What Does Pearl Symbolize In The Scarlet Letter

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The Scarlet Letter Many novels have symbols that mean something other that what they originally mean. Some symbols are objects and some are actual people. In the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, there are many different symbols. In this novel, Hester is punished for her sin and is forced to wear a scarlet A. Her daughter Pearl is born because of this sin. Hester loves Pearl very much and wouldn’t have changed what she did. Pearl is a very significant symbol in this novel because she is a constant reminder to the citizens that Hester had committed adultery. At the beginning of the novel, when Pearl was just a baby, she was a symbol of the sin that Hester had committed. Pearl was proof that she had committed adultery. “‘And who, by your favor, Sir, may be the father of yonder babe - it is some three or four months old, I should judge - which Mistress Prynne is holding in her arms?’” (Hawthorne, Nathaniel, Nancy Stade, and George Stade. The Scarlet Letter. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2005. Print. 54) Chillingworth sees the baby in Hester’s arms and wonders who the father is. The entire town knows that Hester had committed adultery because of Pearl and are continuously shaming her for it. Hester sees Pearl in…show more content…
People start to say that Pearl’s true father was the devil. “So Pearl - the elf-child, - the demon offspring, as some people, up to that epoch, persisted in considering her” (213). In other words, People believe that Hester’s sin was so bad that Pearl’s true Father must have been the devil himself. Of course, it is true that Pearl really isn’t half human. Some people think that Pearl is half immortal. “[Pearl is] a lovely and immortal flower” (74). This shows that Pearl is considered to be half immortal. She is considered to be an unnatural beauty. Many people thought that Pearl’s natural beauty came from the Half immortal part of
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