What Does The Pearl Symbolize In The Scarlet Letter

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Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter narrated the journey of a woman named Hester Prynne and the life the damsel in distress had to lead due to committing adultery. Hester had committed adultery with none other than Arthur Dimmesdale, a Puritan minister, and as a result, Hester gave birth to an illegitimate child named Pearl. Is there more to Pearl than what meets the eye? Pearl symbolized more than what the Puritan community describes her to be, the child of Satan. Pearl embodied the result of adultery that Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale have committed as well as a child who has been deprived of her happiness, something that a child of such a young age needs for healthy growth and development, Throughout the story, Pearl constantly …show more content…
Pearl was a little girl, but hard to understand. Even the Puritans couldn’t decipher the mystery behind the little girl that they accused of being the devil’s child. For example, in the book, whenever Puritan children attempted to gather around Pearl, “Pearl would grow positively terrible in the puny wrath, snatching up stones to fling at them, with shrill, incoherent exclamation that made her mother tremble because they had so much the sound of a witch’s anathemas in some unknown tongue (Hawthorne 90-91).” Hester Prynne blames Pearl’s abnormal behavior on the way she was born into this world, a way that was morally wrong, based on the beliefs on the Puritans. Pearl also seemed to have an affiliation with the letter that Hester was trying to comprehend. “One day, as her mother stooped over the cradle, the infant’s eyes had been caught by the glimmering of the gold embroidery about the letter; and, putting up her little hand, she grasped at it, smiling, not doubtfully, but with a decided gleam, that gave her face the look of a much older child (Hawthorne 93).” Even as an infant, a phase in any person’s life where he or she doesn’t have the ability to comprehend that much, Pearl still grabbed the letter and found it quite intriguing. She always asked her mother why she wore the letter and she asked the secret behind the letter. Hester even went …show more content…
During the Puritan times in the seventeenth century, a normal child would have both parents and lead a civilized, religious life. Pearl on one hand never received the love of a father because Dimmsdale did not want to reveal the sin that he committed with Hester. This is a major reason as to why Pearl acts the way she does in the story. “ Because of Pearl’s odd attributes and the fact that she had no father, the Puritan community began to wonder if Pearl was a “witch-baby” fathered by the devil ( Shegufta Yasmin).” Yasmin, a professional lecturer at the University of Bangladesh, agrees that the reason Pearl was abnormal for a little girl was because she lacked the love and companionship of a father. In the story, when Dimmsdale was on the scaffold and finally admitted to his sin and revealed the love he has for Pearl, the spell was broken and Pearl turns into a normal human being. One can say that Pearl has been the victim of the letter. “ Her victimization has consisted in being denied a reality of her own. At the very moment when she becomes real, nevertheless—when her errand toward Hester is fulfilled—she ceases to be a character in the story (Nina Baym).” Pearl’s human side ceased to exist in the story until after the spell was broken, which made her cry for the first time in the story. Nina Baym, an American literacy critic and literary historian, agrees that Pearl