What Is The Little Pearl's Character In The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne

Little Pearl is born out of sin to an adulteress named Hester Prynne. The townspeople see her as a “demon offspring” (Hawthorne, 1994, p. 68). Her role in the story not only symbolizes Hester’s sin (the scarlet letter does that), but also sin itself. The reader watches her grow up from the time she is a baby to around age seven, and, after that, hears little of her except for the rumors that make it across the ocean into the New World. Pearl is a symbol of sin. While this statement is correct, it is also a small part of how her character can be seen. Once one really dissects and analyzes how she fits into The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, he will see that she is not actually static. Her character changes in such a way that

No matter how hard she tries, Hester cannot make her child obey. Pearl “could not be made amenable to rules” (Hawthorne, 1994, p. 62). Since Pearl was created out of a sinful desire, she represents sin itself, and what comes from it. Being created out of disobedience to God, Pearl could not obey. Everything that Pearl does comes back to a strange obsession with “the scarlet letter on Hester’s bosom” (Hawthorne, 1994, p. 66). When Pearl plays, she “took some eel-grass, and imitated, as best she could, on her own bosom, the decoration with which she was so familiar on her mother’s. A letter,--the letter A,--but freshly green, instead of scarlet!” (Hawthorne, 1994, p. 122). She creates a scarlet letter for her own breast, after which Hester has to explain why Pearl should not wear one (Hawthorne, 1994, p. 122). When Hester takes the letter off, she feels a freedom she has not felt for years, but Pearl becomes angry and wants Hester to put it back on, thus putting the guilt and grief back into her mother’s life. This represents how sin holds one back from a freedom that is found from forgiveness in God’s grace. Because Hester has trouble making Pearl obey, this makes many of the people believe she had a demon, thus representing

Pearl receives Chillingworth’s “very considerable amount of property, both here and in England” (Hawthorne, 1994, p. 178). She is not Chillingworth’s daughter or heir, but she receives it anyway. In the same way, one is given salvation through Christ even when he does not deserve it. An example of the fruit of Pearl’s transformation is how she, “at a marriageable period in her life, might have mingled her wild blood with the lineage of the devoutest Puritan among them” (Hawthorne, 1994, p. 178). Though Pearl does not seem to have many opportunities as a child, in the end God’s grace is clearly seen through her transformation as a