The Scarlet Letter, Pearl
How can something so good and pure come out as a result of something so evil? An infant, a child, during the period of the Puritan early settlements in the New World, completely shunned out due to her mother’s evil deed. Pearl is “a beautiful flower growing out of sinful soil”. In the novel “The Scarlet Letter”, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Pearl was the great price of Hester, always with her as her companion, also, she was a child so different from the other Puritan infants with a strange character, and finally, Hawthorne’s purpose for Pear is not only to give Hester a companion, but to point out something deeper than that.
A lovely and immortal flower, an innocent life, a great price, Pearl. Pearl is the greatest and just about the only prized possession of Hester Prynne, the outcast of a colonial town due to her evil deed of adultery. Hester would treat her Pearl as a princess, an example being standing aside and letting the infant express herself when she was mad or sad, or any other emotion. Hester would pick the finest and richest tissue and then let her imagination play while forming the decorations of the dress that the Pearl would wear before the public eyes. One main reason for this lenient attitude towards Pearl is that she is Hester Prynne’s consolation after all the punishment Hester has to go through every day for the rest of her life, The Scarlet Letter. Pearl is Hester’s every day companion, always by her mother walking along her side and she too is a victim of cruel treatment from the other townspeople, just as her mother.
Pearl is an “imp of evil, emblem and product of sin, she had no right among christened infants.” Pearl is aware that she is different from the other Puritan infants. The other infants treat her cruelly because they sense that there is something wrong with Hester and Pearl. Pearl is also different; she has a distinct mood and character which her mother worries about. Pearl denies having a “Heavenly...