Pearl Anent Nature In The Scarlet Letter

In the novel, The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne characterizes Pearl with contrasting personalities and roles she plays in Hester’s life. Pearl’s conflicting personality components, innocence and defiance, both derive from her isolation from society, which transpired because of her mother’s sin. Pearl represents the conflict between everything good and dark, which reflects in the role she plays in Hester’s life, as the physical embodiment of the A. While Pearl serves as a savior to Hester, representing possible redemption, she is also Hester’s tormentor, a constant reminder of her sin, and the consequences of disobeying her Puritan nature and religion. Hawthorne’s intent is established in the novel through Pearl’s attachment to the A, the mirror

The brook represents a wall. Pearl exclaims that she will not cross the brook because Hester is not wearing her letter. Pearl is not recognizing her mother without the letter. This makes Pearl not cross the brook. As soon as Hester puts the letter back on, Pearl crosses the brook. To Dimmesdale the brook becomes a boundary between two worlds, a world of peace and freedom and a world of lies and guilt. Across the brook lies freedom from his sin. The brook represents Pearl. The brook has an unknown source, and Pearl also has an unknown source. This means that most people do not know where the brook or Pearl came from. Another similarity between the two is that the brook travels through a dark and often evil forest, yet it never stops traveling. This is true for Pearl also for throughout her whole life she has been unwillingly placed into the evil and sorrow that her mother deals with and just as the brook, she keeps on going.

Settings and characters in the book are described using allusion and personification; this creates imagery which helps the reader understand what is happening in the book. The main character, Lily Owens, describes her version of Mother Nature, “She[Mother Nature] looked like Eleanor Roosevelt.”.

    In Nathaniel Hawthorne's work, The Scarlet Letter, nature plays a very symbolic role. Throughout the book, nature is incorporated into the story line. One example of this is with the character of Pearl. Pearl is very different than all the other characters due to her special relationship with Nature. Hawthorne personifies Nature as sympathetic towards sins against the puritan way of life. Hester's sin causes Nature to accept Pearl.

From her initial introduction to the reader as the “yonder babe, (…) of some three or four months old”, Pearl represents the beauty of the truth (54). As she struggles to find answers about her mother’s scarlet A while simultaneously growing up, Pearl identifies as an innocent character, despite her creation. It is frequently noted that she looks similar to the scarlet letter that her mother so reluctantly bears, with her “bright complexion [and] eyes possessing intensity both of depth and glow, and hair already of a deep, glossy brown” (76). Her similar appearance to the scarlet letter furthers her permanent connection to the letter. Additionally, it highlights the notion that her mother will likely never be able to look at her without reminiscing upon her sin. As Pearl develops, her fire-like actions and dark appearance further molds her into the fleshly expression of Hester’s adultery. Furthermore, Hawthorne ensures to characterize Pearl throughout the novel as a friend to the sunlight, a friend to the truth. As she begins to pick determine that Dimmesdale is her father, the sunlight welcomes her. This is because she is the only innocent character who is not afraid to step into the sun’s rays. Pearl recognizes the light’s love for her and audibly notes, “the

“Imagination is the key ingredient to overcoming fear and doubt.” Throughout “The Scarlet Letter”, Nathaniel Hawthorne tends to emphasize the intensity of Pearl’s imagination by describing the way Pearl saw the world around her and by talking about the way the people who noticed her vivid imagination, referred to her as a “witch-child”. In “The Scarlet Letter”, Pearl grows up secluded from the rest of the children in the New World. She learns to entertain herself and keep herself company by using her imagination. This is one big example of Pearl overcoming the hardships that she grew up with. As the book progresses, and as Pearl gets older, we see her overcome more hardships she is challenged with to create a strong, independent young girl. The poem provided written by Emily Dickinson comes to show how overcoming Pearl’s hardships led her to blossom from a strong, independent young girl, into an even stronger, successful woman.

Every pearl begins as a dangerous and harsh intrusion into life. A piece of dirt is inserted into an oyster’s environment where it doesn’t belong. The oyster can either respond by dying, or by accepting and surrounding the sand with care. With continual care, the oyster turns the small speck of dirt into a beautiful pearl. The Scarlet Letter is a story of how one woman takes a scandalous event and rather than allowing the event to define her, she, by constant kindness, turns her life and her child into something of worth. The theme I am focusing on in The Scarlet Letter is the person and the concept which embodies courage and redemption.

The thoughts and emotions that occur in connection with water are triggered by the lake, and they help Ruth choose transience over any other form of existence. When water floods Fingerbone, the boundaries are overrun, exposing the impermanence of the physical world, and the world’s own natural push towards transience. Water shifts the margins, warning us that the visible world only shows us part of the whole--or perhaps even a mere reflection of a false reality. After the fantastic train wreck in which Ruth’s grandfather perished, the lake sealed itself over in ice, changing boundaries again, while it concealed, like a secret, the last traces of the victims with the illusion of its calm surface. The lake, a source of beauty and darkness, life and death, is “the accumulated past, which vanishes but does not vanish, which perishes and remains” (172). Water carries the symbolic possibility for rebirth– the flood causes the graves in the town cemetery to sink, “so that they looked a little like…empty bellies," suggesting that the dead were born into the receding waters (62). As water and death are so pre-eminent in Sylvie’s consciousness, in dream, she teaches Ruth to dance underwater, to live a life of transience to be

Hester's daughter, Pearl, functions primarily as a symbol. She is quite young during most of the events of this novel—when Dimmesdale dies she is only seven years old—and her real importance lies in her ability to provoke the adult characters in the book. She asks them pointed questions and draws their attention, and the reader's, to the denied or overlooked truths of the adult world. In general, children in The Scarlet Letter are portrayed as more perceptive and more honest than adults, and Pearl is the most perceptive of them all.

Whenever Pearl is outdoors, particularly in the wilderness, there seems to be a conscious desire on her part to merge with nature. Instead of being the representation of sin like she is in town, Pearl is the representation of freedom in the forest.

The only way to really make someone a human is to accept them despite their perceived faults. In the Scarlet Letter, Pearl plays one of the most important roles in developing the book’s moral themes. Throughout the story Pearl becomes her own powerful being, as well as a key symbol. Because of her mother’s sin, Pearl is shunned by society.

This permanent marking is like a voice that never stops screaming into my already beaten ears. I feel utterly alone, except for this, the scarlet letter on my bosom. And ofcourse, the living proof of my crime, my little Pearl, who is also a daily reminder of my misdoings. She has been nagging me to tell her the meaning of my “A”, but deep down I am unable to tell her the truth. For she is too young to know the real significance of my letter. I lamely told her I wear it for the sake of the gold thread, but I know she can read right through my transparent lies. I often wonder if my little Pearl knows the truth, she even pointed out Dimmesdale’s frequent habit of grabbing his heart. As I continue to overthink this situation, I start to wonder

Pearl is a symbol of love and passion for Hester. To start off, when Hester is first coming out of the jail she doesn't try to hide, ".., wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another..," (46). This starts off showing that Pearl is a result her her sin, but she does not hide her, or try to cover up what had defined her life thus far. Pearl reminds Hester of her passion and how Pearl came into this world. Plus, when Hester and Pearl are on their way to the govenor's hall, it address Pearl's appearance, "..; arraying her in a crimson velvet tunic, of a peculiar cut, abundantly embroidered with fantasies and flourishes of gold thread," (84).

For this essay I would like to propose how big of a part Pearl plays in Hawthorne’s work of the Scarlet Letter. How the importance of her character brings the whole story together. Reading the Scarlet Letter we seem to get side tract on Hester and Dimmesdale’s tangled up relationship or even Chillingworth’s twisted character of trying to ruin Dimmesdale life and get back at Hester, while Pearl is left acting out trying to fight for attention to be noticed. Hester is perceived to be such a strong character, which she is, but I believe with the underling of pearl making her strong.

The novel “The Scarlet Letter” by Nathaniel Hawthorne was published in the 1850s, and takes place in the Boston, Massachusetts area during the 17th Century when Puritans were the main population. Hester Prynne, is accused of committing adultery and is forced to wear a scarlet A against her chest and care for Pearl, Her daughter who is born from the tryst. In the beginning of the novel, both Pearl and the Letter are introduced at the same time aspressed against Hester’s chest. Though she chooses to hold the child close to her and the Letter is thrust upon her, Hawthorne shows the reader how determined she is to take these symbols of sin and integrate them into her life and create her own identity.