Hester Pleads to Keep Pearl

Hester Prynne, the wearer of the scarlet letter, confronts the most severe crisis of her motherhood when she learns that Governor Bellingham and other leading inhabitants of Boston plan to remove her daughter Pearl from her care. The authorities, deeming Pearl a child of demon origin or at least in need of better Christian guardianship, have made the custody of the seven-year-old girl a matter of public debate. Hester, armed with nothing but her conviction and the living symbol of her sin, goes to Governor Bellingham's mansion to fight for her child.

The Confrontation at the Governor's Mansion

Hester arrives at the mansion with Pearl, who is dressed in a crimson velvet tunic embroidered with gold thread, a costume that makes her the very image of the scarlet letter endowed with life. Governor Bellingham, accompanied by the Reverend John Wilson, the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, and the physician Roger Chillingworth, confronts Hester. The Governor demands to know what she can do for the child's temporal and eternal welfare, suggesting that Pearl would be better off removed from Hester's influence. Hester responds by laying her finger on the scarlet letter, declaring, "I can teach my little Pearl what I have learned from this!" When the Governor insists that the letter is a badge of shame and the very reason for the proposed removal, Hester argues that the badge has taught her lessons that may benefit her child, even if they can profit nothing to herself.

The Examination of Pearl

Governor Bellingham orders John Wilson to examine Pearl's religious knowledge. The old minister attempts to draw Pearl between his knees, but the child, unaccustomed to any touch but her mother's, escapes through the open window and stands on the upper step. When Wilson asks who made her, Pearl, in a moment of perversity, announces that she was not made at all but plucked by her mother from the wild rose bush that grows by the prison door. This answer horrifies the Governor, who declares that a child of three years who cannot tell who made her is equally in the dark about her soul and its destiny. He concludes that no further inquiry is needed, and the decision to take Pearl away seems imminent.

Hester's Desperate Appeal

Hester, catching hold of Pearl and drawing her forcibly into her arms, confronts the old Puritan magistrate with almost fierce expression. She cries out that God gave her the child in requital of all else that had been taken from her, declaring that Pearl is both her happiness and her torture, that Pearl keeps her in life and punishes her. "Ye shall not take her! I will die first!" she shouts. When John Wilson offers the comfort that the child will be well cared for, Hester raises her voice almost to a shriek, repeating that God gave her the child and she will not give her up. Then, by a sudden impulse, she turns to the young clergyman, Arthur Dimmesdale, who had been her pastor, and cries, "Speak thou for me! Thou wast my pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me better than these men can. I will not lose the child! Speak for me!"

Dimmesdale's Intervention

The young minister, pale and with his hand over his heart, comes forward. He looks more careworn and emaciated than at the scene of Hester's public ignominy, his large dark eyes holding a world of pain. He speaks with a voice sweet, tremulous, but powerful, making the hall re-echo. He argues that there is truth in what Hester says and in the feeling that inspires her, asserting that God gave her the child and gave her an instinctive knowledge of its nature and requirements that no other mortal can possess. He insists on the awful sacredness of the relation between this mother and this child, arguing that the child, born of the father's guilt and the mother's shame, has come from the hand of God to work in many ways upon her heart. He declares that the child was meant for a blessing, for the one blessing of her life, and also for a retribution, a torture to be felt at many an unthought-of moment. He concludes that it is good for this poor sinful woman to have an infant immortality confided to her care, to be trained up by her to righteousness, and that if she brings the child to heaven, the child will also bring its parents thither. "For Hester Prynne's sake, then, and no less for the poor child's sake, let us leave them as Providence hath seen fit to place them!"

The Resolution and Its Aftermath

Governor Bellingham, persuaded by Dimmesdale's arguments, agrees to leave the matter as it stands, so long as there shall be no further scandal in the woman. He stipulates that Pearl must undergo due and stated examination in the catechism and must attend school and meeting. The young minister, after speaking, withdraws a few steps, his face partially concealed in the heavy folds of the window-curtain, his shadow tremulous with the vehemence of his appeal. Pearl, the wild and flighty little elf, steals softly towards him, takes his hand in both of hers, and lays her cheek against it in a caress so tender that her mother asks herself, "Is that my Pearl?" The minister, after a hesitation, kisses her brow. This moment of tenderness is brief; Pearl soon laughs and goes capering down the hall. The incident illustrates the young minister's argument against sundering the relation of a fallen mother to her child, and even at this early stage, the child has saved her mother from Satan's snare, as Hester later reflects when Mistress Hibbins invites her to the forest and she declines, saying she must keep watch over her little Pearl.