The Living Scarlet Letter
The Living Scarlet LetterThe Living Scarlet Letter
Throughout The Scarlet Letter Nathaniel Hawthorne uses a variety of symbols, which are significant to the novel. A very important symbol in the novel is Pearl, who is a result of Hester and Dimmesdale’s sin of adultery. Pearl is a constant living reminder to Hester and Dimmesdale of the sin they committed.
Along with wearing the letter “A”, on her chest for the remainder of her life, Hester lives with another punishment. She must live with her daughter, “the scarlet letter in another form.” “She named the infant “Pearl,” as of being of great price,-purchased with all she had,-her mother’s only treasure”(82). Pearl was important to Hester. Without her she would not have been able to survive. When there was talk of Pearl being taken away from Hester, she became very upset. She went to Governor Bellingham’s mansion to beg him to let her keep her daughter. “Had they taken her away from me, I would willingly have gone with thee in the forest and signed my name in the Black Man’s book too, and that with mine own blood!” (107). Pearl is like the rose bush growing outside the prison door. She gives Hester hope. While Pearl served as constant reminder to Hester of her sin, she needed her to survive.
In the beginning of the novel Pearl merely represents the love affair between Hester and Dimmesdale. While Hester stands on the scaffold she recognizes this fact. She resists the temptation to hold Pearl to cover up the “A” on her chest, and she realizes “ . . . one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another”(50). Hester realizes that Pearl will serve to be as much of a punishment as the letter “A.” Every time she looks at her child she will be reminded of Dimmesdale and their love affair together. When Hester was taken back to the jail later in the evening “[the child] seemed to have drank in with it all the turmoil, the anguish and despair, which pervaded the mother’s system”(66). Pearl signifies the agony that Hester had experienced while standing on the scaffold in front of the townspeople. Pearl can sense her mother’s feelings of pain and embarrassment.
Pearl becomes fascinated with the scarlet letter on Hester’s breast, even from the time she is a baby.
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. (88)
As she grows older she constantly questions and comments on the scarlet letter. “What dost the letter mean mother”(165)? Hester is forced to lie about the true...
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