A dark, mystical forest, resting on the fine line between reality and the "other" side. Shameful adulteresses meet under the cover of night, to discuss plans with their lovers. The trees wield the eyes and ears of "the black man", and terrifyingly precognizant children make startlingly accurate predictions.
If all this sounds familiar to you, you're probably really into grade-B horror movies, or you've read The Scarlet Letter.
The forest on the edge of town presents some interesting food for thought in The Scarlet Letter. Many a plot point occur within it's grasp. Hester, for whatever masochistic reason, decides to maintain residence near Boston, in a cottage just next to the forest. But the closer one gets to the forest is directly proportional to the concentration of grade-B-horror-movie level happenings: take it from Hawthorne.
"A mystic shadow of suspicion immediately attached itself to [Hester's house]. Children, too young to comprehend wherefore this woman should be shut out from the sphere of human charities, would creep nigh enough to behold her plying her needle at the cottage-window, or standing in the doorway, or labouring in her little garden, or coming forth along the pathway that led townward, and, discerning the scarlet letter on her breast, would scamper off with a strange contagious fear."
Oh my gosh, an old abandoned cottage occupied by a barren, harsh, ostracized woman, where children creep near to the windows, peek in, scream, and run away in fear? Color me terrified. If that doesn't scream grade-B horror movie, I don't know what does.
...Well, I take that back. You know what else does? Creepy clairvoyant little girls.
"‘Mother,’ said little Pearl, ‘the sunshine does not love you. It runs away and hides itself, because it is afraid of something on your bosom. Now, see! There it is, playing a good way off. Stand you here, and let me run and catch it. I am but a child. It will not flee from me—for I wear nothing on my bosom yet!’"
Yeah. If I were Hester, I'd be worried about my kid, too. Especially the way Pearl seems perpetually unfazed by how terrifying her cognizance is. Pearl is an innocent object--a small child--and as such, the realizations that she makes about her mother are unblemished by society, and any preconceived definitions that someone who isn't a three-year-old might have. Thus, when she says something that requires either superhuman level comprehension, or prior knowledge, it's really creepy.
"‘Come, my child!’ said Hester, looking about her from the spot where Pearl had stood still in the sunshine—‘we will sit down a little way within the wood, and rest ourselves.’
‘I am not aweary, mother,’ replied the little girl. ‘But you may sit down, if you will tell me a story meanwhile.’
‘A story, child!’ said Hester. ‘And about what?’
‘Oh, a story about the Black Man,’ answered Pearl, taking hold of her mother’s gown, and looking up, half earnestly, half mischievously, into her face.
‘How he haunts this forest, and carries a book with him a big, heavy book, with iron clasps; and how this ugly Black Man offers his book and an iron pen to everybody that meets him here among the trees; and they are to write their names with their own blood; and then he sets his mark on their bosoms. Didst thou ever meet the Black Man, mother?’"
"The Black Man", in this case, means Satan.
That passage just got a whole lot creepier, didn't it? Especially when Hester acknowledges that the Scarlet Letter is the Black Man's mark, and that she did indeed meet him.
All of these passages occur in the forest, just outside Boston. The forest is a place detached from Puritan society--despite being so close to Boston, the ideals change so drastically inside it. It's a mystical, surreal landscape, that overturns, and exposes the underlying flaws of Puritan society. Dimmesdale is able to meet with Hester to discuss their relationship, something that would invariably get them killed, or at least jailed, if they were to do it in public. The Puritans believe their methods of punishing Hester to be good for her, and an improvement to her character, for both the good of their community and Hester herself. But in reality, Hester hates it. It not only causes her extreme pain, but that pain is shared by Dimmesdale, because he cannot openly acknowledge their sin. Thus, they hide in the forest, alone and ashamed, to reconcile each other about the wrongs brought upon them. Pearl, however, does not realize how the forest is different from Boston. She frequently berates Dimmesdale for not publicly recognizing them as a family, because she doesn't understand that there is a clear line between the quasi-surreal forest, and the early Puritan society in Boston. Despite her spot-on psychic accuracy, she is unable to parse basic social norms.
It's interesting, how the horrifying concept of an innocent psychic child personifying the remorse we all feel for our sins, has seeped it's way even into today's media. Hawthorne was able to tap into some basal human fear that hasn't eroded despite 300 years of perpetuation. It's no secret that a hypnagogic landscape--where closed doors open, shadows move, and things change--and unnaturally aware children are staples of, well, grade-B horror movies.
In a Noble-Savage-esque way, Pearl is both an object for comparison, and the lens that we use to compare. Pearl is unabashed by society--so the observations she makes about Hester are true and pure, despite what her messages might connotate. But just as well, Pearl herself is a personified Scarlet letter--she is at the same time Hester's shame, for committing adultery, but also her love for Dimmesdale, and the result of that. It is, indeed, Pearl's namesake: she's the treasure that Hester gave everything for. And that's enough dichotomy for 4 PM on a Saturday.
