Pearl In The Scarlett 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

In the scarlet letter, Pearl is a symbol of an act of love and passion, an act that is also adultery, as well as her father’s mistakes. She is also what the Puritan’s cannot understand. She is the natural law unleashed, the freedom of the law. The story starts in the seventeenth century Boston in a Puritan settlement. A young Hester Prynne is led to the scaffold, along with her newborn Pearl, and the scarlet letter A on her chest. As Hester is standing on the scaffold, we learn that she is being punished for adultery and her secrecy. Shunned by the community, the two live in a small cottage on the outskirts of Boston where Pearl grows up.

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

In The Scarlet Letter, Pearl is often regarded as a symbol to that of the suffering of Hester Prynne and the shamed Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale but Pearls significance is more than just symbolizing the sin committed by her parents. She in many ways represents the innocence that the puritan belief is regressing itself to have. Hawthorne constructs Pearl as an evolving symbol for Hester and Dimmsdale and her progression as a character is shown through that of the actions set forth by these characters. Since the inception of the act of adultery by Hester and Dimmesdale, Pearl is developed by sin but she is not conformed to sin and as a result symbolizing a release of sin. She is essentially the road from childhood to adulthood, innocence to innocence lost to finally understanding and accepting the card that we are all delved with and that’s life after sin.

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.

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.

These individuals assume this because they never take the time to pay attention to how Pearl interacts with society and nature. If they would focus more on how she actually acts and not worry about connecting her to her mother, they would soon realize that she is not a devil like they believe her to be; she is a normal, wild, lively

Because she was brought into the world in an act of adultery, the sight of her constantly reminds her mother of the sins of her past, which reminds her to do right. Not only is Pearl a symbol of salvation, at least of Hester’s salvation, she is a sign of hope and the better things in life. The themes in the Scarlet Letter are strongly shown through Pearl.

Pearl is a product of sin committed by Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale, who has a large impact on those around her. Pearl’s role in the story could be seen in many ways, but Anne Marie McNamara, writer of “The Role of Pearl”, believes that her biggest role is to draw Dimmesdale to confess his sin. McNamara’s view of Pearl’s role in The Scarlet Letter is right, and it is best drawn out over her curiosity of Dimmesdale’s heart, the brookside scene, and Dimmesdale’s confession.

As a child, I used to hear the phrase 'lukso ng dugo', which is a Tagalog phrase to refer to that feeling you get when you meet someone, and by fate, turns out to be one of your own. As I was reading the Scarlet Letter, I realized that most of Pearl's actions and who she is are rooted from that. However, most who read the book only see Pearl as a living symbol and not an actual character. In the Scarlet Letter, Pearl is not just a representation of Hester and Dimmesdale’s actions, she is a child and is rather affected by the whole ordeal and had strived throughout the story to get Dimmesdale to acknowledge her as his child.

Pearl sticks out to the reader because of her abnormalities. One can begin to see the point Campbell is trying to make in the line, “Pearl is the disruptive female supplement to the phallocentric economy; she ‘disturbs the relationship to ‘reality,’

Her mother was forced to live in a world with no escape from the symbol and the stigma of it. She is seen later at the age of seven playing in a creek and she forms a letter “A” on her chest with green eel-grass. “‘I wonder if mother will ask me what it means!’ thought Pearl”(185) This quote illustrates that she was not just playing around, instead she was making an effort to make her mother acknowledge the symbol as it was once again and that she was a living part if that symbol. She later asks her mother what the scarlet letter means, relating it to Hester and to Arthur Dimmesdale, with his hand over his chest all the time. Her questioning her mother on this forced her mother to think about the effect she already knew it had on herself, and what it did to Dimmesdale and his hiding of the sin he committed and the constant sign of that Pearl

        Pearl primarily serves the role of silently urging Dimmesdale to overcome the pressures to conform to society, and to allow his guilty inner-self to emerge and receive retribution for his sins. She exists as a constant and living reminder and product of the sin Hester and Dimmesdale committed, and acknowledges the false innocence Dimmesdale tries so desperately to maintain. Her inquisition, "Why does he not wear [a scarlet letter] outside his bosom as thou dost?" (ch 16) to her mother concerning Dimmesdale is evidence of this. Pearl has no chance to conform to society because at birth she is regarded

However, there are two characters in this story that also function as symbols. Pearl and the Scarlet letter itself seem to mirror each other through the entire novel. It makes sense when you consider that neither could exist without the other as Hester herself describes in chapter eight Pearl's clothes contribute to her symbolic purpose in the novel by drawing parallels between her and the scarlet

The main focus of concern in this novel is without a doubt with the primitive mind of Pearl. The young girl is walking through life up until this point not knowing the true reasoning for the scarlet A sown on her mother’s articles of clothing. Even at a young age, Pearl shows signs of having the initiative to ask questions of and about the supernormal nature. The peculiar behavior towards the significance of the letter and the attraction towards it, makes one wonder what she truly feels about it. As a reader, we see the letter as an attribute to enhance the knowledge of one’s sins and using it as a burden on one. Seeing that Pearl often makes the shape of an A on her chest in the same place as her mother’s gives great worry towards her thoughts