Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

71impossibility of the encounter with the Real (and the Thing). In this sense, Dimmesdale turnsaway from the mandate of the Realthe displeasing affect of shameto the impossible Thing.As for Pearl, she “had been offered to the world, these seven years past, as the livinghieroglyphic, in which was revealed the secret they so darkly sought to hideall written in thissymbolall plainly manifesthad there been a prophet or magician skilled to read the characterof flame! And Pearl was the oneness of their being” (152). She is their sinthome, the surplus oftheir jouissance, and the symptom of their sin. She is the material manifestation of the sign A.She represents also the missed encounter between colonial and antebellum America. Bercovitchposits that Pearl represents the rupture or “the broken links between child and parent, betweenone generation and another, between the New World and the Old, between colonial andantebellum America” (203). Pearl is a figure for the letter and the literal imago of theimpossibility of fixing the meaning of the letter. What happened after “the scene of the greatgrief, in which the wild infant bore a part had developed all her sympathies” (186) is that she leftthe Puritan community with her mother and never returned. Pearl, the wild child, has beennormalized and domesticated. Domesticated, the letter of Pearl, the sinthome of Hester andDimmesdale, has done its office.Chillingworth, an elderly English scholar, marries Hester Prynne and sends her to PuritanNew England. There she had an affair with Dimmesdale and found herself pregnant with adaughter, Pearl. Her refusal to name the father of her daughter led to her public shame manifestedin her wearing a visible sign of her adulterythe letter A. When Chillingworth arrives, he findsher with the baby, the fruit of her adultery and social disgrace. Wreaking revenge, he disguisedhimself as a doctor in order to know and name the un-named father. This quest for knowing the