Nathaniel Hawthorne gives us a lot of information and
commentary on Pearl throughout The Scarlet Letter, and it's up to
the reader to decide how he or she feels about her. Pearl is a much more complex
character than she might seem at first.
You've mentioned
all the kind of "other-worldly" references to this daughter of Hester and Arthur.
Clearly, his use of those words and images is an attempt to paint Pearl as a creature
beyondearthly. Yet she is also quite in touch with the realities of life. She plays
rough sometimes (as when she crippled a bird while playing or my favorite, when she
throws mud at her childish tormentors), and she's well aware of the severities of this
Puritan community, as when she plays make-believe and creates the elders and other stern
figures of the town.
She's a typical spoiled child,
throwing tantrums (at the brookside) and taking advantage of her mother's lenience (as
she traipses through the cemetery or throws cockles at her mother's bosom). Yet she has
an innate sense of justice, asking multiple times if Arthur will stand with them on the
scaffold in the daytime. When he refuses, she shows him no
sympathy.
In short, Pearl as a young girl is a product of
an illicit relationship and nothing about her life is normal. Just like her clothing,
Pearl is an outward embodiment of the turmoil and guilt in her parents' lives. Once she
genuinely kisses her father one last time on the scaffold, Hawthorne tells us it's as if
a curse has been broken. We now have hope that she will grow and mature into a loving,
caring adult. The evidence of that is slim, but we know she married well and apparently
for love, that she was quite rich and had no economic worries, and that she still cared
for her mother--all signs of a relatively normal life and one which we might not expect,
given her early years. This speaks to the bondage of guilt and sin and the freedom of
unconditional love.
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