The Forest and the Wilderness

The forest and wilderness are seen as the home or dwelling place of evil by the townspeople. It’s the unknown. Such a wilderness is compared to the moral wilderness in which Hester has been lost for years: "She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness; as vast, as intricate and shadowy, as the untamed forest" (18.2). The forest contrasts sharply with the town, or "civilization," the former representing a place where passion and emotion reign, and the latter, a place where law and religion prevail. Interestingly, Hester lives on the edge of town, on the border between wilderness and civilization. She straddles both worlds.

We associate Nature with kindness and love from the very beginning of this story, for our narrator tells us that the wild rosebush reminds all that “the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him” (1.2). As much as we want to root for Nature in this book, it isn’t always a place of comfort and peace. When Hester and Dimmesdale meet in the woods, the brook and the trees seem to listen, talk, and to have secrets of their own. After a few hours in the woods with Hester, Dimmesdale becomes incredibly mischievous and unrestrained. The woods seem to affect people in interesting ways. The creepy Chillingworth harvests his medicine and remedies from the woods and from the seashore – remedies that help keep Dimmesdale alive and, therefore, tortured.The brook that Pearl plays with while her mom and Dimmesdale chitchat is a particularly important brook. It babbles and talks, taking on an almost humanlike quality:

All these giant trees and boulders of granite seemed intent on making a mystery of the course of this small brook; fearing, perhaps, that, with its never-ceasing loquacity, it should whisper tales out of the heart of the old forest whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on the smooth surface of the pool. Continually, indeed, as it stole onward the streamlet kept up a babble, kind, quiet, soothing, but melancholy, like the voice of a young child that was spending its infancy without playfulness, and knew not how to be merry among sad acquaintances and events of somber hue. (16.23)

Like Pearl, this brook seems to be almost childlike and yet full of all of the deepest, darkest secrets. It seems to know everything, and it doesn’t seem to be a cheery, gushing brook out of a fairy tale. There’s something distinctly sad about this streamlet. Pearl tries to cheer the brook up, but it won’t be cheered. Her mom tells her that she could understand what the brook was saying if she had suffered something in her life. Pearl thinks the brook is too boring and gloomy to be a plaything, so she finds other things to occupy her while her mom chitchats with Dimmesdale.

However, when Hester calls Pearl over to her in order that she might embrace her dad (Dimmesdale), Pearl hesitates at the edge of the brook, and it forms a kind of divide between her world and that of her mothers. Pearl will not cross this divide until her mother fastens the scarlet letter once more to her chest. It’s as though the scarlet letter binds Pearl to her mother in a way that little else in the world does. She doesn’t seem to know her mother without it. The scarlet letter is a part of both of their identities and is a significant part of their relationship. Why do you think Pearl makes her mother put the scarlet letter back on again? Why is it significant that this babbling, melancholy brook provides Pearl with a perfect, almost flawless mirror reflection at the moment her mother summons her across it?