Pearl Refuses to Cross the Brook

Pearl Refuses to Cross the Brook is the moment in the forest, immediately after Hester Prynne has cast off the scarlet letter and let down her hair, when her daughter Pearl—standing on the far side of a small stream—refuses to come to her mother until the embroidered token is restored to its place. The scene crystallizes Pearl's function as the living scarlet letter, a being who will not accept any alteration in the symbol that defines her mother's identity and her own origin.

The Setting and the Child's Position

After Hester and Arthur Dimmesdale have resolved to flee together, Hester removes the scarlet letter from her bosom and throws it among the withered leaves on the verge of the brook. She also takes off the cap that confines her hair, letting it fall upon her shoulders. The sunshine breaks through the forest, and for a moment she feels an exquisite relief. But when Hester calls Pearl to cross the stream and join them, the child stops at the margin and will not advance. Pearl stands on the opposite bank, gazing silently at her mother and the minister, who sit together on a mossy tree-trunk. The brook forms a pool so smooth that it reflects a perfect image of Pearl, crowned with wild flowers, and this reflection seems to communicate a shadowy, intangible quality to the child herself. Hester feels estranged from Pearl, as if the child has strayed out of the sphere in which mother and daughter once dwelt together.

Pearl's Demand and the Scarlet Letter

Pearl stretches out her hand with her small forefinger extended and points unmistakably toward her mother's breast. She stamps her foot with an imperious look and gesture, and when Hester beckons and smiles, the child bursts into a fit of passion, shrieking and gesticulating violently. The woods reverberate with her cries. Hester realizes what ails the child: Pearl misses something that she has always seen her mother wear. The minister, unnerved, begs Hester to pacify the child. Hester then tells Pearl to look down at her feet, where the scarlet letter lies close to the margin of the stream, its gold embroidery reflected in the water. She asks Pearl to bring it to her, but Pearl answers, "Come thou and take it up!" Hester acknowledges to the minister that the child is right. She advances to the brook, takes up the scarlet letter, and fastens it again into her bosom. As she does so, a sense of inevitable doom settles upon her; her beauty and warmth depart like fading sunshine, and a gray shadow falls across her.

The Child's Recognition and the Kiss

Once the scarlet letter is back in place, Hester gathers up her hair and confines it beneath her cap. She then extends her hand to Pearl and asks, "Dost thou know thy mother now, child?" Pearl answers, "Yes; now I will!" and bounds across the brook, clasping Hester in her arms. She kisses her mother's brow and both cheeks, but then, by a kind of necessity, she also kisses the scarlet letter itself. Hester reproaches her, saying, "When thou hast shown me a little love, thou mockest me!" Pearl then asks why the minister sits yonder, and whether he will go back with them hand in hand into the town. Hester explains that he will join them in days to come, but Pearl remains skeptical. When the minister bends forward to kiss her brow, Pearl breaks away, runs to the brook, stoops over it, and bathes her forehead until the unwelcome kiss is washed off and diffused through the gliding water. She then stands apart, silently watching the two adults as they make their arrangements.

The Symbolic Significance

Pearl's refusal to cross the brook until the scarlet letter is restored enforces the moral logic that has governed her entire existence. From her earliest infancy, the first object she noticed was the scarlet letter on her mother's bosom, and she has always been described as the scarlet letter endowed with life—the living hieroglyphic that reveals the secret union of her parents. The brook itself becomes a boundary between two worlds: the forest dell where Hester and Dimmesdale dream of a new life, and the realm of truth where Pearl insists that the symbol of sin cannot be discarded. By compelling her mother to resume the letter, Pearl acts as the agent of an inexorable moral order, ensuring that Hester cannot escape her identity through a mere act of will. The scene thus prefigures the novel's conclusion, where the scarlet letter is never finally removed from Hester's breast, and where the truth of the past must be acknowledged before any reconciliation can occur.