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Pearl as Hester’s Tormentor and Savior
Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth century, Puritan ideology was a common practice. The group’s focus was to purify the Church of England. Thus, adultery was punishable by death. Other punishments would be strict and harsh. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter traces Hester Prynne’s punishment for her shameful act of adultery. Being forced to wear a scarlet letter A on her chest for eternity, Hester begins a new epoch. Her illegitimate daughter Pearl is a complex symbol in this novel. Representing both sin and salvation, Pearl comes at a high cost for her mother. Pearl physically embodies Hester’s scarlet letter, acting as a constant reminder of her sin. Acting dually as Hester’s savior
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and tormentor, Pearl has a strong role in her mother’s life. Despite Hester’s love for Pearl, the fact remains that Pearl is Hester’s illegitimate daughter. She is conceived through sin. Pearl is complicated. Uncontrollably, Pearl is a constant reminder of Hester’s sin. When first appearing on the scaffold, Hester clutches infant Pearl to her chest to hide the letter, however, she “wisely judg[es] that one token of shame would but poorly serve to hide another” (SL 50). Hester will always be aware that Pearl originates from a violation of the Puritan law. Additionally, Pearl is referred to as “elf-child”, “demon”, “devil”, and “witch”. Hester is not an exception, often calling her daughter such names. Clearly, Pearl is not a normal child. Because of her means of existence, it is unlikely that the townspeople will view Pearl as a part of society. Hester “knew that her deed had been evil; she could have no faith, therefore, that its result would be good” (SL 82). The possibility of Pearl being an ideal child is nonexistent, being that she is the product of Hester’s sin. Hester “looked fearfully into the child’s expanding nature, ever dreading to detect some dark and wild peculiarity, that should correspond with the guiltiness to which she owed her being” (SC 82). Hester never pretends her daughter is perfect. Hester feeling fearful about her young daughter expands the point that Pearl torments Hester. Pearl is alive due to sin, therefore negatively impacting her life. Hester loves her daughter, but Pearl is always the direct result and reminder of sin. Although Pearl is the direct product of Hester’s sin, she is essential to Hester’s well-being.
Hester values and cherishes her daughter. Pearl is named so because of the worth she possesses, “being of great price,-purchased with all she had,-her mother’s only treasure” (SL 81). Hester is defenseless against her punishment of the letter, and she cannot reverse her act of adultery. Pearl is the source of happiness in Hester’s unfortunate life. Pearl is of great importance, because with her existence comes a conclusion to Hester’s previous life. As Pearl grows to be the age of three, question arises as to whether she should be living with and raised by Hester. If Pearl is not evil, the people do not believe Hester should raise her, due to her sinful action and seclusion from the town. However, if Pearl is evil, Hester should not be involved, for Hester’s sake. Despite this being the peoples’ views, Hester refuses to have Pearl be taken away from her. She argues she will be able to teach her daughter through her scarlet letter. Claiming “Ye shall not take her! I will die first!” (SL 103), adduces Hester’s love and need for her daughter. Hester finds that, without Pearl, she has no reason to live. Furthermore, Hester is invited to a witch gathering by Mistress Hibbins, but declines. She refuses the offer, but tells Mistress Hibbins that if Pearl had been taken away, she “would willingly have gone with thee into the forest, and signed my name in the Black Man’s book too, and that with my own blood” (SL 107). The loss of Pearl would send Hester into a complete downfall in life. Thus, Hester finds great endearment and necessity in her
daughter. Pearl associates herself with the letter. She has a fascination with this object on her mother’s chest, often asking questions about it. When Pearl is examined is the mayor’s mansion, she firmly states that she “is her mother’s child” (SC 100). Pearl closely connects herself to her mother. She often refutes the idea that she came from God, claiming “I have no Heavenly Father!” (SC 90). Considering the town’s strict Puritanism, this mindset is not allowed. Puritans believe in a God-centered world. Pearl focuses her life through her mother and the scarlet letter. The bond between Pearl and the letter goes to the point where Pearl mimics having the letter on herself. While playing, Pearl arranges “eel-grass” in the letter A on herself, “which she was so familiar on her mother’s” (SC 161). The letter is Hester’s punishment from the town, but Pearl does not find it that way. Pearl views the letter in a positive manner, which is the opposite of it’s intention. In the forest, while feeling free, Hester removes her letter. Pearl is returning to her mother, and notices the missing letter. Pearl physically distances herself, refusing to go near her mother. She begins “this wild outbreak with piercing shrieks” (SC 189). Pearl takes Hester’s sense of freedom away, forcing her to put the letter on her chest again. If Hester discards her letter, she is discarding and disowning Pearl. As Pearl’s actions resemble the letter, her physical appearance does as well. Pearl’s “whole appearance, that is irresistibly and inevitably reminded the behold of the token which Hester Prynne was doomed to wear upon her bosom. It was the scarlet letter in another form; the scarlet letter endowed with life!” (SC 93). The townspeople view Pearl primary as the embodiment of the letter. She is the life form of Hester’s letter. Pearl is the direct result of Hester and Dimmesdale’s passion. She is the link between the two. The connection is most evident in the end of the novel. Hester and Dimmesdale meet, and plan to leave the town together, with Pearl. Pearl asks Dimmesdale, “But wilt thou promise, to take my hand and mother’s hand, to-morrow noontide?” (SC 139). Pearl wants to join the three together publicly, in the middle of the day. She wants to rid them of their secret. Dimmesdale denies her then, being it is judgement day, but later the three appear on the scaffold. Pearl pushes Dimmesdale to confess. Moments before his death, Dimmesdale asks “dear little Pearl, wilt thou kiss me now?” (SC 229). Without hesitation, Pearl kisses Dimmesdale. Pearl has Dimmesdale accept his sin, and die without the burden of his secret. The truth is owned up to, due to Pearl. She is the letter that connects her mother and father. Ultimately, while the letter is supposed to be Hester’s punishment, Pearl finds familiarity and comfort in it. Essentially, Pearl is a necessary symbol with dual meaning. While bringing elation to Hester, she can also be a deleterious child. Being the embodiment of Hester’s punishment, Pearl connects herself to the letter. Pearl causes consistent remembrance of the passionate sin to both her mother and father. Pearl is the product of Hester and Dimmesdale’s sin, while the scarlet letter is the product from the society. Thus, Pearly acts as both a tormentor and a protector.
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel, The Scarlet Letter, tells the story of a young adulteress named Hester Prynne and her bastard daughter, Pearl, as they endure their residence in a small town of the Massachusetts British settlement in the1600s. Pearl’s illegitimate birth is the result of the relationship between Hester Prynne and a minister of the Puritan church, Arthur Dimmesdale. Through public defamation and a perpetual embroidery of an “A” upon her dress, Hester is punished for her crime. Whereas, Arthur choses to suppress the secret over illuminating the truth and endures internal and self-inflicted punishment as consequence.
Pearl is a symbol of Hester’s transgressions and even has similar qualities as the sin which she represents. Pearl’s life and behavior directly reflects the unacceptable and abnormal nature of Hester’s adulterous sin. Hester is plagued with more than just a letter “A”; she is given a child from her affair who is just as much a reminder of her sin as the scarlet letter. Ultimately Hester overcomes the shame associated the scarlet letter and creates a sense of family for herself and Pearl. This relationship is integral to the theme of this novel and the development of its characters.
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.
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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter tells the story of Hester Prynne, a sinner, living in a puritan society. As punishment, she is forced to wear a scarlet letter on her chest. Her daughter Pearl is the product of her sinful ways, and a constant reminder of her wrongdoing. Pearl’s embodiment of the Scarlet Letter causes her hostile relationships with the world and her mother. However, when Dimmesdale kisses her, he frees her from isolation and allows her to form human connections.
From the moment she is born in the cold, heartless prison, Pearl is placed under scrutiny. The townspeople see her as a visible reminder of sin, and it isn't long until even her own mother searches for evil in her. The girl is described as "the scarlet letter in another form; the scarlet letter endowed with life!"(Hawthorne 103). With her fascination from an early age with the scarlet letter, Hester believes that Pearl's very reason for existence is to torment her mother. Hester fails to realize that the letter is just something bright and significant to which Pearl reacts; instead, she sees every glance, every word aimed at the letter, every touch of Pearl's tiny fingers to her bosom as an added torture resulting from her adultery. Hester, considering Pearl's very existence, goes so far as to question if the impish child is even her own. "Thou art not my child! Thou art no Pearl of mine!"(Hawthorne 99) she tells Pearl, only half-jokingly. In her own way, she wonders whether Pearl was sent to her by God or by a demon wishing to cause her pain. She is not alone in this speculation; many of the town's citizens believe there is something of the Devil in Pearl.
Although Hester and Pearl are isolated for a while after their punishment (85), the Puritan society’s view of her changes in chapter 13. In chapter 13, Hester is shown to have become a servant of the community, and, rather than scorning her, the community praises her as holy (134). Even the symbol that embodies her punishment, the scarlet letter A, transforms into a symbol of her holiness, being interpreted by the people as meaning “Able” (134). In chapter 24, the story’s conclusion, Hester mentors young women, furthering the idea that she brings redemption from her sin by using her lessons to help others
As a living reminder of Hester’s extreme sin, Pearl is her constant companion. From the beginning Pearl has always been considered as an evil child. For Hester to take care of such a demanding child, put lots of stress onto her life. Hester at times was in a state of uncontrollable pressure. “Gazing at Pearl, Hester Prynne often dropped her work upon her knees, and cried out with an agony which she would fain have hidden, but which made utterance for itself, betwixt speech and a groan, ‘O Father in heaven- if Thou art still my Father- what is this being which I have brought into the world!’” (Hawthorne, 77).
Through the use of numerous symbols, Nathanial Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter serves as an allegory for the story of Adam and Eve and its relation to sin, knowledge, and the human condition that is present in human society. Curious for the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, which resulted in the revelation of their “humanness” and expulsion from the “divine garden” as they then suffered the pain and joy of being humans. Just as Adam and Eve were expelled from their society and suffered in their own being, so were Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale in The Scarlet Letter. Hester was out casted and shunned, while Dimmesdale suffered under his own guilt. After knowledge of her affair is made known, Hester is forced to wear a scarlet letter “A” on her chest to symbolize her crime of adultery, and is separated from the Puritan society. Another “A” appears in the story, and is not embroidered, but instead scarred on Dimmesdale’s chest as a symbol of guilt and suffering. Hester’s symbol of guilt comes in the form of her daughter, Pearl, who is the manifestation of her adultery, and also the living version of her scarlet letter. Each of these symbols come together to represent that with sin comes personal growth and advancement of oneself in society as the sinner endures the good and bad consequences.
Often in novels writers use symbolism as a device to make their themes and ideas come across clearly to the reader. In the novel The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne uses many forms of symbolism. People and objects are symbolic of events and thoughts of hawthorn throughout the course of the book. The Scarlet letter itself is a symbol he uses to contradict the puritanical society of the story. Nathaniel Hawthorne uses Pearl both as a symbol in the novel, and to work on the consciences of Hester and Dimmesdale.
Pride and Greed. Lust and Envy. Gluttony. Wrath. Sloth. The seven deadly sins govern the Puritan society of the Boston Massachusetts Bay colony depicted in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and are recurring themes throughout the novel. The novel recounts the tale of Hester Prynne, a young married woman who arrives at the colony without her husband. When Hester becomes pregnant, with her soon to be daughter Pearl, while her husband is assumed to have died at sea, the townspeople call her out for having an affair and shun her from society. Hester is cursed to wear the mark of the scarlet letter, symbolising “adultery,” until she has resolved her sin. Throughout the course of the novel Hester does her best to give back to the very people
In the beginning of The Scarlet Letter, the letter is understood as a label of punishment and sin being publicized. Hester Prynne bears the label of “A” signifining adulterer upon her chest. Because of this scorching red color label she becomes the outcast of her society. She wears this symbol of punishment and it become a burden throughout her life. The letter “produces only a reflection of her scarlet letter; likewise, the townspeople's image of Hester revolves around her sin. The evil associated with Hester's actions and the letter on her chest consume all aspects of her life, concealing her true beauty, mind, and soul” (R. Warfel 421-425). Society pushed blame upon Hester Prynne, and these events lead to the change of her life. The Puritans whom Prynne is surround by view the letter as a symbol from the devil, controversially some individuals look upon the letter, sigh and fell sympathy towards her because they have or are involved in this same situation. Nonetheless the haunting torture Hester Prynne battles daily drags on, Nathaniel Hawthorne shows this torture “of an impulse and passionate nature. She had fortified herself to encounter the stings and venomous stabs of public contumely wreaking itself in every variety of insult but...
Through Hester and the symbol of the scarlet letter, Hawthorne reveals how sin can be utilized to change a person for the better, in allowing for responsibility, forgiveness, and a renewed sense of pride. In a Puritan society that strongly condemns adultery one would expect Hester to leave society and never to return again, but that does not happen. Instead, Hester says, “Here…had been the scene of her guilt, and here should be the scene of her earthly punishment; and so, perchance, the torture of her daily shame would at length purge her soul, and work out another purity than that which she had lost; more saint-like, because the result of martyrdom.” Hes...
Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel, The Scarlet Letter, focuses on the Puritan society. The Puritan society molded itself and created a government based upon the Bible and implemented it with force. The crime of adultery committed by Hester generated rage, and was qualified for serious punishment according to Puritan beliefs. Ultimately the town of Boston became intensely involved with Hester's life and her crime of adultery, and saw to it that she be publicly punished and tortured. Based upon the religious, governmental, and social design of the Puritan society, Hester's entire existence revolved around her sin and the Puritan perception. Therefore it is evident within The Scarlet Letter that the Puritan community to some degree has constructed Hester's character.
In ‘The Scarlet Letter’, situated in 17th century puritan Massachusetts, Hester Prynne lives shamed and alienated from the rest of the Puritan community due to her affair with Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale. After being tried for adultery, she is sentenced to live the rest of her days wearing a red scarlet letter on her bosom, in order to show the nature of her sin to the Puritan community of Massachusetts. These conditions furthermore act as a catalyst to Hester’s imprisonment, as she is constrained to live as an outcast to society alone with her daughter, Pearl. Despite the fact that she is given the choice to leave Massachusetts, she decides to stay in order to serve her punishment for the atrocities she committed. “The chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling to her inmost soul, but could never be bro...