Pearl is described to be elf, fey, and immorality, which ascribes a alone shadow of visible radiation and shadow to her ageless enigma and danger. She is wild, rebellious, and unmanageable, whom God is ne’er likely to care for a visit. She is far from the reader ‘s common apprehension. Since The Scarlet Letter is permeated with a strong Puritan colour, many critics interpret pearl as a merchandise of wickedness from a symbolic position. Or because of Nathaniel Hawthorn ‘s unhappy childhood and tense inner household relationships, some people interweaves guiltless pearl with other supporters ‘ mental universe utilizing the libido mechanism or Oedipus complex in a psycho-analytical manner. However this sophisticated and hard elf-child has non been exposed any small, she is still some unknown liquors concealing profoundly under the defending clock.

Harmonizing to the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, “ God is dead ” , accordingly, this will take to nihilism. If the universe is nihilistic, so everything is permitted, and people attain the power to exert a strong free will. With a strong free will, human can transform into superhuman who has all the possibility to accomplish everything. As a superhuman, he is non confined to human morality, and he can non be defeated destiny. In Hawthorn ‘s Scarlet Letter, is pearl a demigod with a strong free will, or as others, she is besides bound by destiny? With the theory of Nietzsche and nihilism, this paper will travel into the analysis of pearl and seek to flick off the dust on pearl and give her a clear individuality.

1. Pearl without Religious Concept

1.1 Puritan Background

With the high idealism of spiritual freedom, 102 Puritan pilgrims stepped onto the Mayflower in 1620 to get away the old universe. After 65 yearss ‘ difficult battle against the worst experience of ocean ocean trip, the boat landed on the new continent with a ne’er so bright a hereafter for them. They held the strong belief of Manifest Destiny, and pattern their sermon sing themselves on the behalf of the at hand God. They are devoted to construct the new colonial universe a pure puritan never-land.

a’‰ A individual without God must be a individual without spiritual construct

In the Bible, God is the Godhead of the universe. He is our all-powerful Godhead, and we can ne’er excel the power of the control set by God. In the book, God teaches his boies of right, incorrect, forfeit, justness, love, wickedness, repentance, etc, which gives the really foundation of the western civilization and model their life.

In Scarlet Letter, in the governor ‘s hall, Governor Bellingham, Mr. Wilson, Dimmesdale and Chillingworth saw small pearl for the first clip.

‘Ay, so! ‘ cried good old Mr. Wilson. aˆ¦Art thou a Christian child-ha? Dost know thy catechism? Or art thou one of those blue hob or faeries whom we thought to hold left behind us, with other relics of Papistry, in gay old England? ‘

‘I am female parent ‘s kid, ‘ answered the vermilion vision, ‘and my name is Pearl! ‘ 1

This is Pearl ‘s first visual aspect in the novel, and she accompanies her female parent to the governor ‘s hall. Mr. Wilson is so surprised with Pearl that he ca n’t assist oppugning the really individuality and beginning of this “ small bird of ruddy feather ” . The good people suppose that small pearl has a “ demon beginning ” . Pearl is really beautiful in visual aspect of a kid, besides, her female parent gives her full drama of her imaginativeness and passion to do pear a attire “ in a ruby velvet adventitia of a curious cut, copiously embroidered in phantasies and flourishes of gold yarn. ” ( Scarlet Letter, chapter a…¦ ) . When people question pearl ‘s devil beginning and elf-like looking, these good people merely enforce their ain spiritual opinion on this guiltless kid. Conversely, Pearl wholly has non any thought of these critical shockable eyes and these captive heads. She introduced herself that she is mother ‘s kid biologically and she has a name of Pearl. Here pearl bears no spiritual load in her bosom, so spiritual morality has no power on her interior religious universe. Now comes a bold decision: this scene is a concealed confrontation between Puritanism and a new construct, more specifically nihilism or godlessness.

2. Free will vs Fate

Does Pearl hold a strong free will? Can pearl exercising her free will? Is Pearl restricted by destiny?

Before analyzing these uncertainties, a clear knowledge of free will and destine is really of import. Free will mention here is a restricted self-control, and it ‘s a restricted one alternatively of an infinite one. Free will bears a strong duty, and it demands people to believe in themselves. There are no Gods or any other agent who determine our character, and we are responsible for cultivating our ain characters.

Fatalism is the thesis that what happens must go on. Fatalism believes that free will is impossible, actions are free, but however goes to an inevitable terminal. Determinism holds that every event or province of personal businesss, including every human determination and action, is the inevitable and necessary effect of anterior personal businesss. Fate may mention to destiny, an inevitable class of events. Fate here is more Determinism than Fatalism.

2.1. A small powerless miss

Dimmesdale pours out such acrimonious fighting words to Hester:

“ I am powerless to travel. Wretched and iniquitous as I am, I have had no other thought than to drag on my earthly being in the domain where Providence hath placed meaˆ¦ ” 2

When he shed all his despairing feelings on the word “ powerless ” , we common readers catch so heavy a failing in his personality. He blames this impotence on Providence, and he excuses destiny for all his vacillation and un-action. There is litter sincereness in his dissembler tone.

But when focal point comes to Pearl, “ powerless ” is certain to be a justifiable word for her. Hester goes to Governor ‘s hall to plead for a permission of rise uping her ain kid. Even Pearl is described to be “ fiend-like ” , “ dauntless ” , “ wild and flyaway small hob ” , she has no right to command her ain life, nor does she has the power to contend against this unfairness. This feeling of despair and powerless is unconquerable, and it keeps stalking human existences through life, as it shoulders the intolerable load of destiny.

2.2. Un-escapable Destiny

Pearl as a kid is powerless, so what if she grows up and can makes her ain determinations, can she get away destiny all in all? At the terminal of the narrative, it writes

“ in no long clip after the doctor ‘s decease, the wearer of the vermilion missive disappeared, and Pearl along with her. “ 3

Pearl foliages and wantonnesss her past with her female parent in order to get a new life. In so making, they both eventually can go forth behind their iniquitous life, and project away the enchantment of destiny upon themselves. In such a courageous action, their free will force them frontward, and their independency against destiny is so close around their gimmick.

However, the item of Chillingworth ‘s last will can non be overlooked in the treatment here.

“ At old Roger Chillingworth ‘s deceaseaˆ¦ he bequeathed a really considerable sum of belongings, both here and in England to small Pearl, the girl of Hester Prynneaˆ¦

So Pearl-the elf child-the devil progeny, as some people up to that era persisted in sing her-became the richest inheritress of her twenty-four hours in the New World. “ 4

What ‘s the importance of Chillingworth ‘s bequeathment to Pearl? It gives Pearl the stuff foundation to construct a new life outside the “ New World ” . Without this foundation, a new life would be a palace in the air. But this foundation is non achieved by any free will by Pear, and it is old Chillingworth ‘s will to give. Thus this bequeathment becomes a destiny left on Pearl.

Friedrich Nietzsche proposes strong self-control ( free will ) , therefore there comes Hitler ; Arthur Schopenhauer speaks loud for the bounds of free will, merely ensuing in the pessimism. If they are excessively utmost, there should be a balance between destiny and free will. However, in the above analysis of Pearl, we barely see any free will in her monumental turn-point, she is besides enslaved by the powerful destiny, and this helps us to turn up her as a merchandise of destiny.

3. Representation and Kernel

The ground why pearl is misunderstood to be evil, touched, and elf, is mostly prevarications on her unnatural intuition.

Pearl asks her female parent what the vermilion missive means, why she wears the A, and why curate Dimmesdale keeps his manus over his bosom. These inter-connecting inquiries raised by a-three-year old miss are eccentric, and the inquiries themselves are beyond her ability to compose if she is merely a normal small kid. Pearl tells Hester that Chillingworth has a use on Dimmesdale, and she is intuitively sensitive. On the scene of Dimmesdale ‘s Virgil, Pearl laughs three times without manifest grounds, and she is haunted and unsafe. There are so many illustrations that can be quoted to exemplify Pear ‘s abnormalcy, but all the truth lies in her words. She tells truth from false.

The avidity and nuance, I should even state cunning, with which the job of ‘the existent and the evident universe ‘ is dealt with at present throughout Europe, furnishes nutrient for idea and attending ; and he who hears merely a ‘Will to Truth ‘ in the background, and nil else, can non surely self-praise of the sharpest ears. In rare and stray instances, it may truly hold happened that such a Will to Truth-a certain extravagant and adventuresome gutsiness, a metaphysician ‘s aspiration of the forlorn hope-has participated therein: that which in the terminal ever prefers a smattering of ‘certainty ‘ to a whole cartload of beautiful possibilities ; there may even be puritanical fiends of scruples, who prefer to set their last trust in a certain nil, instead than in an unsure something.5

Nietzsche, in developing “ Biass of Philosophers ” , tells that people are suffocated themselves in their ain biass in the procedure of seeking for the existent universe. Pearl is the lone 1 in the novel who tells the kernel from the representation, because she is the lone guiltless being who is non prejudiced in any criterion in the whole narrative.

Since Adam and Eve eat the forbidden apple, wickedness comes away. In Puritan ‘s divinity, these congenital desires represent wickedness, and people should atone, forfeit and maintain Stoic. In Scarlet Letter, before the prison door, when Hester is traveling to traverse the market topographic point, adult females in the crowd chitchat here and at that place and squash their hatred and disgust words toward her disgraceful and iniquitous personal businesss. For these dish the dirting adult females, does n’t their superego take control of their Idaho, and writhe their self-importance to prejudice? The more superego repress Idaho, the more Idaho will contend back. The stronger these adult females criticize Hester ‘s wickedness, the stronger their ain passion for wickedness explosion out of their hatred words. They cheat themselves by adorning a contrary look.

For pearl, she has a position from nowhere which is similar to the subjective power. The Existentialists believe that the universe is a nil and in nil can people construct something. And pearl physique truth from her nihilistic universe. In existent life, people are afraid of a nihilistic universe, because a nihilistic universe is like the most crude universe when Adam and Eve were cast into a helpless and entire unusual topographic point. In get awaying this province, people learn to keep on to some common thing ( faith, common involvement, common bias, etc. ) which bind people together and portion a sense of belonging. While in the average clip, they besides are restricted by these common things. There is a scene in Scarlet Letter when pearl plays with herself by the river bank, she is so quiet and content with solitariness and the province of nil. This is rather the same as the Buddhism ‘s instruction in The Diamond Sutra that the universe is empty without kernel and seeing everything can be attained from egolessness and void. In explicating this, we can borrow the construct of model. A individual lives in a model like a prison which shapes a alone life style. He/She think in this model and eat in this model. Besides they ‘ve been changed by this model. However Pearl is born to be a entire space and she does n’t alter until the enchantment is let travel. She has non a model and she is free from bias of all sorts. She is what the Buddha calls true Bodhisattvas.

By interrupting Pearl ‘s cryptic behaviour and words, a existent Pearl will come before us and expose herself as an un-prejudiced human being who is besides confined by destiny.