NP Twins: Her Fearful Symmetry or Double Trouble

[alice wellintown]

In the brook beneath stood another child, -- another and the same, --
with likewise
its ray of golden light. Hester felt herself, in some
indistinct and tantalizing manner, estranged from Pearl;
as if the child, in her lonely ramble through the forest,
had strayed out of the sphere in which she and her
mother dwelt together, and was now vainly seeking to
return to it.

   There was both truth and error in the impression;
the child and mother were estranged, but through Hes-
ter's fault, not Pearl's. Since the latter rambled from
her side, another inmate had been admitted within the
circle of the mother's feelings, and so modified the
aspect of them all, that Pearl, the returning wanderer,
could not find her wonted place, and hardly knew
where she was (Hawthorne, HSG).



The mini-genre of twin literature exploits the tension between two
ways of seeing the world: familiar determinism and unfettered
individualism. All twin stories are by default tales about upbringing,
yet they all find nature and nurture pitted against each other. Her
Fearful Symmetry



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