Compare And Contrast Pearl And Chillingworth

In The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hester Prynne's first interaction with Roger Chillingworth in Massachusetts occurs whilst she standing on the platform of ignominy. Chillingworth, her husband, as if “dropping down, as it were, out of the sky, or starting from the nether earth,” suddenly appeared after a lengthy disappearance, having sent his wife to the Bay Colony ahead of himself. Ironically, Chillingworth appears at the exact moment when Hester is carrying Pearl in her arms, baring her to the Colony. As the reader is introduced to Pearl and Chillingworth, it seems that Pearl’s character traits derive little foundation from her genetic father, but are rather similar to Hester’s perception of Chillingworth. Hester, cognizant or

not, intertwines Roger Chillingworth's physical, spiritual and personal characteristics, and uniquely positions them onto her daughter, Pearl. Almost resembling the therapeutic transference from one and displaced onto the other. Hester's assessments of love, scorn, anger, nature, and eternal father all seem to get manifested through her astute descriptions of Roger Chillingworth and Pearl. In many instances, these two characters, despite their polarized ages, positions in Hester's life and in society, and serving diverging roles in the story, are used as foils, to highlight one another's qualities. This essay will expose these comparisons, and the utility that Roger and Pearl serve.
Chillingworth is frequently depicted as “misshapen from birth-hour,” with “one shoulder lower than the other.” This physical epithet of psychosomatic degradation is a manifestation of his mental unconscious, necessitating his intellectual prowess to “veil physical deformity.” “Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of [the intellectual thoughts]."
Hester is aware of the overt ailments of her husband and relishes her daughter’s “perfect shape,” “vigor,” and “natural dexterity.” In the prison, Hester literally embraces her “rich and luxuriant beauty,” holding her away from Chillingworth, afraid that given the chance, Pearl’s “eyes possessing intensity both of depth and glow” would be corrupted by “the old man's soul [which was] on fire, and kept on smoldering duskily within his breast." For this same reason, Hester dresses Pearl in a manner diametric to Chillingworth.

Chillingworth first appeared in a peculiar mixture of “civilized and savage costume,” continuing to cover up his “well stricken” body with “heterogeneous garb.” Utterly contrasting is the radiant pearl. Housed within the fear that her daughter will emulate her mother’s husband, Hester commands Pearl through “gorgeous robes." Dressed in a drab attire herself, Hester expresses the love which Chillingworth repressed and her newfound freedom through “the child’s fanciful attire.” Until now, Hester has previously viewed love through a lense of constraint, but in this desire to clothe Pearl in the finest, Hester has found a proxy in which love can be freely

expressed.
Hester’s emphasis of Pearl’s features, by means of her clothing, to spite Chillingworth does not alleviate her concern over the similarity of their behavior. Both of their first interactions with Hester focus on negating the ephemerality of the scarlet letter embroidered on her dress. In the prison, Chillingworth, in his agonizing mannerism, “laid his long fore-finger on the scarlet letter, which forthwith seemed to scorch into Hester’s breast.” This Michaelangelo’s Creation of Adam-esque encounter formulates that Pearl is created ironically, almost cursedly, in the image of Chillingworth; that through the act which begot the scarlet “A,” Pearl is forever condemned to be an internal embodiment of Chillingworth, despite belonging genetically to Dimmesdale and appearing superficially innocent. These manifestations of Chillingworth in Pearl recur throughout the novel, most clearly in her obsession with interacting with the “A.” Even from the crib, Pearl put “up her little hand [and] grasped at it, smiling.” Just as Chillingworth reminds Hester of her iniquity given the opportunity, Pearl seeks to bring the letter to the forefront of their relationship, going as far as forcing her mother to bear the symbol of her sin when she finally removes it in the forest. Surprisingly, even in their inaction, Pearl bears a resemblance to her should be father; Pearl in her “placidity of sleep” and Chillingworth in his “profound and dewy slumber.” The similarities in Pearl’s and Chillingworth’s actions lead Hester to insist on their not being separated at Bellingworth’s mansion; Pearl does not serve as a indication of Hester’s sin through Dimmesdale's genetics and as a fruit of sin, rather by a persistent presence of her husband; The crucial moment where she had forgotten Chillingworth causes her to forever retain a visual sign. Hester unconsciously chooses for her love of Dimmesdale to be eternally joined by an anger of abandoning her husband and Puritan ways, despite her conscious wish to elope.
Growing up in isolation from society, Pearl was "born an outcast, and “never created a friend." Chillingworth, similarly “isolated from human interests,” echoes Pearl’s “dearth of human playmates." The results of this environment are Pearl’s intellect and uncanny perceptions of truth which are Hester’s self-attributed conscious reminders.

Hester perceives Pearl to “look so intelligent,” a remnant of her past involvement in Chillingworth’s “remarkable intelligence.” His “native sagacity” allows him not only to excel in studying medicine and alchemy, but in his ability to read a human soul as well. In contrast to this, Pearl’s perception of the truth stems from a born intuition rather than conscious reasoning. Being a child, she has the ability to judge actions sans prior moral standards, basing her opinions solely on the truth shown to

her.
Pearl’s acute ability to recognize guilt and shame in a manner so pure shapes Hester’s perception of nature and truth in a way unlike Chillingworth. Hester views Pearls ‘diabolical’ actions as accentuating her meaningful questions, being able to only understand what is good with reference to what is bad. Although Hester is disenchanted by Pearl’s throwing a prickly burr at Dimmesdale, chasing other children, pelting birds with pebbles and talking gibberish to Dimmesdale, she comprehends that Pearl’s being “incapable and unintelligent of human sorrow” allows her to constructively formulate an uninvolved third party opinion. Pearl, acting as a moral compass of sorts, compels her to put the “A” back on, to act regarding Dimmesdale as a possible father and to eventually change the “A” to represent Hesters’ “A”bleness.
The dialectic existence of Pearl and Chillingworth’s ‘diabolicalness’ is a microcosm of Hester’s transposition of Chillingworth on Pearl; how Hester and Chillingworth’s relationship directly changed the nature of Hester and Pearl’s relationship, in addition to Pearl herself. Pearl’s ‘diabolical’ actions are extremely comparable to Chillingworth’s torture of the Hester, though oppositely so. Chillingworth essentially nullifies any chances of eloping, possible aids in killing Dimmesdale and attempts to take Pearl away from Hester’s care. Hester’s transfusion of this diabolic characteristic from Chillingworth to Pearl allows her to evolve from becoming an object of scorn to an object of purity. Whilst Pearl is cruel to be kind, Chillingworth is cruel for the sake of cruelty. Chillingworth seeks destruction where Pearl represents repentance. Hester effectively utilizes all of Chillingworth’s qualities, through the means of Pearl, to consciously and subconsciously understand the world around her and formulate her relationship and position within the Massachusetts Bay Colony.