid
kind than now. The frown, the harsh rebuke, the frequent
application of the rod enjoined by scriptural authority, were used

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not merely in the way of punishment for actual offenses,
but as a wholesome regimen for the growth and promotion
of all childish virtues. Esther Prynne. Nevertheless, the loving mother
of this one child, ran little risk of erring on
the side of undue severity. Mindful, however, of her own

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errors and misfortunes, she early sought to impose a tender
but strict control over the infant immortality that was committed
to her charge, but the task was beyond her skill.
After testing both smiles and frowns, and proving that neither
mode of treatment possessed any calculable influence, Esther was ultimately

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compelled to stand aside and permit the child to be
swayed by her own impulses. Physical compulsion or restraint was effectual,
of course, while it lasted. As to any other kind
of discipline, whether addressed to her mind or heart, little
Pearl might or might not be within its reach. In

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accordance with the caprice that ruled the moment, her mother,
while Pearl was yet an infant, grew acquainted with a
certain peculiar look that warned her when it would be
labor thrown away to insist, persuade, or plead. It was
a look so intelligent yet inexplicable, so perverse, sometimes so malicious,

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but generally accompanied by a wild flow of spirits that
Hester could not help questioning at such moments whether Pearl
was a human child. She seemed rather an airy sprite, which,
after playing its fantastic sports for a little while, upon
the cottage floor would flit away with a mocking smile.

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Whenever that look appeared in her wild, bright, deeply black eyes.
It invested her with a strange remoteness and intangibility. It
was as if she were hovering in the air, and
might vanish, like a glimmering light that comes we know
not whence and goes, We know not whither beholding it,

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Hester was constrained to rush towards the child, to pursue
the little elf in the flight which she invariably began,
to snatch her to her bosom with a close pressure
and earnest kisses, not so much from overflowing love as
to assure herself that Pearl was flesh and blood and
not utterly delusive. But Pearl's laugh when she was caught,

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though full of merriment and music, made her mother more
doubtful than before. Heart Smitten at this bewildering and baffling
spell that so often came between herself and her sole treasure,
whom she had bought so dear, and who was all
her world, Hester sometimes burst into passionate tears. Then, perhaps,

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for there was no foreseeing how it might affect her,
Pearl would frown and clench her little fist and harden
her small features into a stern, unsympathizing look of discontent.
Not seldom she would laugh anew and louder than before,
like a thing incapable and unintelligent of human sorrow. Or

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but this more rarely happened. She would be convulsed with
a rage of grief, and sob out her love for
her mother in broken words, and seem intent on proving
that she had a heart by breaking it. Yet Hester
was hardly safe in confiding herself to that gusty tenderness.
It passed as suddenly as it came brooding. Over all

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these matters, the mother felt like one who has evoked
a spirit, but by some irregularity in the process of conjuration,
has failed to win the master word that should control
this new and incomprehensible intelligence. Her only real comfort was
when the child lay in the placidity of sleep. Then

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she was sure of her and tasted hours of quiet, sad,
delicious happiness, until, perhaps with that perverse expression glimmering from
beneath her opening lids, little Pearl awoke. How soon with
what strange rapidity, indeed, did Pearl arrive at an age

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that was capable of social intercourse beyond the mother's ever
ready smile and nonsense words. And then what happiness would
it have been? Could Hester Prynne have heard her clear,
bird like voice mingling with the uproar of other childish voices,
and have distinguished and unraffled her own darling's tones amid

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all the entangled outcry of a group of sportive children.
But this could never be. Pearl was a born outcast
of the infantile world, an imp of evil, emblem, and
product of sin. She had no right among christened infants.
Nothing was more remarkable than the instinct, as it seemed,

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with which the child comprehended her loneliness, the destiny that
had drawn an inviolable circle round about her, the whole
peculiarity in short of her position in respect to other children.
Never since her release from prison had Hester met the
public gaze without her. In all her walks about the town,

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Pearl too was there first as the babe in arms,
and afterwards as the little girl, small companion of her mother,
holding a forefinger with her whole grasp, and tripping along
at the rate of three or four footsteps to one
of Hester's. She saw the children of the settlement on
the grassy margin of the street, or at the domestic thresholds,

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disporting themselves in such grim fashion as the Puritanic nurture
would permit, playing at going to church perchance, or at
scourging Quakers, or taking scalps in a sham fight with
the Indians, or scaring one another with freaks of imitative witchcraft.
Pearl saw and gazed intently, but never sought to make acquaintance.

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If spoken to, she would not speak again. If the
children gathered about her, as they sometimes did, Pearl would
grow positively terrible in her puny wrath, snatching up stones
to fling at them with shrill incoherent exclamations that made
her mother tremble, because they had so much the sound
of a witches and athemas in some unknown tongue. The

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truth was that the little Puritans, being of the most
intolerant brood that ever lived, had got a vague idea
of something outlandish, unearthly, or at variance with ordinary fashions
in the mother and child, and therefore scorned them in
their hearts, and not unfrequently reviled them with their tongues.

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Pearl felt the center and requited it with the bitterest
hatred that can be supposed to rankle in a childish bosom.
These outbreaks of a fierce temper had a kind of
value and even comfort for her mother, because there was
at least an intelligible earnestness in the mood, instead of
the fitful caprice that so often thwarted her in the

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child's manifestations. It appalled her, nevertheless to discern here again
a shadowy reflection of the evil that had existed in herself.
All this enmity and passion had Pearl inherited by an
alienable right out of Hester's heart. Mother and daughter stood

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together in the same circle of seclusion from human society,
and in the nature of the child seemed to be
perpetuated those unquiet elements that had distracted Hester Prynne before
Pearl's birth, but had since begun to be soothed away
by the softening influences of maternity home. Within and around

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her mother's cottage, Pearl wanted not a wide and various
circle of acquaintance. The spell of life went forth from
her ever creative spirit and communicated itself to a thousand objects,
as a torch kindles aflame wherever it may be applied.
The unlikeliest materials, a stick, a bunch of rags, a

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flower were the puppets of Pearls witchcraft, and without undergoing
any outward change, became spiritually adapted to whatever drama occupied
the stage of her inner world. Her one baby voice
served a multitude of imaginary personages, old and young to
talk withal the pine trees, aged black and solemn and

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flinging groans, and other melancholy utterances on the breeze needed
little transformation to figure as puritan elders, the ugliest weeds
of the garden, with their children, whom Pearl smote down
and uprooted, most unmercifully. It was wonderful, the vast variety
of forms into which she threw her intellect, with no continuity, indeed,

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but darting up and dancing, always in a state of
preternatural activity, soon sinking down as if exhausted by so
rapid and feverish a tide of life, and succeeded by
other shapes of a similar wild energy. It was like
nothing so much as the phantasmogoric play of the Northern lights.

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In the mere exercise of the fancy, however, and the
sportiveness of a growing mind, there might be little more
than was observable in other children of bright faculties, except
as pearl In the dearth of human playmates was thrown
more upon the visionary throng which she created. The singularity
lay in the hostile feelings with which the child regarded

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all these offspring of her own heart and mind. She
never created a friend, but seemed always to be sowing
broadcast the dragon's teeth. Whence sprung a harvest of armed enemies,
against whom she rushed to battle. It was inexpressibly sad. Then,
what depth of sorrow to a mother who felt in

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her own heart the cause to observe in one so
young this constant recognition of an adverse world, and so
fierce a training of the energies that were to make
good her cause in the contest that must ensue. Gazing
at pearl Hester, Prynne often dropped her work upon her
knees and cried out with an agony which she would

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fain have hidden, but which made utterance Forred's self betwixt
speech and a groan, oh Father in heaven. If thou
art still my father, what is this being which I
have brought into the world? And Pearl overhearing the ejaculation,
or aware through some more subtle channel of those throbs

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of anguish, would turn her vivid and beautiful little face
upon her mother, smile with spritelike intelligence, and resume her play.
One peculiarity of the child's deportment remains yet to be told.
The very first thing which she had noticed in her
life was what not the mother's smile, responding to it

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as other babies do by that faint embryo smile of
the little mouth, remembered so doubtfully afterwards, and with such
fond discussion whether it were indeed a smile by no means.
But that first object of which Pearl seemed to become
aware was, shall we say it, the scarlet letter on

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Hester's bosom. One day, as her mother stooped over the cradle,
the infant's eyes had been caught by the glimmering of
the gold embroidery about the letter, and putting up her
little hand, she grasped at it, smiling not doubtfully, but
with a decided gleam that gave her face the look

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of a much older child. Then, gasping for breath, did
Hester pryne clutch the fatal token, instinctively endeavoring to tear
it away. So infinite was the torture inflicted by the
intelligent touch of Pearl's baby hand. Again, as if her
mother's agonized gesture were meant only to make sport for her,

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did little Pearl look into her eyes and smile. From
that epoch, except when the child was asleep, Hester had
never felt a moment's safety, not a moment's calm enjoyment.
Of her weeks, it is true, would sometimes elapse during
which Pearl's gaze might never once be fixed upon the

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scarlet letter. But then again it would come at Annoir's
like the stroke of sudden death, and always with that
peculiar smile and odd expression of the eyes. Once this freakish,
elvish cast came into the child's eyes, while Hester was
looking at her own image in them, as mothers are

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fond of doing, and suddenly, for women in solitude and
with troubled hearts, appested with unaccountable delusions, she fancied that
she beheld not her own miniature portrait, but another face
in the small black mirror of Pearl's eye. It was
a face fiend like, full of smiling malice, yet bearing

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the semblance of features that she had known full well,
though seldom with a smile and never with malice in them.
It was as if an evil spirit possessed the child
and had just then peeped forth in mockery. Many a
time afterwards had Hester been tortured, though less vividly, by

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the same illusion. In the afternoon of a certain summer's day,
after Pearl grew big enough to run about, she amused
herself with gathering handfuls of wild flowers and flinging them
one by one at her mother's bosom, dancing up and
down like a little elf whenever she hit the scarlet
letter Esther's first motion had been to cover her bosom

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with her clasped hands, But whether from pride or resignation,
or a feeling that her penance might best be wrought
out by this unutterable pain, she resisted the impulse and
sat erect, pale as death, looking sadly into little Pearl's
wild eyes. Still came the battery of flowers, almost invariably

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hitting the mark and covering the mother's breast with hurts
for which she could find no balm in this world,
nor knew how to seek it in another. At last,
her shot being all expended, the child stood still and
gazed at Hester with that little laughing image a fiend
peeping out, or whether it peeped or no, her mother

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so imagined it from the unsearchable abyss of her black eyes. Child,
What art thou cried the mother? Oh, I am your
little pearl, answered the child. But while she said it,
Pearl laughed and began to dance up and down with

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the humorsome gesticulation of a little imp whose next freak
might be to fly up the chimney. Art thou my child?
In very truth? Asked Hester. Nor did she put the
question altogether idly, but for the moment with a portion
of genuine earnestness. For such was Pearl's wonderful intelligence that

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her mother half doubted whether she were not acquainted with
the secret spell of her existence, and might not now
reveal herself. Yes, I am little pal, repeated the child.
Continue her antics. Thou art not my child? Thou art
no pearl of mine, said the mother half playfully, For

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it was often the case that a sportive impulse came
over her in the midst of her deepest suffering. Tell me, then,
what thou art and who sent thee? Hither tell me, mother,
said the child, seriously, coming up to Hester and pressing
herself close to her knees. Do thou tell me, thy

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heavenly father send thee? Answered Hester prynne, But she said
it with a hesitation that did not escape the acuteness
of the child, Whether moved only by her ordinary freakishness
or because an evil spirit prompted her. She put up
her small forefinger and touched the scarlet letter. He did

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not send me, cried she positively. I have no heavenly father. Hush, Pearl, hush,
thou must not talk, so answered the mother, suppressing a groan.
He send us all into this world, he sent even me,
thy mother, Then much more thee. Or if not thou

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strange and elfish child, whence didst thou come tell me?
Tell me, repeated Pearl, no longer seriously, but laughing and
capering about the floor. It ist thou that must tell me.
But Hester could not resolve the query. Being herself in
a dismal labyrinth of doubt, she remembered betwixt a smile

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and a shudder, the talk of the neighboring townspeople, who,
seeking vainly elsewhere for the child's paternity, and observing some
of her odd attributes, had given out that poor little
Pearl was a demon offspring, such as ever since old
Catholic times, had occasionally been seen on earth, through the
agency of their mother's sin and to promote some foul

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and wicked purpose. Luther, according to the scandal of his
Monkish enemies, was a brat of that hellish breed. Nor
was Pearl the only child to whom this inauspicious origin
was assigned among the New England Puritans. End of Section
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