Who Is Pearl In The Scarlet Letter

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"She is my happiness... she is my torture” (103). These are the words Hester used to describe Pearl. Although Pearl is a secondary character in the novel, The Scarlet Letter, she is very significant and symbolic to the story. Pearl is the daughter of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale and is the product of a sinful affair that is frowned upon by their puritan society. Throughout the novel Pearl is a wild child who is unlike any other puritan child at that time. She is a child that is not at ease in the town that she lives in and serves as a constant reminder of the love and passion that Hester and Dimmesdale have for each other but also she reminds Hester of the sin she committed. Pearl was there as a chance for Hester and Dimmesdale to…show more content…
To her mother Hester, Pearl’s name means “as being of great price” (81). This in the novel shows how pearl has changed Hester life. She was given to Hester but at the price of Hester’s status in the community. This also shows how Pearl is important to the novel by showing how pearl is meant to be something bittersweet to Hester. Something that Hester can look at and remember what has happened to her in the past. According to the Shmoop Editorial Team, Pearl’s name also means “pure, white, and definitely not sinful”. This shows how Pearl’s name shows that Pearl is one of the only characters who have not committed a sin. This clearly means that she is innocent during the novel and that she did not deserve what happened to her during the novel. While she was the product of Hester’s and Dimmesdale’s affair, her name is meant to signify the pureness that she possesses as a way to help Hester and Dimmesdale restore their…show more content…
Sparknotes says that Pearl “asks them pointed questions and draws their attention, and the reader’s, to the denied or overlooked truths of the adult world.” She shows everyone who the other characters really are in the novel and at the same time shows who she is. She is shown to be this observant person who makes connections that no one else in the novel notices or pays any attention to. Pearl is also this child that scares the other children when she approaches and is seen as a witch-child. In The Scarlet Letter, the community calls her an “imp of evil, emblem and product of sin”(85). The reasoning behind why they call her is because when she gets mad at the children of the town for calling her and her mother names and when she is chasing them off, she speaks in a language that sounds like witchcraft. Pearl also plays with toys that she imagines from everyday objects like sticks and rocks. What is unique about her is that she hates them because she pictures them as the town elders and the town children. This shows that Pearl has an imaginative mind but still a person who is capable of extreme amounts of hatred towards people. Pearl also has an obsession with the scarlet letter that is on her mother’s bosom. This shows how much Pearl knows and how it is something that Hester must keep on for as long as she needs too. In the text, it states “pearl misses something which she has always
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