Scarlet Letter And Self Reliance

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

Thomas Carlyle, a famous Scottish philosopher known for his poetry, and morality once said, “It is through symbols that man consciously or unconsciously lives, works and has beings.” This quote relates to Pearl in The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne because of her ability to make her own moral choices apart from those of her mother, or the townspeople. Throughout the novel, the letter A, the rose, and nature all symbolize Pearl and her morality. To begin, the letter A is presumably a symbol for Pearl. Pearl is an uncontrollable little girl who has behavioral issues and acts similar to a demon child.

The Scarlet Letter Introduction The Scarlet Letter is a classic tale of sin, punishment, and revenge. It was written in 1850 by the famous American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. It documents the lives of three tragic characters, each of whom suffer greatly because of his or her sins. Shot Plot The story begins with Hester Prynne, a resident of a small Puritan community, being led from the town jailhouse to a public scaffold where she must stand for three hours as punishment for adultery. She must also wear a scarlet A on her dress for the rest of her life as part of her punishment. As she is led to the scaffold, many of the women in the crowd complain that

Nelson Mandela once said, “There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” In most cases, it is difficult to distinguish and fully understand when you have changed. Whether it be a trivial change in habit to a crucial character transformation, it is best to set oneself up against an untouched canvas, and begin to analyze the newfangled person from there. Throughout Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, the concept of identifying one’s changes is apparent in two of the main characters, Pearl and Dimmesdale. Both characters experience their own engenderment of maturity and personal growth, though Dimmesdale’s involvement with it is much more deleterious in comparison to Pearl’s.

““There was witchcraft in little Pearl’s eyes, and her face, as she glanced upward at the minister, wore that naughty smile which made its expression frequently so elvish.” (Hawthorne 145) This, is a misleading description that Nathaniel Hawthorne depicts of Pearl, the daughter of Hester Prynne, in his classic novel The Scarlet Letter. Pearl is the living product of sin for her mother. Born out of wedlock, Pearl is a unique child that tends to be very moody and unpredictable. However, Pearl, at such a young age, demonstrates outstanding knowledge and exhibits curiosity to her mother’s scarlet letter, and the hypocrisy of Puritan society. Although Pearl portrays devilish characteristics and performs mischievous behaviour, she

Anastas, Benjamin. “The Foul Reign of Emerson’s ‘Self-Reliance.’” The New York Times, 3 Dec. 2011, www.nytimes.com. This article blames today’s politics and the American joy of instant gratification with the dismissal of outside facts due to the ‘Self- Reliance’ philosophy of Emerson. Stating that the American people can ignore loads of facts if their own experience tells them something different. Benjamin Anastas is an American Novelist, journalist, and book reviewer. He also teaches literature at Bennington College.

The Puritan era in New England was inundated with an atmosphere of righteousness and judgment. This culture spurned those who strayed from its religious codes. In his novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses multiple symbols to bring a deeper meaning to the society, his characters, and to adultery. One of the motifs used comes as the character Pearl, the daughter of the two adulterers. Pearl has multiple descriptions; physically, she is “a lovely and immortal flower,” yet also “an airy sprite . . . as if she were hovering in the air and might vanish” (80, 83). She has a “wild, desperate, defiant mood” and is often referred to as a “flower,” a “bird,” and an “elf” (82, 80, 98, 87). Hawthorne uses Pearl’s multi-layered personality

“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.

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.

Pearl is an evident symbol that sends multiple messages in the book. In the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne symbolism is quite evident throughout the text. In the case of Pearl, Hester's Daughter, she symbolizes many things in the text. Pearl forces Hester to deal with her sin and learn to cope with the consequences she faces resulting from what she did. Pearl helps send the message of the importance of forgiveness and consequences. She symbolizes the sin that Hester has committed and the shame Hester has to face. Pearl also symbolizes the connection between Dimmesdale and Hester and the guilt that Dimmesdale has to face for hiding his secret sin for so long.

Romanticism is categorized as “a preference for simplicity and naturalness, a love of plain feelings and truth to common place reality, especially as found in natural scenes”. Nathaniel Hawthorne was an anti-transcendentalist and believed in the dark side of man, hence his dark romantic novel The Scarlet Letter. This allegorical novel depends heavily on symbol and character. The novel is chock full of symbolic dimension of images, characters, and descriptions. The Scarlet Letter defines the American Romanticist movement while using symbolic characters and places that give the book seemingly two different stories. The first story denotes the story going on in the book, including the characters. The other story has symbols that speak on

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne was written in 1849. This novel won him much fame and a good reputation as a writer. In writing The Scarlet Letter, Hawethorne was creating a form of fiction he called the psychological romance. A psychological romance is a story that contains all of the conventional trappings of a typical romance, but deeply portrays humans in conflict with themselves. The Scarlet Letter won Hawthorne great critical acclaim, and even today the book remains on the best seller list. The Scarlet Letter is so popular maybe because generations of readers can interpret it and see subtle meanings that somewhat reflect their own lives. Each of us, has

Pearl has been fascinated by the scarlet letter from a very young age, in fact, it was the first thing she noticed about her mother. “One day as her mother stooped over the cradle, the infant’s

Wilson’s question, a question testing Pearl’s religious knowledge and belief in god, exemplified her courage. An outspoken character, Pearl was beyond her age in knowledge as well as many other aspects. The fact that Hawthorne created this girl as an unyielding character illustrates his support for the feminist cause. Yet another time Pearl’s aptitude surfaced was the warning to her mother. “Come away, mother! Come away, or yonder old Black Man will catch you! He hath got hold of the minister already.” (Hawthorne 123) This realization Pearl possessed between good and bad coupled with her intellect allows for her empowerment. Moreover, Pearl’s role as a strong, prominent character showed 19th century Americans an alternative side young girls could possess.

In the ninth through eighteenth chapters of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, many things are established. The characters in the novel are beginning to be fully characterized, Pearl is described as “elvish” and to have an “elf-smile in her eyes” and at such a young age Pearl displays a supernatural intelligence that most three year-old’s do not possess. Pearl is a living example representing the sin of adultery that Hester Prynne, her mother, has committed, which connects to the theme. Pearl is very much alike her mother Hester, because of their captivating beauty. Another character development is the evolution of Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale’s illness. Dimmesdale becomes extremely ill, and he punishes himself because of the sin he committed which was also adultery, with Hester Prynne. Dimmesdale slowly begins to attempt to reveal his sinfulness through his sermons, but this leads his congregation to believe he is very holy and could never be a sinful being. Hawthorne uses dramatic irony, through this situation because the reader knows who the father of Pearl is and that Dimmesdale committed adultery, but the people of the