THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 6

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• Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne

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 a 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 the calm, white, unimpassioned lustre 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 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 dishonoured bosom, to connect her parent for ever with the race and   
    descent of mortals, and to be finally a blessed soul in heaven! 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 the guiltiness to which she owed her   
    being.

  
   

Certainly, there was no physical defect. By its perfect shape, its   
    vigour, 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 theworld's first parents were driven out. The child had a   
    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 it   
    best. But little Pearl was not clad in rustic weeds. Her mother, with a morbid purpose   
    that may be better understood hereafter, had 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 splendour of Pearl's own proper   
    beauty, shining through the gorgeous robes which might have extinguished a paler   
    loveliness, that there was an absolute circle of radiance around 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 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 ceased to be herself- it would have been no longer Pearl!

  
   

This outward mutability indicated, and did not more than fairly 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 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 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 while Pearl was imbibing her soul from the spiritual world, and her   
    bodily frame from its material of earth. The mother's impassioned state had been the   
    medium through which 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 lustre, the black shadow, and the untempered light, of the intervening   
    substance. Above all, the warfare of Hester's spirit, at that epoch, was perpetuated in   
    Pearl. She could recognise 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, 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, not merely in the way of punishment for actual   
    offences, but as a wholesome regimen for the growth and promotion of all childish virtues.   
    Hester Prynne, nevertheless, the lonely mother of this one child, ran little risk of   
    erring on the side of undue severity. Mindful, however, of her own 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,   
    Hester was ultimately 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 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 labour thrown away to insist, persuade, or plead.   
    It was a look so intelligent, yet inexplicable, so perverse, sometimes so malicious, 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. 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, Hester was constrained to rush towards   
    the child- to pursue the ittle 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 tterly delusive. But Pearl's   
    laugh, when she was caught, 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- 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, unsympathising look of discontent. Not seldom, she   
    would laugh anew, and louder than before, like a thing incapable and unintelligent of   
    human sorrow. Or- 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 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 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 that was capable of social intercourse, beyond the mother's ever-ready smile and   
    nonsense-words! And then what a happiness would it have been, could Hester Prynne have   
    heard her clear, birdlike voice mingling with the uproar of other childish voices, and   
    have distinguished and unravelled her own darling's tones, amid 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, 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, 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, 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. 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 witch's anathemas in some unknown tongue.

  
   

The truth was, that the little Puritans, being of the most intolerant   
    brood that ever lived, had 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. Pearl felt the sentiment,   
    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 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 inalienable right, out of   
    Hester's heart. Mother and daughter stood 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.

  
   

At home, within and around 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 a flame wherever   
    it may be applied. The unlikeliest materials- a stick, a bunch of rags, a flower- were the   
    puppets of Pearl's 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 flinging groans and other melancholy utterances on   
    the breeze, needed little transformation to figure as Puritan elders; the ugliest weeds of   
    the garden were 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, 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   
    phantasmagoric play of the northern lights. 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 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 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 fain have hidden, but which made utterance for   
    itself, betwixt speech and a groan, "O Father in heaven- if Thou art still my Father-   
    what is this being which I have brought into the world!" And Pearl, overbearing the   
    ejaculation, or aware, through some more subtile channel, of those throbs of anguish,   
    would turn her vivid and beautiful little face upon her mother, smile with sprite-like   
    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, 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 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 of a much older   
    child. Then, gasping for breath, did Hester Prynne clutch the fatal token, instinctively   
    endeavouring 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 agonised gesture were meant only to   
    make sport for her, 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 scarlet letter; but then, again, it would come at   
    unawares, 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 fond of doing; and, suddenly-   
    for women in solitude, and with troubled hearts, are pestered 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 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 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. Hester's first motion had been to cover her bosom 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 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 of a fiend peeping out- or, whether it peeped or no, her mother 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 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 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 Pearl!" repeated the child, continuing her   
    antics.

  
   

"Thou art not my child! Thou art no Pearl of mine!" said the   
    mother, half playfully; for 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 Heavenly Father sent 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 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 sent us all into this world. He sent even me, thy   
    mother. Then, much more, thee! Or, if not, thou 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 is 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 and a shudder- the talk of the   
    neighbouring townspeople; who, seeking vainly elsewhere for the child's paternity, and   
    observing some of her old attributes, had given out that poor little Pearl was a demon   
    ffspring; such as, ever since old Catholic times, had occasionally been seer, on earth,   
    through the agency of their mother's sin, and to promote some foul 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.   
   

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1. Ebooks list page : 86
2. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 2
3. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 11
4. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 10
5. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 8
6. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 23
7. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 5
8. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 4
9. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 9
10. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 3
11. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 20
12. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 1
13. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 13
14. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 15
15. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 21
16. THE SCARLET LETTER: CHAPTER 19