How Is Pearl Reflected In The Scarlet Letter

In his novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses the storyline of Hester Prynne’s adultery as a means of criticizing the values of Puritan society. Hester and her daughter Pearl, whom she conceives out of wedlock, are ostracized from their community and forced to live in a house away from town. The reflections of Pearl in different mirrored surfaces represent the contrast between the way Puritans view her and who she actually is. In the fancy mirrored armor of the society’s elite class, Pearl is depicted harshly as a devilish and evil spawn, unable to live up to the expectations of such a pristine society. However, in the natural reflections of the earth’s surface, Pearl’s beauty and innocence is much more celebrated. The discrepancies between these positive depictions of Pearl as an angelic figure and the Puritans’ harsh judgment of her character suggest that Puritans inflated her oddities and strange habits in order to place her and Hester in a place of inferiority within the community. Hawthorne employs reflection and mirrors in his novel to convey the Puritans’ misconstrual of Pearl as an elfish, evil child and to critique the severity of early Puritan moral codes.

Pearl’s reflection in Governor Bellingham’s armor

If somebody, like Hester Prynne, does not enforce these moral codes, he or she is used as an example of a sinner for future generations and is banned to the outskirts of town. Hawthorne uses the symbol of mirrors and reflection to emphasize these extreme Puritan values and examine their effect on Hester’s daughter. The contrast between her reflection in the mirrors of Puritan elites and that in the natural mirrored surface of water, untouched by religion or morals, is symbolic of Puritan’s vilification of those who do not conform to their high standards and city on a hill