How Is Pearl A Symbol In The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne does more than just characterize Pearl as Hester’s child in his novel The Scarlet Letter. Pearl is introduced right in the beginning as a symbol of Hester’s sin: adultery. Pearl, as she develops into a toddler, is delved more into as a symbol of the sin. She is beyond what anyone around her would see her as, which is a child. Hawthorne, of course, showed the most symbolism to Pearl, but another help to understand just how important of a symbol she was, was Cindy Lou Daniels. With her literary analysis Hawthorn’s Pearl: Woman-Child of the Future, she uses evidence from Hawthorne’s novel along with multiple other critics of how Pearl is the major symbol of Hester’s ignominy of The Scarlet Letter. The only way to explain how Pearl is a symbol is to start at the beginning. Pearl was born because Hester had an affair with a man, who is eventually found out to be Reverend Dimmesdale, and had a child with him. Hester’s husband, Roger Chillingworth, had practically disappeared for almost over two years. When Hester became

They condemned her for committing such a vile sin, so they forced her to bare a red scarlet letter “A” across her breast. On Hester’s trial day she is standing out on the pedestal and is holding Pearl, who is only a mere infant at the time. “She bore in her arms a child, a baby of some three months old, who winked and turned aside its little face from the too vivid light of day; because its existence, heretofore, had brought